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8 hit songs that were low key ghostwritten by other famous artists

The topic of ghostwriting can be a sensitive one.

Everyone knows about the whole Drake/Meek Mill saga when Meek found out Quentin Miller wrote Drake’s verse on Meek’s song “R.I.C.O.” and lost his shit on social media.

A few years ago, Kendrick Lamar spoke to Rolling Stone about the idea of ghostwriting in rap, saying that ghostwriting is fine and all, but it really depends on the art form you’re trying to express.

Kendrick said of ghostwriting:

“It depends on what arena you’re putting yourself in. I called myself the best rapper. I cannot call myself the best rapper if I have a ghostwriter. If you’re saying you’re a different type of artist and you don’t really care about the art form of being the best rapper, then so be it. Make great music. But the title, it won’t be there.”

I think Kendrick is probably right in this case.

Rap is all about what you say, rappers are judged off the content and quality of their bars. Whereas other genres, like pop music, are mostly defined by who is singing and how they’re saying it.

Huge pop artists are not criticized when they have a song written for them, that’s just part of the business.

It is interesting to see which popular artists write for other artists as a sort of side hustle.

Artists like Ne-Yo, The-Dream, Frank Ocean, and PartyNextDoor just have a particular knack for writing hit songs and that can be one hell of a profitable skill.

Here’s a list of hit songs written by other artists.

PartyNextDoor wrote Rihanna’s “Work”

PND has his own catalog of fire R&B, most of which he produced himself. Dude is a talent.

But the Toronto crooner also has a solid list of songs penned for other artists. Not only did he write “Work,” he also wrote “Sex With Me” for Rihanna, as well as “Preach” and “With You” for Drake, and DJ Khaled’s Jay-Z and Beyonce duet “Shining.”

But as for “Work,” PartyNextDoor didn’t write it as a club song and despite his own moniker, he has trouble writing “party songs.”

PND told Rolling Stone about writing party songs, specifically “Work”:

“I tried this year to make the party songs. It wasn’t in me. People think [“Work” is] a party song. It’s a breakup song. It’s blues. I went from braggadocious to blues.”

Rihanna damn sure turned it into a party song. Peep the reference track for “Work” below, I don’t care what he says, dude knows how to pen a hit.


Kanye West wrote Alicia Keys’ “You Don’t Know My Name”

The lead single off Alicia Keys’ 2003 album The Diary of Alicia Keys was an absolute hit.

I’m sure many of you remember the music video, starring Mos Def as the love interest of Keys’ that doesn’t know her name.

Just goes to show Kanye’s ridiculous talent, spinning a sample of the song “Let Me Prove My Love To You” by The Main Ingredient and pairing it with Keys’ own piano skills.

The sample is vintage Kanye, but of course Alicia Keys was the exact right person for the track and her album would go on to win the Grammy for Best R&B Album.


Jay-Z wrote Dr. Dre’s verse on “Still D.R.E.”

For anyone that’s seen The Defiant Ones, Dr. Dre isn’t one to hide the fact that he has songs and verses written for him, his skills are suited to the production side.

So on “Still D.R.E.” Dre turned to Jay-Z to pen his verse.

When you listen to Dre’s verse, you can hear some Jay-Z trademarks laying out in plain sight.

We got an official Dre and Jay collaboration on “The Watcher 2” off The Blueprint 2.


Swae Lee wrote Beyonce’s “Formation”

As the story goes Swae Lee of Rae Sremmurd was freestyling on the drive to Coachella and spit “O.K. ladies, now let’s get in formation,” and producer Mike Will stopped him. Mike Will told the New Yorker he knew they had something:

“I’m like, ‘Dog, we got to do that “get in formation” shit.’ That could be a hard song for the ladies. Some woman-empowerment shit. Like, ‘Ladies, let’s get in line, let’s not just fall for anything.’”

The song would become the lead single off Beyonce’s smash album Lemonade.


The-Dream wrote Rihanna’s “Umbrella”

The-Dream is one of those stars of the music world behind many of the hits of other artists.

One of the lead singles off Rihanna’s transformative 2007 album Good Girl Gone Bad, “Umbrella” was actually initially written for Britney Spears, but her label wasn’t down.

Shouts out to that label for causing Rihanna to take “Umbrella” instead.

Peep the reference track from The-Dream above.


Otis Redding wrote Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”

The great Otis Redding initially wrote and recorded “Respect” in 1965 with some pretty different instrumentation.

