By now, the majority of the people are aware of Kanye West's working process. While he began as a producer, he's since created mega writing camps where he gets some of the best songwriters in the world together to help concoct the project's he's working on. They say that two minds work better than one and that's definitely something Kanye applies to his albums. One person he brought on board for one of the writing camps is Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig. In a recent interview, he explained how working with Kanye West helped him in the long run.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ezra Koenig explained how working in camps for Beyonce and Kanye West helped shape his creative process. He says working with Kanye gave him an appreciation for being a songwriter as opposed to the performer.
"If you’re in a situation where Kanye hands you something and asks you to go come up with an idea and make a demo, suddenly you step out of yourself. You look at the craft of songwriting in a different way, without the narcissism of it being all about you and your presentation to the world," he said.
After working with Yeezy, Ezra says it inspired him to try and work with as many people as he could for the record.
"When I first started thinking about this album, I had big ambitions. I was like, “I’m gonna do this Kanye stuff, and if that means I work with 200 people, I’m down.” Every once in a while I’ll sit down and write a song by myself, but I really love writing songs with other people," he told them.
In September, Ezra said the Vampire Weekend album is 80% done. Who knows, maybe Yeezy might return the favor and help out with their forthcoming album in some fashion.