"Gold Digger" is a song recorded by American rapper Kanye West featuring guest vocals by Jamie Foxx. Released as the second single from West's second album, Late Registration, "Gold Digger" peaked at number one on the US Hot 100 on September 6, 2005, becoming West's and Foxx's second number one single. Co-produced with Jon Brion, the song contains an interpolation of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" by Foxx.

The single broke a record for the most digital downloads in a week , selling over 80,000 digital downloads, and was also the fastest selling digital download of all time; both records have since been broken. It was 2005's second-longest running number one on the BillboardHot 100 at ten weeks, behind Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together". "Gold Digger" was nominated for Record of the Year at the 2006 Grammy Awards (losing to Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams") and won the award for Best Rap Solo Performance. The song lists at number 49 on Billboardmagazine's All Time Top 100 and at 9 on the BillboardHot 100 Songs of the Decade. The song was voted number 20 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop.

Upon its release, many surmised that West conceived "Gold Digger" after watching Jamie Foxx's Oscar-winning portrayal of Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray. However, he had actually recorded the song long before the movie was even developed. West originally produced and recorded the song in Ludacris's home in Atlanta, Georgia for Shawnna's 2004 debut album Worth Tha Weightand had written the chorus from a female first-person viewpoint. However, for reasons unknown, Shawnna passed on using the song. Not wanting to let it go to waste, West decided to write the two verses for the song himself, this time from a male's point-of-view. About a year later, right before "Gold Digger" was set to be released, West decided to add a third verse and in a week the new song was recorded and mastered at Sony Music Studios in New York. The idea of employing Jamie Foxx specifically to sing an interpolation of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" in place of its initial sample did in fact arise from West seeing Raywith his friend John Mayer. Foxx's vocals were recorded over many takes; in one version he sang from start to finish, but the track was retracted as his performance didn't coincide well with the song's instrumentation. After recording another version, Jamie decided to re-record it once more as he felt it contained too many explicit lyrics. Once the track was in place, it was layered with additional instruments provided by Brion and individually selected by West. By the end of their very first studio session together, the pair had completed the basic tracks for final version of "Gold Digger".

"Gold Digger" contains an interpolation at the beginning and also actual samples of "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles and a bouncy beat formed from handclaps as well as scratches by DJ A-Trak. Towards the end, the song employs vintage 1970s synthesizers which emit a honking sound in cadence to Kanye's voice. West delivers a tongue-in-cheek lyrical narrative within "Gold Digger" in which he critically depicts the disastrous life of a man married to a woman who manipulates him for financial gain. However, another story arises within the third verse, which illustrates a once destitute black male who earns a fortune and decides to leave a loyal, unselfish girlfriend for a white girl.

The song's music video was directed by Hype Williams, who also directed West's previous video, "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". Shot in a widescreen letterbox format, using stylized art direction with few props, the video features performances shots of West interspersed with footage of Williams' trademark female video models depicted as "pin-up" cover models from fictional vintage magazines. The titles of the magazines the women appear on the cover of reflect the correlating verses in the song. Foxx is also present, lip-synching both his own parts and the Ray Charles vocal sample. John Legend makes a brief cameo. At the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, "Gold Digger" received nominations for both Best Male Video and Best Hip Hop Video, but did not win either of these awards.

Following the chart performance of "Diamonds from Sierra Leone", which failed to crack the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, West's label became concerned with how a follow up single would perform. Their concerns were unfounded as "Gold Digger" became a success, hitting number one on the Hot 100, Pop 100, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks and the Hot Rap Tracks charts.

When Late Registrationwas released, the album version of "Gold Digger" was first made available for download. Approximately 80,000 digital downloads of "Gold Digger" were sold through legal music services such as iTunes and Napster in that first week, making it the most successful digital sales debut ever. The song broke the record for the most digital downloads sold in one week, and the record for the fastest selling digital single of all time, both previously held by Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl". "Gold Digger" sold over 1,000,000 downloads during its seven weeks of release. This makes "Gold Digger" one of the first songs in history to sell over 1,000,000 downloads in the United States.

