Jesus Walks

This song talks about society, racism, and war with ourselves. It decries what rappers typically talk about, which is sex, drugs and money.

Rapper Che Smith, who goes by the stage name Rhymefest, wrote this song with West. In the February 24, 2006 Guardian newspaper, he said: "Kanye and I grew up together. I found a gospel song by a choir of reformed drug addicts in New York. Even though I'm not a Christian it moved me and the beat was kinda like a rap groove. We jacked the whole song but it came to life when Kanye added the army sounds and made it like God's soldiers. Then the writing began. If you make the verses about Jesus it takes away the power of the chorus, so the verses were the sinner speaking. We got the 'Niggas' sound from a Curtis Mayfield song. When we write together we'll listen to a beat and I'll come up with a line and he'll flip it around into something else, then I'll add more lines and before you know it we got a song. Kanye will remember each way we flipped it; he has an ability to memorize. I look at it like this: that was not my record and not Kanye's record; that was a record from the creator to his creations. I'm grateful."

Kanye West knew the challenges of getting "Jesus" on secular radio; when songs in the past referred to Jesus, they had to say, "He" or "Him" (and somewhat recently "God" is being accepted) but never Jesus. In his second verse he challenged radio stations with the following lyrics: "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?" His strategy worked - not only did he get "Jesus" on the radio and on MTV, he also won three Grammy Awards in 2005 as a result.