Redding’s version had a very different tone, almost of desperation. When Aretha got her hands on the track, she spun it into a feminist anthem and a much bigger hit.

Both versions have their merits, but Aretha’s takes the cake as one of the greatest soul songs of all time.


Ne-Yo wrote Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable”

Ne-Yo is one of the industry’s great pop writers. Ne-Yo gifted Beyonce with one of her biggest hits in “Irreplaceable.”

Just switch around some pronouns and you have a tailor-made hit.


Bruno Mars wrote Cee-Lo Green’s “F*ck You”

While this was a slightly collaborative effort, Mars wrote much of Cee-Lo Green’s 2010 smash-hit “F*ck You.”

Mars, while a massive star in his own right, also has quite the collection of songwriting credits including Adele’s “All I Ask,” Travie McCoy’s “Billionaire,” Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk,” and Flo Rida’s “Right Round.”

That’s quite the list.

Meek Mill makes triumphant return to top of rap game with ‘Wins & Losses’

Meek Mill was left for dead.

A series of scandals, personal losses, and legal issues saw the Philly rapper suffer a tough couple years.

In the summer of 2013, Meek Mill’s protege Lil Snupe was gunned down in Winnfield, La. Snupe’s murder was the subject of an emotional song from Meek as he wondered what someone in his position was supposed to do.

“And all he wanted was a coupe, all he wanted was a coupe
So what’s a n**** ‘sposed to do?
Tell ’em put the guns down or tell lil n**** shoot?”

Then Meek was sentenced to three to six months in jail for violating his parole, stemming from an altercation with a police officer when he was 18. Meek was released from prison in December 2014.

Upon his release, Meek began dating superstar Nicki Minaj. Musically, he returned in summer 2015 with Dreams Worth More Than Money, and it all looked rosy for the MMG kid.

Then Meek went a little wild.

Showing that he did not have some of the composure or decorum of most of the music industry’s stars, Meek Mill went on a Twitter rant aimed at Drake over allegations that the OVO leader had ghostwriters scripting his music.

It all started as Meek was pissed off by Drake’s line on “R.I.C.O.” in which Drizzy quipped “the girl of your dreams to me is probably not a challenge.” Initially Meek thought that was a comment about Nicki Minaj, but then someone clued him into the fact that Drake didn’t even write the verse.

https://twitter.com/MeekMill/status/623703382675460096

We won’t post the entire Twitter rant here, but it was truly one of the most entertaining and unhinged moments in recent rap history.

Drake shot back at Meek Mill with multiple diss tracks, allegedly playing “Back to Back” all night in a hotel room right above the room Meek was staying in.

This whole kerfuffle demonstrated Drake’s power within the rap game.

The result of this beef was mostly that people forgot about the fact that Quintin Miller was writing a lot of Drake’s bars and instead focused on Meek Mill taking a series of L’s.

Meek Mill was memed and his Instagram was bombarded with emojis and comments about how Drake dominated him on the diss tracks.

Then earlier this year, Nicki Minaj and Meek ended their relationship, seemingly adding to Meek’s woes.

That’s the context in which Meek Mill released his third studio album, Wins & Losses, last Friday.

The album is a hell of a reaction from Meek Mill, who had seemingly been left behind by the rap game.

Wins & Losses is a conscious return to form for Meek, who came up rapping about the trials and tribulations of his Philly upbringing. On an earlier mixtape this year, Meekend Music, a song “Left Hollywood” symbolizes this return.

Meek spoke to Rolling Stone about the track,

“It’s more like a metaphor. I did move from L.A., but it’s more like a metaphor. I’m catering back towards the streets, like, the culture that helped build me up from day one. The street culture, the street rap.”

Wins & Losses is definitely wrapped up in the street culture and street rap.

But the title of the album itself is Meek owning the up and down nature of his career and public life in recent years as he told Billboard,

“Everybody saying that I’m losing and I lost. I lost my case. I lost my friends to the streets. Those things really meant something to me. I started off in the basement on a karaoke machine. Now I’m in million-dollar studios, making a lot of money being able to feed my family and take them out a crazy environment, still being able to wake up on my own time and do things how I want to do it. That’s my definition of winning. I determine my definition of losing on this album.”

Meek Mill has taken back control of his own persona after controversy, legal issues, and Drake beef.

