It’s a headline made in clickbait heaven: Daft Punk and Jay Z, on the same song, sporting alleged production from Kanye West. Awesome! I love pop music! All this needs is a Lana Del Rey hook and it’d be PERFECT. The below song, titled “Computerized,” has been making the rounds throughout the internets, despite we the internets-native public having no knowledge of from whence this loosie came.
This surfaced on a KanyeToThe forum (via DaftClub) about two hours ago, when poster LordLordLord started a thread called “(Leaked New Music) Daft Punk – Computerized (Feat. Jay-Z)[Unreleased Demo] Co-Produced By Kanye West.” LordLordLord had no way of corroborating that this is, in fact, legit. Not to be a Debbie Downer about the abundant joy that new rap music can bring us, but if life has taught us anything, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Which would explain why “Computerized” kind of sucks. As someone with an internet connection and the capability to not jump to conclusions, I did some digging and found out what’s up with “Computerized.”
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First, this isn’t an original Daft Punk instrumental; that keyboard line is a loop from the song “Son of Flynn” off of Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy. From there, literally anyone—like, even me in GarageBand—could loop that, throw some drums in there, get a vocoder plugin and sing “computeriiiiiized” into it.
From there, let’s analyze Jay Z’s lyrics, which include the line, “I got an iTouch but I can’t feel,” and also a reference to Hov Jobs’ BlackBerry. Judging from the dated technology iHova is talking about on here, this is probably old as fuck. A google search for the lyrics reveals they are indeed previously-unreleased Jay lyrics, but there’s no guarantee Jay’s words were meant to appear over this beat, or who even made the beat. If this is indeed a Kanye production, the Daft Punk sample would place it from around the time he was making Graduation and Jay was making The Blueprint 3, when both were flirting with electronic-leaning production: Kanye of course rapped over Daft Punk for “Stronger,” and Swizz Beatz flipped Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.” for “On to the Next One” (watch the sample get flipped live here).
So, in conclusion, “Computerized” is probably an old track that was never meant to see the light of day. The biggest red flag? “Computerized” kind of sucks. No way Kanye, Jay, and Daft Punk wanted to let it into this cold, unloving world.
Drew Millard is about to jump on an airplane and forget about the internet for a week. He’s on Twitter – @drewmillard
