"Runaway" is released

Why it matters

"Runaway" came out October 4, 2010, as the lead single from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye West produced it with Emile Haynie and Jeff Bhasker. The song is nine minutes long. The opening is a single piano note, struck and repeated. Pusha T raps the second verse. Most of the rest of the song is Kanye singing, in Auto-Tune and out, about his own narcissism and the public consequences of his behavior in the year between the Taylor Swift incident and the album's release. The song is structured as an extended apology that does not quite manage to apologize. "Let's have a toast for the douchebags / let's have a toast for the assholes" is the chorus's opening line, and Kanye includes himself in the toast. The Pusha verse contributes some of the most-quoted bars in Pusha's career ("twenty-five lighters on my dresser, yes sir"). The whole song is one of the more genuinely strange #1-adjacent singles in mainstream commercial rap. The accompanying short film (Runaway, also released in October 2010 and directed by Kanye) is part of the same project. You should see the short film. The song works better as part of the larger 35-minute video piece.