Recorded 2016 Length 2:16 | Genre Hip hop
R&B Label GOOD
Def Jam | |
Released June 7, 2016 (2016-06-07) Format Digital download
streaming | ||
"Father Stretch My Hands" is a two-part song by American rapper Kanye West. It was released as the second single from his seventh studio album The Life of Pablo (2016).
Contents
Composition
The album version of the song is split into two parts: "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" featuring vocals by Kid Cudi and Kelly Price, and "Pt. 2" featuring vocals by Desiigner and Caroline Shaw. The song is built around a sample of the song of the same title, performed and written by T. L. Barrett, with "Pt. 2" featuring prominent interpolations of "Panda", performed by Desiigner. A 'rough cut' of the song was first released online in February 2016.
GQ wrote that the two-part track "begins as a gospel song about fucking models, transitions halfway into a soul-baring confessional dance track, then drops in two entire verses of an entirely different song about drug-dealing and cars by an 18-year-old Brooklyn rapper, before resolving into a meditative piece for vocoder by a contemporary classical composer and ending with a snippet of the sampled gospel song that the whole thing started from, just to remind you how far we've traveled from there in the span of four minutes."
Critical reception
Complex listed the two parts of the song as twenty-fourth and third best song of 2016 so far in their list published on June 16, 2016.