“Runaway” by Kanye West featuring Pusha T

"Runaway" arrived in October 2010 as the second single from Kanye West's fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with Pusha T riding shotgun, and it opens on the loneliest sound in West's catalog: a single piano note, struck over and over like someone tapping on a window. From there it swells into a sprawling slab of progressive rap shot through with pop, R&B and art-rock grandeur, co-produced with Jeff Bhasker, Mike Dean and Emile Haynie, with Chris Chorney's cello moaning underneath.

West turns the song on himself, owning up to wrecked relationships and embracing the villain role the media had handed him, a year after he interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Pusha T's verse comes in colder and meaner. It became the centerpiece of the 35-minute short film Runaway, and Rolling Stone later put it at number 25 on its list of the 500 greatest songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.