Kanye West's Upcoming Album Different From "Yeezus," Says Malik Yusef

Longtime Kanye West collaborator Malik Yusef is working with the rapper on a follow-up to his last project, Yeezus.

“Yeezus was a hard album to work on because it was a departure from where I wanted to be with our music,” Yusef says in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Kanye was very declarative in his statement of ‘I don’t want this to be a regular Kanye album. I don’t want this to be what people are familiar with.'”

In fact, Yusef says he disagreed with West over Yeezus several times.

“We fought over Yeezus every day,” he says in the piece. “There was no friendly disagreements. It was definitely a war. It’s ‘I don’t give a fuck, Malik. It’s a Kanye album, not a Malik Yusef album.’ Kanye’s kicked me off the label eight times.”

This upcoming West album, however, is a departure from Yeezus, according to Yusef.

“This album is different,” Yusef explains. “It’s like a pair of Timberlands; like how Timberlands are not quite leather and not quite suede. It’s not the smooth, slick Chicago music sound we have right now and it’s not the ruggedness of just ‘Hip Hop Hip Hop Hip Hop.’ We’re still working like a motherfucker. We’ve been all around the world [recording].”

Yusef says West has finished 20 songs for the album and that recording this one has been smother than Yeezus.

Theophilus London recently said Kanye played “his new album three times in a dark room of 20 people last night and moshing drunk with mad babes haha.” He would later say Kanye’s album was not finalized.