Kanye West announced that Rick Rubin is the executive producer of his upcoming album, Yeezus. At a listening party yesterday in New York, he gave some insight into his creative process.
Rubin, who was called the most important producer of the last twenty years by MTV, co-founded Def Jam Records and helped popularize hip-hop in the 1980’s. Of working with him, Kanye had this to say:
Last, but not least that came and helped bring this whole shit together, that executive produced the album with me and the family, is Rick Rubin coming in and like finishing up the whole shit for us, which is legendary because everything we did on this project, everything I did, like when we released ‘Numbers on the Board’, from the video, to the no artwork, to the style of the song and everything, I was like ‘what would Rick Rubin do.’ What was his Def Jam shit that they would do because I remember Rick even saying, he said ‘when we did Def Jam we really wasn’t feeling like we was in competition with nobody body because our shit was so direct… ‘where we at right now?’ We in the middle of the city right now, open to the muthafuckin’ streets and nobody is shuttin’ down shit while we make real music. “So I had to go to the god Rick Rubin and play him my shit, ask him questions and allow him to take this project to an entirely new level. And he made a lot of great decisions at the end and pulled it to a new level.
West brought a number of musicians on board to collaborate on the new album, including Daft Punk, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Kid Cudi, Chief Keef, Hudson Mohawke of TNGHT and Travis Scott. West seems to be heading in the same heavy direction that he started on with his last album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If his SNL performances are anything to go by, the album will definitely be a dark one. Of his choice to name the album Yeezus, Kaye had this to say:
West was my slave name and Yeezus is my god name.
To add to the list of odd Kanye-isms, he waxed poetic about his strategy as an artist:
I got a new strategy, it’s called no strategy. And I got a way to sell more music, it’s called make better music.
Yeezus is rumored to be out June 18th on Def Jam Records.
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