Rick Rubin Reflects On Yeezus, Working With Kanye
By Mike Dyce
May 12, 2012; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in attendance during game seven of the Western Conference quarterfinals of the 2012 NBA Playoffs between the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets at the Staples Center. Lakers won 96-87. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Rick Rubin helped Kanye West polish his most recent album Yeezus ahead of it’s June 2013 release. In an article with XXL Magazine Rubin, who had worked with West’s friend Jay-Z, reflected on working with Kanye West on the hyped up album.
"“I helped him focus. He’d recorded so much stuff, and there was this mountain of music—some if it had words and some of it had vocals and some of it didn’t—and I think I just helped him kind of focus it and get the vocals where they needed to be. I would say that was mainly my job, just kind of helping pick through all the stuff and getting it polished.“It’s very hard for me to say [what Yeezus would sound like if I hadn’t worked on it]. It sounded a lot different three weeks before we finished it. It sounded a lot different, so it’s hard for me to say. And it could’ve been—even in the context of us working on it—it could’ve been an entirely different album than it is. It’s like, it happens to be the one that it is. If you like the album, then the right circumstances came together. [Laughs] If you don’t like it, then it was the wrong circumstances. But you know, there was enough stuff that it really could’ve been a lot of different albums.“I like Yeezus a lot. I like how extreme it is, and how it doesn’t sound like any other hip-hop albums. I like how minimal it is. One of the things that Kanye noticed, which I didn’t notice, is that there’s no snare drums until song six, which is an unbelievable feat. It’s so unusual and progressive that it really excites me. And I think that there’s some incredible MCing as well.”"