Nick Cave has responded to a question from a fan as to which song he'd like played at his funeral, and nominated Kanye West's I Am A God, from the rapper's sixth album, Yeezus, released in 2013.
The question was posed to Cave on his Red Hand Files website forum by a fan named Damian. Earlier this week, the Australian singer nominated the song as one of his eight favourite records during his appearance on BBC Radio 4's long-running Desert Island Discs programme.
Speaking about this choice, Cave told the show's host Lauren Laverne, “This became, weirdly enough, a kind of family song. My kids love it, Susie loves it, I love it. It’s an extremely playful, extremely dark, complex song where on the one hand, Kanye is presenting himself as a god, and then towards the end of the song, he’s screaming in terror.”
“It’s an unbelievably deep song, in my view,” he continued. “This is a song that I value on a personal level, and actually I just think is a complete, amazing work of art.”
Kanye West credited 'God' as one of the featured performers on the song, making it the first time that the deity appeared on the Billboard charts.
In 2015, West spoke about the track during an interview for Show Studio's In Camera series, after host Lou Stoppard suggested 'You must feel a sense of pressure from that when people treat you like you are this kind of god to them.'
“The reason why I made the song I Am A God is so those people that feel less than can turn it up and say it loud and embrace it for themselves, that God is inside all of us,” the rapper replied. “It wasn't about specifically me. It was about us as a race; that we are an extension of God, that we all have God inside of us.”
Listen to I Am A God below.
