"Never Let Me Down" is a song by American rapper and producer Kanye West, that features Jay-Z and J. Ivy, from West's debut studio album The College Dropout (2004). It was released as the album's eight track, produced solely by West and samples "Maybe It's the Power of Love" by Blackjack. West and Ivy each provide one verse–the latter's is a poem–while Jay-Z has two verses. Music critics mostly had praise for it, but tended to view Jay's appearance in a negative light. In 2011, Billboard listed the song as the second greatest collaboration between Kanye and Jay. Although an accompanying music video wasn't ever produced for "Never Let Me Down", the audio of it was used in one of West's videos for "Jesus Walks". The song has managed to develop a significant legacy over time, despite never being released as a single. Background Ivy revealed that he originally knew West from Chicago, but was reintroduced to him in New Jersey shortly before they collaborated on the track. He got a call from Coodie at 11pm on December 7, 2002, about being part of the song, in which Coodie said to him: "J, you need to get to L.A. Kanye got this song with him and Jay Z and he wants to put a poet on it. I told him he had to put J. Ivy on it." and Ivy was initially like: "Stop bullshitting", before Coodie played it for him over the phone from Record Plant in Hollywood, California. At the time, Ivy had feelings of excitement about being on the record, not only because of: 'knowing that [West] was taking off to superstardom at the time', but also because he thought of Jay as: 'one of the greatest of all time'. After penning his verse, Ivy called Coodie and rapped to him over the phone, then he put Ivy on speaker phone to rap his verse again once Coodie went in the other room with people in it and the people in there reacted positively to Ivy's verse - this led to him rapping it over, over, over and over again to them. Release On the original track list of The College Dropout, "Never Let Me Down" was number fourteen, instead of number eight as it stands on the official release. When the album was released, West referenced featuring artist Jay-Z in the booklet's list of 'Thanx' by