Black Skinhead

"Black Skinhead" (also stylized as "BLKKK SKKKN HEAD") is a song by American rapper Kanye West, from his sixth studio album Yeezus (2013). It was produced by West and Daft Punk. The song's lyrics center on racial tensions and the crumbling mental state of the character West portrays on the album. The song premiered on Saturday Night Live in May 2013, with West performing it in front of a projected backdrop. He has since performed the song live on various occasions, including at the Glastonbury Festival and the Billboard Music Awards in 2015. It was universally praised by music critics and ranked by numerous sites, including Rolling Stone and NME, as one of the best tracks of 2013. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Nick Knight and features computer-generated imagery of West, with interactive options including "screen grabbing" and adjusting the speed of his vocals. The video was released in July 2013 and has received positive reviews from critics.

Although West initially said Yeezus would have no singles, "Black Skinhead" became the first single released from the album. It was serviced to contemporary hit radio stations in the United Kingdom one day after the album's release. On July 2, 2013, the single was sent to urban contemporary radio stations in the United States. The song charted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Canada, Belgium and Australia in 2013 and 2014. It has since been certified platinum in the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark. American singer Jack White covered the song in June 2014. A remix featuring Miley Cyrus and Travis Scott, recorded shortly after the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, leaked online in January 2016.

"Black Skinhead" features production by French duo Daft Punk (Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter), the album's major producers, who had worked with West on "On Sight", "I Am a God" and "Send It Up". West first became involved with the duo when he sampled their track "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" in 2007 for his chart-topping single "Stronger". Bangalter revealed in an April 2013 interview discussing their album Random Access Memories that they had found time during the recording sessions in Paris to work with West on material for his next album. The duo laid down a combination of live and programmed drums over West's initial vocals. Bangalter described the process as "very raw." He later said Daft Punk "were the first people that Kanye came to" for his album. "Black Skinhead" was the first song recorded by the duo for Yeezus. The drums originated from unused material that had been recorded for Random Access Memories. Daft Punk described using the drums as "a great twist of pushing the envelope." Before the album's liner notes confirmed otherwise, many speculated that the song's beat was sampled from "The Beautiful People" by American rock band Marilyn Manson.

The song's title uses "skinhead", which originated as a description of a 1960s British working-class male subculture whose members often had closely cropped hair. It revolved around fashion and music and went on to inspire the punk rock scene. Despite attracting young males across the political spectrum, the term had come to be popularly associated with neo-Nazis at the time of single's release. Travis Scott said of his initial reaction to the song: "I jumped off the stairs onto the couch. I was going HAM. That was when I heard the 'na na na na' part for the first time, I lost my fucking mind. That's some soccer anthem-type shit." According to co-producer Mike Dean, the song was almost left off Yeezus for sounding "too much like a soccer song." In November 2013, co-writer Lupe Fiasco still felt unsure what the song was supposed to be about. He described it as "a lot of emotional, a lot of this, a lot of cliché, a lot of kinda stuff balled in together, and it's just supposed to be presented as a package and you digest it."

West and Miley Cyrus skipped the after party for the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards on August 25, 2013, to record her remix of the song. The pair also worked on other tracks during the recording session—possibly for use on her then-upcoming album Bangerz. Producer Mike Will Made It took part in the session, having added some production to the remix of "Black Skinhead". The remix leaked on January 21, 2016, and was revealed to feature Travis Scott and Miley Cyrus. The track heavily samples Tears for Fears' 1985 song, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" from their album Songs from the Big Chair and features Cyrus singing a rendition of the hook. West uploaded a slightly different version of "Black Skinhead" exclusively on Apple Music in April 2016. The song's opening lines were changed to retain more distorted vocals.

