Before he was a rapper, Kanye West was a hit producer, working with the likes of Jay-Z, Nas, Britney Spears and more. Even before his 2003 debut single Through The Wire, he'd built a reputation in the industry, and it only grew from there.

However, it turns out that he had more... primal reasons for getting into production. Thanks to a tweet from @surgeon18012021, the Internet's been caught up on the reason that Kanye started to make beats, and it's the result of a "sexually suggestive Mario ROM hack he was making".

Thinking about the fact that Kanye West started making music because of a sexually suggestive Mario rom hack he was making pic.twitter.com/K5bbT8Bm8R

— PLSTCSRGN (@surgeon18012021) June 19, 2021

At the age of 12, Kanye was a wannabe game designer, and he spoke about it in a 2009 interview with Details. He needed music for the games he was making, so who better than to make the music himself?

Kanye recounted, "First beat I did was in seventh grade, on my computer. I got into doing beats for the video games I used to try to make. My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas.

"Mind you, I'm 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You'd have to draw in and program every little step—it literally took me all night to do a step, 'cause the penis, y'know, had little feet and eyes."

Kanye went on to talk about how he believes that sexual desires can be channelled into creation, saying, “People ask me a lot about my drive. I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age.

"Look at the drive that people have to get sex—to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 A.M., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic . . . "

READ MORE: We're Mesmerised By These AI Re-Creations Of Kanye West's Album Covers

Next time you go to listen to a Kanye-produced beat, just remember that it all started because of a Mario ROM hack he was making. We're not sure we'll ever be able to forget that fact.