I remember ‘Through the Wire’ being a single when it first came around in those halcyon days of 2003. Its music video was playing somewhere, and little notifications popped up covering how Kanye West was in a car accident where he almost died, but didn’t, and had to have his jaw wired shut. Whoever was running those notes made it very clear that he hadn’t passed away, he was very much alive. But eight-year-old me didn’t get the picture. Aaliyah had died a couple years earlier, and the video for ‘More Than a Woman’ came out posthumously. I don’t think I’d got over that and was convinced that ‘Through the Wire’ was that type of deal. But then 2004 came around, videos from The College Dropout were dropping for ‘All Falls Down’, ‘The New Workout Plan’ and others. I slowly but surely became convinced that Kanye West might not have actually died after all. My sister got The College Dropout, either as a gift or by her own actions, and there’s many a memory I have of hearing its music around the house during those days.

So, ‘Through the Wire’. What could I say about it that isn’t covered in its Wikipedia page, really? It was Kanye West’s debut single, properly introducing the world to the man if they hadn’t paid attention to the production credits he’d racked up to that point. It’s the song he initially recorded vocals for with his jaw wired shut while he was recovering from the near-fatal crash he experienced when he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car. When the song first came around, I didn’t think his voice didn’t sound all that bad considering his situation. It turned out he had just re-recorded the vocal when his jaws were free again. The original recording shows how much he could really only mumble in the state his face was in. So, as he says, he was very much delivering his message through the wires. Plus, it heavily samples Chaka Khan’s ‘Through the Fire’, with Khan’s vocals pitched-up to the maximum, a standard in the “chipmunk soul” West brought to the mainstream during that period. Chaka Khan says she didn’t like what West did to her voice. She also performed her song live alongside him at the VMAs. Who knows how she feels? All I can tell you for certain is that I like it, if it wasn’t clear.

I listened to this song again yesterday, just to gear myself up and gain some thoughts on what I wanted to write. I only just realised that at about 1:40 in the song, whoever’s playing the bass guitar plays a bum note before carrying on. It’s hard not to notice it now. But that miniscule detail can’t detract from the overall result. ‘Through the Wire’ is a classic tale of the phoenix rising from the ashes, with West humorously recounting his experiences of the crash, the aftermath and his experience in the hospital. “The doctor said I had blood clots / But I ain’t Jamaican, man”. I’ve always liked that lyric. It’s simple, but it does the job. I could go through the track line-by-line, but there’s no fun in that. And there are websites available for that purpose anyway. Generally, it’s a track like this that makes me miss how Kanye West used to be. He poked fun at that kind of sentiment in 2016. But in these times, it rings truer than ever. The Life of Pablo was his last album, though, wasn’t it? Can’t remember him releasing anything else afterwards.