An unlikely duo, Kanye West and Lil Pump teamed up for “I Love It,” a song about their respective sexual preferences. The song and its accompanying music video were debuted at the inaugural Pornhub Awards in Los Angeles, California; Kanye served as co-creative director of the event.
On August 10, 2018, Kanye was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Towards the end of the interview, Kimmel asked Kanye if having daughters had changed Kanye’s attitude toward women, to which he replied, “Nah, I still look at Pornhub.” After the interview’s release, Pornhub reached out to Kanye via Twitter, giving him a lifetime premium membership to show appreciation for his support. This sequence of events led to a professional partnership between the two parties, as demonstrated by Ye’s involvement in the 2018 Pornhub Awards.
On August 19, 2018, Kanye attended 2 Chainz’s wedding, wearing a suit and undersized Yeezy slides. Many people on the internet made fun of Ye’s slides, and he responded by posting an image of himself wearing extremely oversized slides. These slides ended up being worn in the music video for this song.
The song and music video became a huge success, accumulating more than 76 million views in its first week, (temporarily) becoming the biggest-ever global debut for a hip-hop video on YouTube. It would go on to accumulate 210.2 million views in its first four weeks.
“I Love It” peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Kanye’s biggest hit since 2015’s “FourFiveSeconds,” which peaked at #4. His second highest charting song of 2018 was “Yikes,” which debuted and peaked at #8.
On September 29, 2018, Kanye and Pump performed an edited version of this song on Saturday Night Live, which was officially released on the 30th as the “Freaky Girl Edit.”
On October 12, 2018, Billboard published their “21 Under 21” interview with Lil Pump. According to Pump, his contributions to this song were recorded in fifteen minutes during his 18th birthday party, and the song’s explicit chorus was Kanye’s idea.
“I Love It” eventually found a home on Pump’s 2019 album, Harverd Dropout.