From the outset of Wins & Losses, the presence of old Meek is undeniable. He’s a master of the intro, pick out any Meek project and that first track is a certifiable banger.

The titular track “Wins & Losses” is no different.

Meek scream-raps in typical fashion about glowing up despite the hate,

“When they all thought we was finished, they was laughing at that
So I went and bought me a Dawn and flipped that hat to the back”

“Connect The Dots” with Yo Gotti and Rick Ross is a vintage, maximal, MMG cocaine-flipping track that harkens back to Meek’s earliest work with the MMG boss.

But Meek also gets pretty thoughtful on Wins & Losses, rapping about the condition of impoverished inner-city America on “Young Black America.”

On the politically-charged track, Meek raps about that run-in with police that has stained his record for years,

“Yeah, I was on that corner, tryna get my coins up
Coppers run up on us and we turn to Jackie Joyner
White man kill a black man, they never report us
Black man kill a white man, they gon’ start a war up
Mama she was tore up, sippin’ on the Absolut”

Billboard asked Meek Mill about getting political and that fateful altercation with police. Meek spoke about how one moment can determine a man’s freedom,

“I was 18 and got beat up by a cop and almost killed by cops. I was just a statistic coming up. The cops… thinking everybody else in the neighborhood is dangerous or everybody in the hood is killers. They caught me and treated me like I was a killer. I don’t think that’s really right. The cop gave me a 100 charges with trying to kill a cop. I don’t want to kill a cop. They basically put me on probation for the rest of my life from that point on when I was 18. I’m 30 now and still on probation. I’ve been to jail three times from that one stint of probation. Any mistake you make, you’ll be put in prison. Your freedom can be took.

Talk your shit Meek.

While returning to his roots and wanting to make music for the street, Meek is also speaking to real social and political issues.

After all he’s been through, my dude is competing with Lana Del Rey for the number 1 album in the country.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW6BXatgsI0/?taken-by=meekmill&hl=en

Shouts out Meek. We’re all happy to see the Philly kid back doing his thing.

Drake drops new song at Louis Vuitton show in Paris, whole thing is sus

Drake has released his first work since his cross-genre ‘playlist’ More Life back in March.

The new track, “Signs” debuted at Louis Vuitton’s Spring-Summer 2018 collection, playing as dudes in LV walked around looking a uncomfortably hot.

Skip ahead to around the 4 minute mark of the video to hear “Signs.”

The song is just a continuation of Drake’s new beach club aesthetic. Honestly, a fashion show is the perfect location for Drake’s recent catalog, which is a weird thing to say about probably the biggest rapper in the game right now.

Obviously the production, courtesy of Noah “40” Shebib, is incredibly on point and Drake sing-raps with some fake Caribbean inflection, it’s annoyingly catchy in the worst possible way.

Louis Vuitton’s style director took to Instagram yesterday to preview “Signs,” writing that Drake, “will be premiering a brand new song inspired by our #louisvuitton #pfwSS18 collection.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVmmmodgkWp/

Then Oliver El-Khatib, Drake’s manager and co-founder of OVO Sound, posted the same artwork and announced that he was curating the fashion show’s music.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVmwwBPBkEn/

The whole deal seems pretty contrived. Dude made a song “inspired” by the Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer collection.

Drake’s whole appeal was his seeming normalcy. He was a rapper/singer that listeners across the globe could fuck with.

At this point he’s like the Amazon of music.

Drake will co-sign an artist just to take their song (where is iLoveMakkonen?) and he’s basically become the biggest vulture in the industry.

Back in October, Earl Sweatshirt took to Twitter criticizing Drake’s vulturedom after the Toronto native posted a video on Instagram set to Kodak Black’s “Skrt.”

Earl hits the nail on the head as far as how Drake uses young artists for personal gain.

As a former Drake stan, all of this behavior is disturbing. I mean, I guess dude can’t really be crying anymore over his ex-girlfriend, he’s the most successful rapper under 40 by a very long shot.

Basically, Drake doesn’t really have much else to talk about this point, so he’s getting his inspiration from Louis Vuitton spring-summer men’s lines.

After a 7 month hiatus, Father returns with wild visuals for ‘Hands’

Father just dropped the dope visuals for his hit single “Hands.” It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from or seen the ATL rapper.

The video dropped four months after he released the song.

Before premiering the song, Father took a seven-month hiatus.

Even though he took a half year break, do not mistake his quietness for fuckery, Father was touring heavily throughout 2016 and 2017. Father also has a list of hit singles and is the the biggest act of alternative Atlanta record label, Awful Records.

