The legendary Sir Paul McCartney has long solidified his place in music history. During his tenure with The Beatles, Paul's songwriting prowess played a role in shaping modern pop and rock music as we know it. It's no wonder that Kanye West, another creative and innovative mind, saw a kindred spirit in the English legend. As such, the pair ended up linking up for several studio sessions, culminating in the recording of ""Only One," "FourFiveSeconds," and "All Day." Now, with his new album Egypt Station coming in the imminent future, Sir Paul sat down with DIY to detail his experience working with Yeezy.
"With Kanye, I learnt a lot," reveals Paul, an admitted fan of both My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch The Throne. "We had a method in our early days of The Beatles and with Wings that I used all the way through for writing songs. I would sit down with a guitar or at a piano and make it up and complete it. Then that's it, you've done your song, and then you're ready to roll and go in the studio." While that has been Paul's way throughout the bulk of his career, with Yeezy, it was far more tailored toward spontaneity.
"With him, it was much more made up as we went along—so much so that I didn't even realize that I was making songs," says Paul. From the sound of it, Yeezy's method left Paul confused at first, as he explains below:
"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 favorite of mine anyway, so that just came without me lifting a finger."
Let it be known. All your favorite recent Kanye lyrics have emerged out of staring at a picture of Kim Kardashian. Shout out to Paul McCartney, a true legend.