Highlights (song)

"Highlights" is a song by American hip-hop artist Kanye West, from his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo (2016). The song features vocals from Young Thug and The-Dream. One day before the album was released, West performed the song on Saturday Night Live with Young Thug, El DeBarge, Kelly Price and The-Dream. Within the track, West takes a shot at Ray J. The song was met with mixed reviews from music critics. It was revealed in July 2016 that West had shot a music video, but it was never released.

The word "light" had been included in titles of West's tracks "Flashing Lights", "Street Lights" and "All of the Lights" in the past. The Life of Pablo tracks "Ultralight Beam", "Low Lights" and "Highlights" all include the word in their titles.

The track comes straight after "Low Lights" on The Life of Pablo, with the previous song essentially serving as an intro to "Highlights". The transition to Bible references in the song from those in "Low Lights" suggests that West believes his spirituality helped bring him success. When working on the song, West and those around him knew the feel that they were going for.

By the time that all the changes had been made to the album in June 2016, the song was remixed with Thug's vocals sounding more polished.

West references his brother-in-law Rob Kardashian in the track with the lines: "Blac Chyna fucking Rob, help him with the weight/I wish my trainer would, tell me what I overate". Despite these lines being rapped by him, West showed support for Rob two months afterwards, showing that the content was a playful jab and not intended as a diss like the lyrics about Ray J. The lyrics: "I need every bad bitch up in Equinox/I need to know right now if you a freak or not" inspired the editor of Broadly to get Gabby Bess to conduct a survey that involved asking people stood outside Equinox if they're freaks or not.

The track's lyrical content is focused around the newfound fame and fortune that West witnessed in life after being married with Kim Kardashian. Multiple subjects relevant to this are touched on within it, with the rapper leaving barely anything about their lives off the table.

The Life of Pablo was scheduled to be titled Waves at one point and "Highlights" was set to be a part of Act 2 on one of the track lists for the album. When West later shared the album's tracklist via Twitter, the track was handwritten as being titled "High Lights", but when the album was officially released on February 14, 2016, it went under the title of the single word "Highlights". The song was first heard when West performed it Saturday Night Live with Young Thug, El DeBarge, Kelly Price and The-Dream on the very day before The Life of Pablo was released.

Later on in the February that West's album had been released, a demo version of the song with Madonna on the chorus was leaked online from the website Madonnarama. Another demo leaked online in the same month that's more than a minute longer than the officially released version and features extra verses by West, including lyrics about Chloë Sevigny and The Brown Bunny.