I'm in It
West served the role of lead producer and Evian Christ co-produced it with Dom $olo, while Noah Goldstein, Arca, and Mike Dean contributed additional production.
The rapper, Evian Christ, and Dean served as co-writers with the vocalists, Malik Yusef, Cyhi the Prynce, Sakiya Sandifer, and Elon Rutberg, while Dre & Vidal, Jill Scott, Carvin Haggins, and Kenny Lattimore received credits due to a sample of their composition.
[1] Assassin was recruited by West's team at Gee Jam Studios in Jamaica's Portland Parish, finding the initial sessions to resemble his posse cut "Mercy" (2012) and he delivered different verses to instrumentals with no other vocals.
[3] After Bon Iver singer Justin Vernon collaborated with West on his fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010, he developed a bond with the rapper and worked on ten songs for Yeezus, of which three were included.
[4] Record producer Mike Dean cited Vernon as an artist West would always collaborate with and did not pinpoint him as any musical genre, not knowing if he would sing like the Bee Gees or perform in distortion and comparing his focus on emotion to Michael McDonald.
Vernon looked back with a lack of awareness of his lyrics on the song and described West as discussing "really violently and stunningly visual sex shit", which came from the "intelligent conversations" about the state of women held in the studio rather than how the rapper talked to his friends.
[5] According to engineer Anthony Kilhoffer, the song originated with a different sample and melody that West abandoned for a six-minute arrangement, until producer Rick Rubin edited it to flow in the structure of a three-minute composition.
Dean recalled how everyone would "push things to be weirder" and he moved in a more musical direction, although West gravitated towards hip hop and he praised the final product that contrasts with "crazy guitar parts and all this stadium stuff".
West, Evian Christ, and Dean co-wrote it with Vernon, Assassin, Malik Yusef, Cyhi the Prynce, Sakiya Sandifer, and Elon Rutberg, while the duo Dre & Vidal, Jill Scott, Carvin Haggins, and singer Kenny Lattimore received songwriting credits due to the sample of "Lately".
[9] HipHopDX reviewer Justin Hunte thought that the song's club-appropriate sexual lyrics, reggae influences, and "Swag-hili" line make it "quickly embed itself Indian-style into the eardrum".
[26] At PopMatters, David Amidon was interested in certain lyrics from West and found imagining him asleep with his nightlight on to be fun, while he stated Assassin goes "in and out of the beat like a pirate ship on the high seas".
[18] Providing a less enthusiastic review for The New York Times, Jon Pareles stated that West enacts the black stereotype of "the insatiable superstud, callous and lewd", who uses women for sexual means.
[27] In the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts was both surprised and impressed with West's reference to King's speech, although expressed that the song "could be called bawdy were it not so lyrically dark".
[19] In a mixed review, Jesal "Jay Soul" Padania from RapReviews felt that the "quick-quick-slow dancefloor fuck song" is highly explicit to varying levels of success, criticizing how West's misogyny resembles fellow rapper Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being II (2013).
[11] For the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot was irritated with West for his sweet and sour sauce line that takes part in "the kind of transgressive 'humor'" of artists of a lesser caliber.
