Words I Never Said

"Words I Never Said" is a song by American hip hop recording artist Lupe Fiasco, released February 8, 2011, as the second single from his third studio album Lasers.[1] The song was produced by British music producer Alex da Kid and features vocals from American singer-songwriter Skylar Grey. The song contains references to controversial political and socioeconomic topics, including the September 11 attacks, government fiscal policy, and the Gaza War.[2] The song's message of standing up for the people and being against the government has been used as a theme song for Internet group Anonymous. It was named the 41st best song of 2011 by XXL magazine.[3]

"Words I Never Said"
Single by Lupe Fiasco featuring Skylar Grey
from the album Lasers
ReleasedFebruary 8, 2011
Recorded2010
Genre
Length4:21
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Alex da Kid
Lupe Fiasco singles chronology
"The Show Goes On"
(2010)		 "Words I Never Said"
(2011)		 "Out of My Head"
(2011)
Skylar Grey singles chronology
"I Need a Doctor"
(2011)		 "Words I Never Said"
(2011)		 "Dance Without You"
(2011)

Background

A teaser video was uploaded on YouTube on January 18, 2011 featuring only samples of lyrics and audio from the song. 'Words I Never Said' officially premiered on Lupe Fiasco's website on February 1, 2011 along with its single cover. When the full audio was released, #wordsineversaid was a trending topic on Twitter.[4] It became available to stores and iTunes on February 8, 2011.[5]

On February 18, 2011, in an interview with DJ Semtex on BBC 1Xtra, Lupe revealed that the record was given to him by Atlantic, but he cut out a bridge sung by Skylar Grey, who meant for it to be a song about relationships.[6] This is the second time Fiasco and Grey have been featured on a track together, the first being "Be Somebody" from Fort Minor's album The Rising Tied, with Grey performing under the name Holly Brook.

The song, which was one of the last written for the album, can also be interpreted as a thinly disguised message aimed at Atlantic Records producer, who in Fiasco's opinion forced a lot of material on the album that did not sit right with him.[7]

Music video

On April 29, 2011, the official music video for "Words I Never Said" was premiered by MTV and later onto YouTube. It was directed by Sanaa Hamri, who was previously directing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass".

British rapper Lowkey sampled the lyric "Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist, Gaza Strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit" from the first verse of "Words I Never Said", for the chorus in his song "Obama Nation (Pt. 2)", featuring M-1 and Black the Ripper, from Lowkey's second studio album Soundtrack to the Struggle (2011).

Charts
Chart (2011) Peak
position
US Billboard Hot 100 [8] 89
US Rap Digital Songs (Billboard)[9] 20
US R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Songs (Billboard)[10] 26

Skylar Grey version
"Words"
Single by Skylar Grey
from the album The Buried Sessions of Skylar Grey
ReleasedMarch 10, 2015 (2015-03-10)
Recorded2010
GenreSynthpop
Length5:06
Label
Songwriter(s)
Skylar Grey singles chronology
"I Know You"
(2015)		 "Words"
(2015)		 "Addicted to Love"
(2015)

Grey's solo record of Words I Never Said under the title of Words was first released in 2012, and included on her extended play The Buried Sessions of Skylar Grey, released on January 17, 2012.[11] After that, the song was also included on the Step Up Revolution film soundtrack, along with another track by the singer, called "Dance Without You" and songs by other artists like Fergie, Jennifer Lopez, Yelawolf, and many more. On March 10, 2015, Skylar Grey officially released the song on iTunes.[12]

Background

This song was dedicated to her grandfather who has died. She never really spent time with her grandfather because of her music career.[13]

gollark: Regexes, splitting at equals signs or some kind of state machine maybe.
gollark: I might be somewhat annoyed about someone not paying me a cut of that, except I didn't even invent the algorithm.
gollark: Besides, that isn't particularly evil.
gollark: It's actually ported from someone's Haskell implementation but several times faster, so you could just have NFTized output from that anyway.
gollark: I'm sure people will definitely use my fractal art program, random esolangs, deliberately inefficient matrix multiplier program, slow full text search thing, and length terminated strings for evil.

References
  1. Amazon Mp3. "Words I Never Said: Lupe Fiasco: MP3 Downloads". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-02-08.
  2. MTV News. "Lupe Fiasco Gets Political On 'Words I Never Said'". mtv.com. Retrieved 2011-03-31.
  4. "Twitter / Lupe Fiasco: thank you lasers for trend". Twitter.com. 2011-02-01. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  5. iTunes Store. "Words I Never Said (feat. Skylar Grey) - Single". iTunes.apple.com. Retrieved 2011-02-08.
  6. "Hip Hop with Semtex, Lupe Fiasco, and Sway Freestyle". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-02-18.
  7. Angus Batey (March 3, 2011). "Lupe Fiasco: 'I have the right to speak out' | Angus Batey | Music". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  8. "Billboard - Music Charts, News, Photos & Video".
  9. "Rap Digital Songs : Jul 09, 2011 - Billboard Chart Archive". Billboard.
  10. "R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Songs : May 28, 2011 - Billboard Chart Archive". Billboard.
  11. "The Buried Sessions of Skylar Grey - Single by Skylar Grey". 17 January 2012.
  12. "Words - Single by Skylar Grey". 10 March 2015.
  13. "Skylar Grey – Words".
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