Kanye West’s Next Album Will Have Eight Songs

Christina Lee | December 8, 2013 8:17 am

Kanye West plans to take producer Rick Rubin‘s earliest aesthetics, last heard in Yeezus, to a new level in his next album. “I think my next album is going to be eight songs,” he said at Miami’s Art Basel, during a Surface magazine talk with architect Jacques Herzog. “It’s just reducing down the amount of information that you need.”

West had turned to Rubin for help just weeks before he had to submit Yeezus to his label. West even recorded vocals for five songs just two days prior to his deadline. But as he would tell BBC Radio 1 host Zane Lowe, West had also asked for Rubin’s “Reduced By” aesthetic, as initially popularized by LL Cool J‘s debut album Radio. (“He’s not a producer, he’s a reducer,” West said.)

Yeezus, one of our best albums of 2013, ended up being just 10 songs and clocking in at 40 minutes. “People say a design is the point where you can’t take anything else away,” West said at Art Basel. “[Yeezus] was very, very designed. I took a departure from radio and popular music in order to get this seat here.” According to Surface, he even said that Yeezus‘ departure from rap and hip-hop was also crucial.

West has teamed with Rubin and Q-Tip to work on this effort, which he hopes to release next summer.

[via Rolling Stone]

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