"Black Skinhead" has an industrial-sounding beat, and is part of the Yeezus character's opening segment of gnarled electro and pounding industrial rap. West begins the song with the lines: "For my theme song/My leather black jeans on/My by-any-means on" a reference to "Good Morning", the opening track of his third studio album Graduation. These lines use a "simple aesthetic touch"—leather black jeans—to envelop Yeezus, the character West portrays, in black, rugged gear. This reflects his awareness, expressed on his 2005 single "Diamonds from Sierra Leone", that money and possessions are often equated with self-worth by young black men. The old West is gone. "Black Skinhead" is "now his theme music. This grimy, grungy tone that doesn't require just any jeans, but leather black jeans." The song's lyrics do not mention Malcolm X or the Civil Rights Movement. "But when we make the connections between 'by any means necessary' (Malcolm's famous phrase) and the jeans call-back to 'Good Morning,' and the reference to a cultural movement associated with rebellion, the ghost of Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s comes alive." Yeezus views himself as not only a political leader for the Black community, but a superhero. West raps: "Pardon, I'm getting my scream on" in the fourth line and screams in frustration throughout the song. The rest of song sees Yeezus discussing "racial tensions and his own crumbling mental state." The "manic repetition" of "Black" shows there is "so much more at stake" for him. West ends the song by repeating "God!" in an exasperated way. Yeezus is a "leader frustrated by the inaction of his people: 'These niggas ain't doin' shit'." He "mutates the external idea of God into an internal one", which leads into the next track "I Am a God" where he "hypes himself up."

Before the album's release, West performed "Black Skinhead" on the May 18, 2013, broadcast of the American sketch comedy television series Saturday Night Live, where he also performed "New Slaves". He performed the song in front of a projected backdrop, which alternated between abstractly disturbing black-and-white imagery with colorful vintage price tags and the declaration "Not for sale." His performance was met with positive critical reviews. Chris Martins of Spin described it as providing "the sort of aplomb and production value that the show hasn't felt since ... well, probably the last time West visited", noting "'Black Skinhead' documents Ye's dynamic transition from rap champ to rock star." Stereogum's Liz Pelly branded the song an "aggressive new track" and claimed that "West's stage presence on SNL was full of rage." Philip Cosores of Paste commented on the performance, writing: "The song comes from somewhere usually only seen in small clubs or basements, and the images of vicious dogs adds to the focal point, the angriest dog in a sense." After the performance, Daft Punk were revealed as the song's composers and West shared a photo of the handwritten lyrics via Twitter. Although West initially said no singles would be released from the album, "Black Skinhead" was released on June 18, 2013. It is the second track on West's sixth studio album Yeezus, and was sent to UK contemporary hit radio stations on June 19. West had previously spoken about avoiding a full-court press roll-out for his album, saying at a listening session in New York: "I have this new strategy, it's called no strategy." On June 28, 2013, Def Jam Recordings confirmed the song would be serviced to US radio stations as the first single from Yeezus at the same time as a clean version was released to DJs. The label also revealed that a music video for the song was in production. Following the announcement, "Black Skinhead" was released officially on July 2 to US urban contemporary radio stations. West was set to perform the song at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards on August 25, 2013, but ended up performing "Blood on the Leaves" instead.

"Black Skinhead" received universal acclaim from music critics. Ray Rahman of Entertainment Weekly cited it as one of the album's best songs, describing it as "a galloping punk-rap manifesto". The staff of Popdust rated the song five out of five, describing it as what "would've sounded at home on Top 40 in the late-'00s, at least if you stripped away all the growling bass and the background yelps and turned the drums down in the mix considerably". The Guardian's Alexis Petridis pointed out "the battering bovver-glam drum and sampled screaming of 'Black Skinhead'" is an example on the album where, "West appears to be operating under the influence of industrial music". This song and "Hold My Liquor" were classified by Phil Witmer of Noisey as "rock anthems from the 25th century" not rap. He described "Black Skinhead" as "soundtracking a mosh pit of cyborgs". Jon Pareles of The New York Times described West as "angry" as he snarls "over a track that switches between a blunt glam-rock drumbeat and a distorted synthesizer line." Digital Spy's Robert Copsey felt with "Black Skinhead" West is "erratically accusing middle America of racism ('You see a black man with a white woman at the top floor/ they gon' come to kill King Kong') over a rumbling tribal beat". Copsey claims this is an example of how Yeezus's lyrics range from "insightful [and] irritatingly arrogant, to the plain bonkers."