Don’t know who Father, aka ‘Father’s Liquor Cabinet,’ is? Let’s peep his long tracklist of poppingness. The song he’s mostly known for “Look at Wrist,” he did with iLoveMakonnen & Key! back in 2014. The song has over 7 million views on YouTube and and close to 12 million plays on SoundCloud.


Father also got a shout out from the Champagne Papi on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/rgMsJYDQMz/

Father was no one hit wonder either. All of his projects are low-key masterpieces. After dropping Young Hot Ebony, he went on to do two more studio albums – Who’s Gunna Get Fucked First and I’m a Piece of Shit. 

Not to mention his EP game is crazy.


If you haven’t heard Papicodone … 


Boys & Girls Club …


Or L1L D1DDY, you are sleeping!

Not bad for an independent artist, huh?

Father dropped out of college to enter the rap industry. Before making the switch, Father attended Georgia State University where he was pursuing a degree in Chemistry and intended to become a Pharmacist.

Even though Father was captivated by the campus lifestyle of Georgia State and the party/club scene in ATL, according to an interview he did with Vibe, schooling laid the groundwork for Awful Records,

It definitely pushed me towards it. Once I got into Chemistry and realized school wasn’t meant for me, I went to Georgia State University in Atlanta. I enjoyed the campus life there more so than the school itself. I met so many [people] there and that was really a starting point for Awful Records. The party/club scene in Atlanta opened the doors with meeting new people. Some people choose to really get involved in it and then the others choose to be a part of it but focus on school. I was just one of the people who loved the Atlanta party vibe, and that’s what took a hold of me.

His unique talents are incomparable.

Last year, Father took to Twitter when he was compared to megastar rapper, Future.


Peep how tight Father got when he was compared to Future

Don’t test Father because he’ll be ready to shoot the hands on sight. Check out his new visuals for his latest rough em up single “Hands.” Warning: content portrays violence and may not be suitable for children under the age of trap god.


Hands on sight… go off in they shit

XXXTentacion is one of the hottest new rappers but is he too wild?

My guy XXXTentacion is type wild. The internet got first wind of him when Twitter inspired his beef with Drake. The song that got the beef poppin’ was X’s “Look at Me.”

When Drake was in Amsterdam back in January, he performed “KMT,” where his flow is suspiciously similar to XXXTentacion’s flow on “Look at Me.”

Drake followed XXXTentacion earlier that month

https://twitter.com/PigsAndPlans/status/825539693047664641

This performance took place while XXXTentacion was in jail for allegedly assaulting his pregnant girlfriend, but that didn’t stop the Floridian rapper from tweeting a rebuttal to the stolen flow.

Of course, the tweet was deleted, but we managed to get our hands on the record. Check out what XXXTentacion tweeted about Drake back in late January to Kodak Black:

Twitter
Twitter

Peep what X had to say about Drake in his first interview after jail

Since his release, XXXTentacion has managed to gain an even bigger following on SoundCloud, accumulating over 400 million plays, 970k followers, with only 43 tracks posted.

That’s not bad for someone who’s first song, “Vice City”, was posted on SoundCloud in 2014. Even with (or maybe because of) Drake’s biting, “Look at Me” still managed to grab the #34 spot on the Billboard Hot 100  list.

XXXTentacion definitely has a cult following.


X’s  fans have wild love for him (NSFW THO).

I don’t really know how to describe X’s music but it’ll get you so fuckin hype. It’s like a screamo version of rap. This man’s energy will get you feeling like you’re in the middle of a mosh pit, blacking out on the vibes and shit. His music is not for the weak hearted.


His energy lit af.


Yeah he a wild one.

In more news, he accepts everyone for who they are regardless of what kind of background they come from. In a recent show off of his Revenge Tour with Robb Banks, X went off on a KKK audio clip that stated how the “niggas and the Jews” are taking over the country. He replied,

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re black, white, yellow, purple, if you’re gay, if you’re straight, I give a fuck if you’re a person..”


He then popped off the craziest chant having the crowd say Fuck the KKK and Donald Trump.

https://twitter.com/IamAkademiks/status/871819663310819329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2F247hiphopnews.com%2Fxxxtentacion-speaks-inequality-concert%2F

If you haven’t heard his latest project, check out Revenge below and let us know your thoughts on the XXXTentacion movement.