What’s so impressive about the latest from Kanye West to me, along with Daft Punk’s newest, is their ability to take expectations and rip them to shreds. These people do not owe us anything. They have changed the way this world looks and sounds. They have built their careers around following their own gut, and there’s no way that’s about to change. Yeezus and Random Access Memories sound very different, but the mindset is the same; trust yourself.

I knew when I heard Kanye West perform “Black Skinhead” on SNL, this was the track Daft Punk was talking about. In their cover feature for Rolling Stone they said,

“We had a combination of live drums and programmed drums going..And Kanye was rapping over it.”

“Not even rapping, more like screaming in this very primal way..”

“He’s radical in the choices he makes..He doesn’t give a fuck.”

Daft Punk also said via Mixmag, “”When the first 15-second snippet of ‘Get Lucky’ came out, Kanye came to our studio in Paris and we worked on loads of different ideas together. We’re not sure how many tracks we will have on [his new, forthcoming] album yet.” A look at the credits for Yeezus show that Daft Punk contributed to 4 tracks; “On Sight”, “Black Skinhead”, “I Am A God (Feat. God)” and “Send It Up”. Another artist with his fingerprints on Kanye West’s new masterpiece is Hudson Mohawke. He’s credited on “I Am A God (Feat. God)”, “New Slaves” and “Blood On The Leaves”. There are some more intriguing artists who’ve worked on this new record including Gesaffelstein, Brodinski, Frank Ocean and Lunice. But all these wonderful people aside, this is Kanye West’s vision. It is raw, it is angry and it is not afraid.

In an exclusive interview with The New York Times, Kanye West had a few things to say about Yeezus. He describes it as “visceral, tribal” and when asked if he still feels like an outsider fighting his way in he responds, “No, I don’t think I feel like that anymore. I feel like I don’t want to be inside anymore. Like, I uninvited myself.”

He concludes the interview by saying, “I think that’s a responsibility that I have, to push possibilities, to show people: “This is the level that things could be at.” So when you get something that has the name Kanye West on it, it’s supposed to be pushing the furthest possibilities. I will be the leader of a company that ends up being worth billions of dollars, because I got the answers. I understand culture. I am the nucleus.”

Amen.

Kanye West – Twitter

kanyewest.com

– Jimi Jaxon