Photo: The Chainsmokers

Kanye + Keyes ‘City Of Gods’ Sample The Chainsmokers: Look + Listen

March 6, 2022

The Chainsmokers Alex Pall and Drew Taggart were taken by surprise when Fivio Foreign’s single ‘City of Gods’ – featuring Kanye West and Alicia Keys – sampled the chorus from their 2015 ‘New York City.’

Appearing on the ‘Smallzy’s Celebrity Small Talk’ podcast, Taggart stated:

“We had heard a few months ago that he had taken our song ‘New York City’ and sampled it as the hook – this is a song from way even before our first album, it was on one of our EPs. He had used that, and then they created a beat over it and he was on it. And then a couple of weeks ago, they were like, ‘You know that song? Now it’s gonna have Alicia Keys and Kanye West on it. Which was a huge surprise to us – and obviously when you here those things, too, you never know if they’re gonna come out or not.”

Admitting that there were moments in the past where The Chainsmokers thought a big collaboration was in the cards only to be left disappointed, Drew added:

“We’ve had beats that we made that we’ve heard Drake was getting on and you get your hopes up. When [‘City of Gods’] actually came out and we saw them shooting the music video, it got pretty real.I love that music is in a phase where people can just come from completely different scenes and genres, just take stuff and remake it. I’m not precious with any of other stuff. I like it when people reimagine it for their own purposes.”

Commenting on a long-running joke that no one actually recognizes him or his musical partner, Alex when they’re out and about, he recalled: “I was leaving Hyde, which is a club on Sunset, a couple of years ago and I remember overhearing this group of guys convincing this group of girls that they were us. We walked passed, none of them even noticed us. I don’t know what the fate of that night was for them!”

Concurrent with their exciting ‘New York City’ news, The Chainsmokers ‘High’, marks their first original single since 2019, securing a #1 Billboard chart position within weeks of release on Disruptor/Columbia Records.