While taking part in a Red Bull Music Academy Paris lecture, G.O.O.D. Music president Che Pope spoke on the making of Kanye West’sYeezus album, and how the project compared to past projects from the Chicago rapper.
According to Pope, who served as co-executive producer on Yeezus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy felt like an apology to Kanye, in the wake of the controversy surrounding his incident with Taylor Swift.
He also explained that Kanye’s angst and interest in fashion played a role in the creation of Yeezus.
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“I think that album was different than any of the other Kanye albums because he was in a place where, as you know, you guys saw in the Internet, you saw the rants,” Che Pope said. “He was doing a lot of rants. There was a lot of … He was real feisty, I think is best way to describe it. He was very happy with the albums he had done previously, which were My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch The Throne. As much as accomplished and as strong as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was, he also felt like that was somewhat of an apology, coming off the Taylor Swift stuff and all that so he felt like he had to make the best possible album, best orchestrations. A lot of that album was made in Hawaii and traveling around the world. Watch The Throne was basically made around the world traveling.
“With Yeezus, he was back to being Kanye where he wanted angst and he’s into fashion, he’s inspired by Paris,” he added. “Every week, we visited the Louvre and we’d walk through the Louvre. He’d walk through Paris at night by himself, no security, one or two of us, we’d walk around and look at the architecture. He was in a very feisty place, so it was a great place and it’s challenging. You’re making an album, it’s challenging when you’re in the studios and you don’t speak French and you’re trying to navigate all of the terrain to make it.”
Pope later spoke on The Weeknd’s “Tell Your Friends,” which was a record he says was initially intended for Kanye’s upcoming album. A point Kanye also shared recently, during an appearance on the Big Boy Morning Show.
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“Like a lot of my records, that was a Kanye record,” Pope said. “Primarily, it’s me, Kanye, Mike Dean on the track. Angelo who works with Abel [The Weeknd] did a little bit of production at the end of it. He did a weird part that I don’t really care for. Yeah, it was a Kanye song. Kanye is still taking his time on his record. We’re working on it, but it’s getting there. It’s almost there. He was actually supposed to do something with Abel and ended up giving him the record, but Abel had done that already. He’d written a record for us and it was a Kanye record, and it ended up being an Abel record.”
