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“I f*cked up and I know it, g. I guess it’s bittersweet poetry” – Kanye West

Get ready. You may not receive Yeezus part deux or ever get a chance to revisit the sentiments of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, because Kanye West might be delivering something totally different – a spoken word album.

It sounds slightly obnoxious at first mention, but the idea behind this album may not be THAT bad.

In the beginning of his career, Kanye frequented the Stan Lathan and Russell Simmons-founded Def Poetry Jam series. We didn’t know it at the time, but poems like “Self Conscious” and “18 Years” would eventually become classic records like “All Falls Down” and “Gold Digger.”

Looking for gold ourselves, GlobalGrind started digging and found three of Kanye’s performances on Def Poetry Jam. Watch Kanye stunt first, then perform “Bittersweet” in the video above. And check out Kanye’s other dope spoken word performances down under.

“Self Conscious” poem (which became College Dropout‘s “All Falls Down”)

“18 Years” poem (which later became “Gold Digger”)

We also decided to throw in really great spoken word performances by fellow artists like Chicago emcee Common, Lauryn Hill, DMX, KRS-One, Doug E. Fresh, and Erykah Badu.

Common performs “God Is Freedom”

DMX performs “The Industry” 

Erykah Badu performs an untitled poem about when “friends, fans, and artists meet.” 

KRS-One & Doug E. Fresh perform “2nd Quarter” 

Lauryn Hill performs “Motives and Thoughts” 

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