About “School Spirit”

College is a great place… a great place to smoke weed, great place to have shady hook-ups…

… but not the best place to learn stuff, or so this song says. As Mark Twain once (supposedly) said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”

This song uses an old-school Aretha Franklin sample from the song “Spirit in the Dark”. Aretha gave Kanye clearance for the sample on the condition that the song didn’t have profanity, which is why this song is edited even on the explicit version of the album.

Fortunately there are uncensored versions available on the Internet.