Hold Up, Get Up Lyrics – Kanye West & James Blake | from “WAR”

Kanye West is back in that raw, unfiltered zone with Hold Up, Get Up, a cut from the elusive WAR sessions with James Blake, and it lands like a divine intervention in the dead of night—screamed pleas turning into gospel fire that pulls you right into the redemption ring.

This one’s a haunting blend of experimental soul and hip-hop grit, clocking around four minutes in the leaks, with James Blake’s ethereal production wrapping Kanye’s jagged vocals in choir swells and those signature warped samples. It’s got that late-Donda vibe but dialed up with No I.D.’s sharp edge—pulsing keys and ad-libbed howls that build like a sermon gone rogue. Lyrically, it’s all about clawing back from the brink: verses wrestling sin and survival, flipping last year’s “another me” into God’s direct line (“Hold up, get up, you got one more”). The refrain loops those woozy chants over choir bits from the Choir Of Downside School, Purley, turning personal wreckage into something almost triumphant, like Ye’s preaching to his own reflection.

WAR was this ambitious trio effort—Kanye, Blake, and No I.D.—sparked in spring 2022 right after Donda 2, aiming for a melancholic soul-fest that mixed imperfect raps with lush, moving layers. Scrapped amid the controversies by late 2023, though insiders say tweaks lingered into ’24, it’s mostly surfaced through leaks now, with Hold Up, Get Up as track four in the October ’22 cut.

The full tracklist floats 12-15 deep: openers like Quiet and This One Here (early Vultures scraps), mid-album heaters such as Bobby Digital and Virgil’s Funeral, closing on introspective joints like Never Coming Back. No official drop date or label lock-in yet—Ye teased chunks on Sneako’s May 1 Parti stream, including this screaming snippet, and another surfaced November 30—but fan comps on YouTube and SoundCloud are piecing it together.

Ye’s in full orbit mode this year, post-Vultures mess and Bully’s work-in-progress drops, channeling that spiritual tug-of-war harder than ever. From the Yeezy empire cracks to these vaulted gems, it’s like he’s evolving by excavation—trading stadium bombast for tracks that feel like midnight memos to the man upstairs, proving the chaos just fuels the confession.

Dive into the Hold Up, Get Up lyrics below and unpack its raw narrative. Don’t miss other WAR tracks for more of Kanye West’s fractured gospel.