Kanye West Was Once In A Rap Group Called The Go Getters: Hear Their Unreleased Album

Carl Williott | August 12, 2013 9:30 am

We all know Kanye West made a name for himself as a producer before branching out into rapping, but it turns out he tried his hand at rapping even before all that. A very young Ye was a member of Chicago rap group the Go Getters in the early aughts, which was also made up of GLC, Timmy G and Arrowstar. The group recorded a handful of songs with a bevy of Chicago artists around the turn of the millennium, just around the time West would break through with production on Jay Z‘s The Blueprint.

Go Getters never released an album, but a label compilation/mixtape with their material was released in 2003 under the name World Record Holders, and now it has hit the web thanks to Fake Shore Drive. It’s patently early-’00s fare, and West hadn’t yet settled on a production style (“Fight With The Best” has a proto-“Heartless” beat, while the title track evokes D12), but it shows Kanye’s clever wordplay (“How you gonna con me when “Kan” half my name?”) and deep knowledge of all things music and materialistic.

Hear a Go Getters playlist below, or download the full album.

[via Consequence of Sound]

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