3 Reasons Kanye West's 'Mama's Boyfriend' Is Already Rhyme of The Year

Pardon, there’s a lot of use of the N word, but I’m allowed to use it…

And on that apologetic and somewhat amusing note, Kanye West, in front of a largely white audience of Facebook employees, unleashes a powerful, barebones testimony of the black experience. “Mama’s Boyfriend” eschews blatant images of former notorious drug kingpins (sorry Ross), brazen gunplay or the standard female conquest. Nope, Kanye doesn’t take the easy way out. His a cappella performance of a new composition, which is tentatively set for his formerly titled forthcoming album Good Ass Job, is a layered dissection of African-American mother-son relationships fostered in a divorced/single parent home. Equal parts insightful, painfully serious, jocular, and introspective, “Mama’s Boyfriend” is also a leading contender for rhyme of the year. Here’s why. —Keith Murphy

Kanye Is The Bravest MC In The Game
Let’s be honest. What takes more balls? Igniting a proverbial beef with rapper A. or inviting the wrath of the President of the United States? When your emotional outbursts have at times garnered you public pariah status (Before Kanye was even dismissed as a “jackass” by Obama following his 2009 MTV Awards bumrush of America’s country sweetheart Taylor Swift, he had already faced widespread rebuke for claiming that a post-Katrina G.W. Bush “doesn’t care about black people), honesty is never in short supply. On “Mama’s Boyfriend,” Kanye makes use of his lack of a filter with stunning results as he channels his childhood relationship with an older man who crashes the West family unit. “You know I scrutinize like who this newer guy?/I’m my mama boyfriend/ I’m her little husband/I was the man of the house when it wasn’t/Trying to get to know me homie, just kill the charm/You ain’t interested in me, you just trying to fuck my mom!” From the mouths of babes.