Kid Cudi is looking back on the time Jay-Z passed on a song that would later evolve into Kanye West’s “Welcome to Heartbreak.”
During a recent episode of his Big Bro with Kid Cudi podcast, Cudi reflected on the origins of the track—originally titled “Cooking Up in the Kitchen”—while speaking with guest Hit-Boy around the 14-minute mark.
“You know what’s crazy about ‘Heartbreak’? Plain Pat had made that beat with Kanye and we had an idea for it that was for Jay,” Cudi said before singing part of the original chorus: “Cooking up in the kitchen/Young boy had that vision/Had to get with it.”
He continued, “And it was the one joint that Hov didn’t fuck with out of all the pack that we gave him … So when we were working on 808s [& Heartbreak], Ye was like, ‘Yo, Hov didn’t take this. We should change the hook up or whatever.’ And that’s when I came up with the new hook.”
This isn’t the first time Cudi has revisited the song’s backstory.
Speaking on a 2016 episode of Pharrell Williams and Scott Vener’s Beats 1 Radio show OTHERtone, Cudi explained that the original concept was inspired by Jay-Z.
“We were like, ‘Oh, it’s for Jay, let’s talk about that dope boy shit, let’s make a theme for that dope boy in the kitchen,” he said, adding that the song originated during sessions for The Blueprint 3.
