"Jesus Walks" is a song by American rapper Kanye West. It was released on May 25, 2004, as the fourth single from his debut album The College Dropout (2004). The song contains a sample of "Walk with Me" as performed by the ARC Choir. "Jesus Walks" was acclaimed by music critics, who praised its compelling sonic atmosphere and boldness in its open embrace of faith. It was met by widespread commercial success, peaking at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and becoming West's fourth consecutive top-twenty hit in the United States.
The single was accompanied by three separate music videos, each of which visually interpreted a portion of its multifaceted context in different ways. "Jesus Walks" continues to be a crowd favorite and stands as one of the most-performed songs by West, who has included it within all of his headlining tours. At the 47th Grammy Awards, "Jesus Walks" was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Rap Song, and received a nomination for Song of the Year.
Various publications placed the song on several year and decade-end lists, and have since listed it among the greatest of all time. The song was named the best song of 2004 on Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll. Pitchfork listed it at No. 123 on its list of the 200 Best Songs of the 2000s, while NME placed it at No. 69 on its list of the "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years" in October 2014. Rolling Stone named the song No. 19 on their list of the 100 Best Songs of the 2000s, and later placed it at No. 273 on its 2010 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Background The song is essentially a spiritual exultation, wherein West discusses how Jesus "walks" with all manner of people, from the sinner to the saint. Towards this end, the first conceptual verse of the song is told through the eyes of a drug dealer contemplating his relationship with God. It reportedly took over six months for West to draw inspiration for the second verse. West also uses the song to express his critical views on how the media seem to shy away from songs that address matters of faith, while embracing songs discussing violence, sex, and illegal drugs. He rhymes, "So here go my single, dawg, radio needs this/They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, video tapes/But if I talk about God my record won't get played, huh?" This is directly taken from West's experiences when he was struggling to get signed onto a record label; many executives turned him down after he played a demo of the song for them. They reasoned that he did not conform to the stereotypes associated with mainstream hip-hop and therefore was not easily marketable. Many of his friends in the music industry also warned him that while the song was outstanding, it would never make it to radio.
Composition
"Jesus Walks" is a mid-tempo hip-hop song. It is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 87 beats per minute and composed in the key of E-flat minor. The song expresses a pulsating rhythm reminiscent to that of a marching band. The rhythm is accompanied by background vocal samples from the ARC Choir's arrangement of the traditional gospel song "Walk With Me" that emit a chant in cadence to the beat. Because of these elements, the composition has been widely described as evoking a militaristic atmosphere. The song begins with a medium tempo followed by its backing vocals and choral arrangement. After West's brief opening dialog, a drumroll sounds and the track's titular hook is belted by the ARC (Addicts Rehabilitation Center) choir and coupled with the chorus. Meanwhile, the song's melody is laced with auto-tune-processed gospel wails. Over time the song amasses itself, exhibiting multi-tracked violin flourishes and momentary vocal solos, gradually growing in intensity before peaking and immediately dissipating. The song repeats this process several times until it fades away completely at its conclusion.
The militant soundscape of "Jesus Walks" is complemented by its lyrical nuances. In the intro, the voice of a drill sergeant initiates the song with an "Order Arms" and is answered by a squad of soldiers who shout "1-2-3-4!" This exchange is followed by West's opening lines, where he declares, "we are at war with ourselves." West retains a considerable amount of dynamics in his rap delivery, as his flow features constant shifts in cadence, pitch, and volume over the simplistic rhythm. During the chorus, his voice builds in intensity in conjunction with the similarly swelling track, and peaks and fades away just before it follows suit. He also employs various rhyme schemes and phrasal techniques, at one point even using a call-and-response pattern.
Critical reception The single received universal acclaim from critics for its open embracement of faith in the face of the oft-secular music industry, with many expressing their astonishment that such an overtly religious song was embraced by radio. In a review of The College Dropout, Village Voice characterized the song as a "desperate masterpiece." Stylus Magazine music reviewer Josh Love cited "Jesus Walks" as the best song on the entire album, saying "Kanye makes his spiritual toil sound like triumph thanks to martial drums and a little gospel choir fervor, sounding a clarion call of salvation to all would-be doubters and haters. He swears that he's not trying to 'convert atheists into believers,' but listening to The College Dropout might just convince you that Kanye West is the Second City's Second Coming." The Los Angeles Times similarly considered "Jesus Walks" to be the highlight of the album, stating, "Its pulsating drums serve as the perfect backing for West's reflections on his own mistakes as well as hip-hop's tendency to focus on negative subject matter." PopMatters, which hailed "Jesus Walks" as the year's best single, listed the song as one of the primary tracks which exemplified the thoughtfulness and scholastic complexity inherent of The College Dropout as a whole, commenting that, "On 'Jesus Walks' Kanye proclaims his devotion to Jesus as seriously as the most devotional hymn singer would, while illustrating the way he falls in and out of what he perceives as the good path to follow. 'I wanna talk to God but I'm afraid cause we ain't spoke in so long,' he confesses, but then he goes ahead and asks us all to join him in that conversation, to push the song onto radio and push the divine into the heart of public dialogue. Extra dimensions are added to the song by the intense, cinematic presence it has, with all of the drama of a gangster film's climactic scenes, and by a Curtis Mayfield drop that makes the song ripe for a study of intertextuality."
