Kanye West’s “Gone” Debuts In Billboard Top 20 Eight Years Late Thanks To Viral Video

Maria Shifrin

Kanye West’s “Gone” Debuts In Billboard Top 20 Eight Years Late Thanks To Viral Video

Maria Shifrin

You may have noticed, perhaps because we can’t shut up about it, that Kanye West released a new album this year. It’s called Yeezus, and it’s amazing. But it’s also an uncompromising noise-rap album, and it’s the lowest-selling album of Kanye’s career. But West has now broken into Billboard’s top 20 singles list for the first time in 2013; it’s just that he’s done it with an eight-year-old song.

This six-minute Cam’ron/Consequence collab “Gone” is the last song (before the bonus tracks, anyway) on Late Registration, and you could make a strong argument that it’s the best song Kanye has ever recorded. But it was never released as a single. And now it’s in the top 20 for a weird reason: Maria Shifrin, a writer and comedian, quit her video-editing job last month by posting an I-quit video to YouTube, using an “interpretive dance” to “Gone” to send the I-quit message. The video has since been viewed more than 15 million times, and it’s instigated plenty of copycat videos, too. And since Billboard now determines chart placement by YouTube streams as well as sales and airplay, that’s now good enough for #18 on the top 100. Here’s the video:

So, uh, is Cam’ron getting paid for this somehow? Because I really want Cam to be getting money for this.

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