Look at Rick Rubin above, and bow down to the God that's helped create countless projects for everyone from Jay-Z, Black Sabbath, LL Cool J, Adele, Lana Del Rey, and most recently, Kanye West on Yeezus.
We've detailed how he came in to help Kanye just weeks before its June 18 release date, but in this profile with The Daily Beast, Rubin speaks in-depth about the project and how he convinced Kanye to cut it down to 10 tracks.
Read an excerpt below to get a grasp on just how quickly Yeezus was created:
I thought I was going to hear a finished album, but actually we listened to probably three and a half hours of works in progress.
It’s a good thing you were on the same wavelength, because the sheer logistics of finishing the album must have been daunting.
Three days before Kanye had to turn the record in he tells us, “I’m going to Milan tonight.” There are probably five songs that still need vocals at this point. Two still need words! So he says, “I have to go to this baby shower before I go to Milan. I’ll be back at 4 p.m., and from 4 to 6 I’ll do the vocals. Then I have to go.” I say, “OK,” thinking it’s not OK, and he says, “Don’t worry. I’ll score 40 points for you in the fourth quarter.” Again it just seemed impossible, but that’s basically what he did. He didn’t come back until after 4, and we probably didn’t start until after 5. He said, “I have an hour and 10 minutes. Let’s go.” And then it was full-on NBA finals [laughs]. It probably ended up taking two hours. Five vocals. He wrote two lyrics on the spot.
When he came to you with the record, did you have a sense of what needed to be done?
Initially, he thought there were going to be 16 songs on the album. But that first day, before he even asked me to work on it, I said, “Maybe you should make it more concise. Maybe this is two albums. Maybe this is just the first half.” That was one of the first breakthroughs. Kanye was like, “That’s what I came here today to hear! It could be 10 songs!”
So there might be another Yeezus in the pipeline?
Might be.
All hail Rick Rubin.
[via DailyBeast]
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