Alongside its subject matter, the production quality of the track received equal acclaim, with Garry Mulholland of The Observer chronicling it as "[a] towering inferno of martial beats, fathoms-deep chain gang backing chants, a defiant children's choir, gospel wails, and sizzling orchestral breaks." Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times, who classified "Jesus Walks" as a gospel song, concurred with this sentiment, describing the song's choral arrangement as "clever". Blender likened the beat of the song to a "phantom marching army", and Entertainment Weekly testified that the "lush, intricate" production of the track gave off an "uplifting" presence. Time magazine critic Josh Tyrangiel declared "Jesus Walks" as "one of those miraculous songs that you hear for the first time and immediately look forward to hearing on a semiregular basis for the next 30 or 40 years."TimeAugust 21, 2005 Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker asserted that the song, "sounds simultaneously like V-Day and like a funeral" and concluded his review stating, "In a different year, 'Jesus Walks' might register as an eccentric's conflation of faith, commerce, and war. In 2004, it's a popular state of consciousness."
Accolades "Jesus Walks" was praised as one of the best songs of the year by numerous publications, including Blender, Rolling Stone, and Village Voice. The song received a nomination for Outstanding Song as well as Outstanding Music Video at the 36th NAACP Image Awards. At the Grammy Awards of 2005, "Jesus Walks" was nominated for Song of the Year, one of ten total nominations West received for that year alone. West, Rhymefest and Miri Ben-Ari won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Song for co-writing the song's lyrics and violin arrangements respectively. The music video won the 2005 MTV Video Music Award for best male video while West also received a nomination for Best Gospel Artist for "Jesus Walks" at the 2005 BET Awards, although he was not an actual gospel musician.
As a result of the significance and impact of "Jesus Walks", in August, The College Dropout was nominated for several gospel Stellar Awards, including Best Gospel Rap Album. However, the awards committees determined that the secular album was ineligible and subsequently withdrew the ballot. West surmised that the fact that they recognized the song in the first place demonstrated its impact, and said the song and its message was not meant for the evangelical audience, but for "... the people that I think God is really trying to reach." He also clarified his views on religion, saying, "Religion just means that you do something over and over. I will say that I'm spiritual. I have accepted Jesus as my Savior. And I will say that I fall short every day." Kanye later claimed that when his father heard the song, he said, "Maybe you missed your calling." To which West replied, "No, maybe this is my calling. I reach more people than any one pastor can." In retrospect, West maintained that while he was surprised by the accolades the song received, he had long predicted the radio success of "Jesus Walks". For him, it was all just a matter of attaining airplay, saying, "It was never a problem once it came out. All I did was use reverse psychology. It was a way of calling out people who didn't want to play it without pointing fingers at anybody."
The song was named the sixth best song of 2004 on Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll. "Jesus Walks" was ranked number 273 Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Rolling Stone also named the song number 19 on their list of 100 Best Songs of the 2000s. BET named it the second best song of the 2000s. In October 2011, NME placed it at number 69 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years". In 2012, Consequence named it the 89th Greatest song of all time. In January 2013, BBC Radio 6 Music readers voted for it as the 88th greatest song released in 6 Music's lifetime. In 2017, Rolling Stone placed it 32 in its list of Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of all time.
Commercial performance "Jesus Walks" appeared on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at No. 74 on the issue dated February 21. After sixth months, the track peaked at No. 2 for the issue dated August 14 and maintained the position for two weeks. "Jesus Walks" first came in at No. 25 on Hot Rap Tracks for the issue dated April 17. On the issue date of August 7, the song peaked at No. 3.
Despite all prior disapproval, "Jesus Walks" came to be one of West's biggest hits. The single was the highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of its first appearance, entering the chart at No. 68 on April 29, 2004. Over the next eight weeks, the song climbed up the chart until it eventually reached No. 16 for the issue dated July 3, where it remained for four weeks. On the issue dated July 24, the song climbed up two places to reach the fourteenth position. "Jesus Walks" reached its overall peak at No. 11 on the issue date of July 31, where it stayed for two weeks in a row. "Jesus Walks" has since been awarded a triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America for pushing 3,000,000 certified units in the US.