Lloyd Banks' "Start It Up" (2010)

Album: H.F.M. 2
Producer: Cardiak
Label: G-Unit/EMI

“Start It Up” began as a record with just Lloyd Banks and Fabolous—it was going to be an 11th-hour entry for his Hunger For More 2project. But after Kanye West tweeted that Banks was “underrated,” the trajectory of the track changed completely.

Twitter went crazy with Kanye’s tweet, and within a few hours Lloyd and Kanye were in the lab together. Twenty-four hours later, the track went from being a two-piece to featuring Kanye, Ryan Leslie and Swizz Beatz, who were all in NYC at the time. “Start It Up” wasn’t released as a single, but it garnered radio play almost instantly, and later charted on Billboard.

That just goes to show how massive Kanye’s influence is. The song would’ve been dope sans Ye, but it turned into a hit once he blessed it. “The first album I vomited/The second I colonic’d it/Ain't nobody fucking with me, I plutonic’d it”—all such claims are validated here.