Kanye's making a record with Chance The Rapper, possibly 51 other people
If you thought Yeezy season was over, you were woefully mistaken. After releasing five albums in five weeks—albeit five extremely short albums in five weeks—rumors have started to emerge that Kanye’s got a whole lot left in the tank. Following the publication of a revealing interview with West in the New York Times—which features an essential passage detailing how ghostwriting in hip-hop actually works—writer Jon Caramanica revealed that the mercurial, occasionally prolific artist has talked about releasing an album per week for a goddamn year. “He said he wants to get a place in Wyoming and he thinks he wants to spend more time there,” Caramanica said on the Popcast podcast. “He told me at one point he wants to make 52 records in 52 weeks. Take that for what you will.”
That sounds like a bunch of big talk from a person who, uh, has a certain proficiency for big talk, but there’s some credence to it. G.O.O.D. Music participation-trophy recipient CyHi The Prynce has said Kanye wants to produce a 7-track record with him. Longtime collaborator Francis And The Lights has said recently that he “heard rumblings” about more Kanye projects, and Def Jam, who distributed all of the 7-track projects, recently tweeted, “Which artist would you like Kanye to produce a 7-track album for next?”
And while the answer to that might be “no one, Jesus Christ, just go take a fucking nap and dial it back for a minute,” we now know that at least one of those will be with Chance The Rapper. In a new interview with Peter Rosenberg for Complex, the Chicago polyglot donned a bright pink Three hat and said he’s in “dry-erase board mode” on two separate projects: one, a full-length collaboration with Childish Gambino (“we got six songs that are all fire”) and the other a 7-track effort with Kanye. Both are artists he’s collaborated with to great success before: Gambino on the Acid Rap standout “Favorite Song,” for example, and Kanye on the exuberant Life Of Pablo opener “Ultralight Beam.” Chance said he’s “about 30%” done with both projects, with plans to enter the studio with Kanye next month—meaning there’s a great chance that if the thing’s coming out at all, it’ll be around then.
One person he will likely not be working with is Gorillaz and Blur frontman Damon Albarn, who recently told French news magazine L’Obs that he had pointedly advised Paul McCartney from working with West back in 2015. Stereogum translated the interview, noting that it had already been translated from English to French, but the sentiment is pretty direct. (It’s worth noting that “FourFiveSeconds,” one of the resulting collaborations, had McCartney’s vocals removed in the final cut.) Albarn said:
Do not get me started on Kanye West … Kanye West trapped Paul McCartney. It’s rude… I have a problem with this abusive collaboration: we’re talking about Paul McCartney, anyway! Kanye West thinks only of Kanye West, using a name to make headlines, saying ‘McCartney is in my song.’ In addition, he puts McCartney in the video of the song, but not in the song itself.
McCartney also recently spoke on the collaboration s a fairly unusual experience, at least for him, saying:
With (West), it was much more made up as we went along – so much so that I didn’t even realise that I was making songs. We had two or three afternoons where we just hung out together in a Beverly Hills hotel in the bungalows out the back, and he had his engineer and was set up with a couple of microphones incase anything happened. I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim on his computer. I’m thinking, are we ever gonna get around to writing?! But it turns out he was writing. That’s his muse. He was listening to this riff I was doing and obviously he knew in his mind that he could use that, so he took it, sped it up and then somehow he got Rihanna to sing on it. She’s a big favourite of mine anyway, so that just came without me lifting a finger.
So, anyway, Albarn and McCartney are probably out, if Kanye’s trying to make a 7-track Britpop album. It’s about time for Chris Martin to do a solo record though, right?