CORRECTION: Factchecker, check thyself. The song is “Murder to Excellence”, not “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Check out “Welcome to the Jungle” “Murder to Excellence” on ‘Watch the Throne.’ Yeezy asserts, at 1:55: “Three hundred fourteen soldiers died in Iraq/ Five hundred nine died in Chicago.”
Kanye is wayyyyyy off. As of today, 4,474 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq. I suppose ‘Ye could claim that he said “soldiers,” not troops, making the veracity of his assertion dependent upon the numbers of U.S. Army soldiers KIA in Iraq. And I am unaware of a database that breaks down U.S. military casualties in Iraq by branch of service. But the vast majority of troops who’ve died in the ground-centric eight-year war have been soldiers, making Kanye still vastly off the mark.
Kanye could additionally claim that he put no time limitation on his claim, and at *some* point 314 soldiers indeed died in Iraq. (At several points, in horrible truth; but that does not help Kanye’s statement. I digress.) But that would be churlish. And the world knows that Kanye West is never churlish.
I do not know how many violent deaths afflict Chicago.
This is the first of many installments of The Rap Factchecker.
You can also read Spencer Ackerman on his blog and at Wired‘s Danger Room.
The numbers are based of 2008 data according to the Associated Press.
Taken from: http://rapgenius.com/Kanye-west-murder-to-excellence-lyrics#note-312732
thats for 2008 only, not the whole iraq freedom campaign. Maybe you should know what your talking about if your gonna claim the title “factchecker”. The deaths for chicago is also for 2008 and kanyes numbers are also right for that stat. You didnt even kno the title of the song, lol, maybe do some research b4 typing?