Most 22-year-olds facing the post-grad job search might feel stumped by what to do with their downtime. Big Willy did not have that problem. The recent UCLA grad and musician spent the last two weeks transforming his favorite Kanye West songs into a six-track jazz medley.
The compilation, A Million a Minute, is more than a collection of covers. Big Willy remixed a cappella versions of West tracks like “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “I Love Kanye,” then performed the piano and bass over them using “that shitty keyboard thing on Garageband.” Afterward, he recorded himself playing the saxophone and added some drums off of YouTube rips.
Willy (real name Wilson but he preferred to omit his last name due to the aforementioned job search) isn’t looking for a career in music—at UCLA, he actually studied economics. But seeing what he calls “overlap” between the genres of rap and jazz, he saw an opportunity and took it.
Says Willy of the track:
I love people’s fascination with Kanye and I love his music style […] It’s funny to see everyone talking about all this stuff he does now and that he has this weird cult following. If I had to give a quote to sum up the medley, it’d be this one from his verse on “Brand New” (one of my fav ‘Ye features). ‘They don’t want to turn they speakers up, they claim I ain’t deep enough / all that talking I feed off of, keep it up.’
Stream and download the compilation in full, below.
