Mike Dean Details Kanye West’s Production “Evolution”

    Mike Dean’s role in the studio with Kanye West may be becoming more pronounced, but the mixer-producer has worked with West on each of his albums, as well as the Watch The Throne project with Jay-Z. In an interview with Huffpost Live, Dean explained how working with West has evolved from 2004’s The College Dropout to Yeezus, which is slated to be released tomorrow (June 18).

    ”[West] is more the producer that oversees everybody now,” Dean says during the interview. “He gets teams of producers to work under him. When I first started working with him, I mixed two, three songs on his first record at my house in Texas. I’d say, ‘Ah, I could help you on this track.’ He’d say, ‘I make beats. That’s what I do.’ That was 10 years ago, I guess. Now he lets everybody put input in and he sorts through it. We’ll have eight producers putting parts on one song and then we’ll just pick through it, pick what’s good.”

    With so many producers working on one song, Dean says the process becomes layered. “Usually one person will start something and eight other people will add parts,” Dean says to interviewer Ricky Camilleri. “Sometimes it’ll end up [that] the person that started doesn’t have anything on the final song, but they’re still producing.”  

    Dean, who performed with West during his Governors Ball 2013 set in New York June 9, has an extensive Rap mixing and production resume. He started working with Scarface, The Geto Boys and other Rap-A-Lot Records artists in the early 1990s and helped develop the “gumbo funk” production style that included the use of live instruments.

    Trained to be a bassoonist, Dean says that his work on Yeezus also signals his own development as a producer. “It’s just an evolution, I guess, of learning how to make records,” Dean says. “We’re kind of pulling back to more minimal now. We’re trying to. It’s hard not to make an epic record if you can.”

    RELATED: Mike Dean Confirms “Watch The Throne” Sequel

    20 thoughts on “Mike Dean Details Kanye West’s Production “Evolution”

    1. his first 2 albums were dope

      graduation was his transition record than 808’s came out

      graduation was his pop album

    2. Why Mike Dean doesn’t get the mainstream love and admiration is beyond me. People who know this guys career going back to Rap-A-Lot know he’s the unsung hero behind Kanye West

    3. Make people sign in with a FB or yahoo account on this site, the comment section is ridiculous. Some of the dumbest shit i have ever read resides on this site.

      Mike Dean is the truth btw.

    4. Kanye stays getting better fa real fa real
      and yall check out that Young Dro Day 2 mixtape yet, its got a few bangers on it, and you already know B.o.B. and T.I. both kill the tracks theyre on. I got mines at www. HipHopGood .com they got all the albums and music on it HipHopGood be haven that new Ye Cole and Miller too, and im sure theyll hav the deluxe edition of That Yeezus up first too

    5. Mike Dean is dope….. hip hop production legend…. And Yeezus is the shit, nothing close to it being released on June 18, except the Quasimoto and Jarren Benton albums respectively.

    6. GIVE ME A CHANCE
      Youtube is all about finding new artist, & though I been rapping for a while im still consider a new artist. I just want my music heard thats all, im not looking for no record deal, getting famous ‘r anything like that.! so please just spare a few sec. to check me out, & if you like what you heard please SUBSCRIBE so ill know you actually listen & support
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzBh55tD_eg

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