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“Only One” is the first song released by Kanye West since his sixth studio album Yeezus. It’s an R&B song co-produced by Sir Paul McCartney and sung from the perspective of Kanye’s late mother, Dr. Donda West as she looks down on her son from Heaven.
Critics have compared the song’s stripped down aesthetic and auto-tuned vocals to those on 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye’s fourth studio album. In a press release, Kanye said that he couldn’t remember singing the song when the lines were played back to him, and he concluded that Donda was sending him a message. During an interview with The Breakfast Club, Kanye also mentioned some of the lyrics seemed to be channeled from his grandmother.
The song debuted at number 35 on the Hot 100, making it Paul McCartney’s first top 40 hit in the U.S. in over 25 years (“My Brave Face” reached number 25 on the charts in 1989).
“Only One” was slated to be on West’s So Help Me God in 2014, but after not releasing that album, West dropped the song to iTunes on New Year’s Eve 2014. It was dropped from the album sometime between 2014 and the release of the first SWISH tracklist in January 2016.
Like “Only One,” Paul McCartney wrote “Let It Be” about his departed mother:
"When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom: let it be"
Rolling Stone compared “Only One” to “a bittersweet bonus track from Kanye’s 808s and Heartbreak.” Billboard called it “an intimate conversation between both Wests”. In a lengthy piece, Noisey described it as “classic Kanye… confident (some would say arrogant) but earnest, honest and vulnerable, aware of itself but unconcerned with impressions.”
Some were less kind. Bloomberg called it “unfinished” and “meandering”, while the Los Angeles Times called it West’s worst-ever track, and drew comparisons to McCartney’s ill-fated collaborations with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson.
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