Kanye West

“Champions” is a celebratory rap anthem, featuring some of the game’s most popular rappers. It was released as the first single of G.O.O.D. Music’s upcoming Cruel Winter, a follow-up to 2012’s compilation album, Cruel Summer. It was released on iTunes on June 12th, 2016. Kanye West is joined by a whopping seven artists, including Quavo, Yo Gotti and Gucci Mane—three artists he’s never worked with before. The song was first previewed on Big Sean and Ian Conner’s Snapchat. It later premiered on Big Boy’s Radio minutes after Kanye announced it on Twitter. During a Q&A on Twitter, Fonzworth Bentley described how the Gucci Mane feature came to fruition. The minimalistic single artwork is a nod to Pusha T, who released his singles “Numbers On the Boards” and “Who I Am” (which featured 2 Chainz and Big Sean) with white covers that read, “No Artwork” and “No Artwork 2,” respectively. According to an interview with Pusha, Kanye designed the “No Artwork” cover: "" what’s the artwork? He was like, there’s no artwork. That was the extreme theme, and our first way of implementing what we were discussing about the stark and minimal, art where the primary focus is on the music."" Travis Scott used the song as a celebratory track for the US Olympic Team. Kanye first played the song on Big Boy’s radio show Real 92.3 as the first single from Cruel Winter on the 3rd of June, 2016. “Champions” peaked at #71 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. On March 15, 2018, “Champions” officially went RIAA Platinum, being certified for over 1,000,000 unit sales.