The high digital download sales helped propel the song from number nineteen to number one in one week, the fifth highest jump ever to that position on the Hot 100. The jump ended the fourteen-week (and ten consecutive week) run of Carey's "We Belong Together" at number one, and kept Carey's "Shake It Off" from replacing "We Belong Together" as the number one single. The song spent ten weeks at the top of the Hot 100 until rising R&B star Chris Brown's hit "Run It!" shot up to the pole position for the week of November 19.

"Gold Digger" also became West's first Top 10 single on the Mainstream Top 40 chart, peaking at number-two. On the Pop 100, "Gold Digger" also broke a record by jumping from number ninety-four to number two, giving West the record for the biggest ever jump on that chart.

In MAX music TV's top 1000 songs of all time, 'Gold Digger' was number 462 on the list.

By reaching number-one, "Gold Digger" gave Charles his first Hot 100 chart-topper as a songwriter, credited as a result of the "I Got a Woman" sample. As an artist, Charles topped the Hot 100 three times in the 1960s, but always with other writers' songs.

"Gold Digger" is Kanye West's second highest charting single in the UK, only behind his number one single "Stronger". It was only held of the top spot by the Pussycat Doll's "Don't Cha". It is by far West's longest charting single in the UK having amassed an impressive 48 weeks inside th top 100 songs. 295,000 copies of "Gold Digger" have been sold in the UK as stated by the Official UK Charts Company.

A remix was made featuring Jay-Z. It was titled "Gold Digger (Jay-Z Remix) featuring Jamie Foxx." It had the same beat and still had Jamie Foxx in the background and Kanye West on the first verse, but it switches to Jay-Z on the second. In 2006 a drum and bass remix was released by High Contrast.

In 2005 American DJ and Producer Diplo remixed the track, he edited the songs chorus to resemble the voice of Ray Charles. The electronic track was titled "Gold Digger (Diplo Mix)" and was never officially released.

A politically charged mash-up of the song titled "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" circulated following Hurricane Katrina, incorporating audio of Kanye West's own assertion that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" on a televised benefit concert.[1] The song criticized George W. Bush for his slow reaction to the plight of New Orleans and was written by Houston hip-hop duo The Legendary K.O. also known as K-Otix. The single became widespread on the Internet for several weeks after the catastrophe, in some cases backing video mash-ups with photo montages from the hurricane.

The refrain of the song asserts that "George Bush ain't a gold digger, but he ain't messin with no broke niggas", and implores, "come down, Bush, come on, come down" to New Orleans. Similar themes, including the characterization of black victims of the hurricane as looters, were covered by Public Enemy in a contemporaneous single, "Hell No We Ain't All Right!"

Welsh indie rock band The Automatic recorded a cover version of the song, which features on Radio 1's Live Lounge CD, as well as later being featured on their final single Raoul.During Leeds Festival 2006 they performed it live with Adequate Seven and the lead singer and saxophonist of Capdown. They also performed it live at the 2007 Reading festival, with fellow Welshmen, Goldie Lookin' Chain and at the 2007 Get Loaded In The Park. At the Newquay Boardmasters Festival in 2006, they performed it live with The Mystery Jets, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly and My Elvis Blackout.

All Time Low has covered "Gold Digger" in the past.

The song was also later sung by the Oceanian Hip-Hop duo Noozfa & Izzei, and they made a crunk remix featuring White Dawg, and Lil' Jon. In addition, it was also sung in Kingston, Jamaica by various other artists like Lil' Bow Wow, C-Murder and Beenie Man.

"Gold Digger", done in a polka beat, is the last segment of "Polkarama!", the polka medley on "Weird Al" Yankovic's album Straight Outta Lynwood. This version substitutes a second "broke" instead of "nigga", like the edited music video.

English solo artist Dear Landlord also performed an acoustic version of "Gold Digger".

Vitamin String Quartet recorded a string quartet version of the song for one of their Unstrung albums.

Comedian Carlos Mencia created a version of this song for a sketch on his show Mind of Menciaalso featuring fellow comedian Aries Spears playing Jamie Foxx's role.

Maria Kanellis used Gold Digger as her theme in OVW

In the episode "Showmance" of Glee, the cast of Gleecovered the song.

In 2008, a song was leaked by Brandy entitled, "Honey". It resembles the Gold Digger version.

Single track list

Promotion only version

European CD Maxisingle

European 12" Maxi-single

United States 12" Maxi-single

Information taken from Late Registrationliner notes.