You could argue John Legend wouldn’t have his career without Kanye West in his corner. Through his connection, he was able to collaborate with Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and Slum Village early in his career. Eventually, in signing with Ye’s G.O.O.D. Music, he became one of the biggest names working in R&B. Nowadays, their relationship is especially strained. However, that doesn’t mean Legend has to overlook how important West was to his career.

In an interview with Genius, Legend candidly reflected on how fervently the Chicago MC and producer advocated for him. Whether it was through label meetings or simple collaborations, he made it clear that his friend and eventual signee should be involved.

“Early on, he worked really hard to get me signed,” John Legend recalled. “He would go to all the meetings with me at the record labels, and he’d put me on other records with Slum Village, Dilated Peoples, Jay-Z, and Alicia Keys. Whenever he could find a way for my voice or my piano playing to get on a record, he would do it. Early on, he put a lot of his social capital into me. He bet on me.”

John Legend Shared The Many Ways Kanye West Helped Him Early in His Career

Elsewhere in the conversation, Genius handed him a VIBE magazine where Legend took the cover alongside Common and Kanye West. The “Ordinary People” crooner warmly referred to them as “my brothers” before looking back on that time in his life.

“We felt like all the things we believed before anybody else believed in us were finally actually coming true. And we believed man,” John Legend rosily remembered.

“Everyone knows how arrogant Kanye can be, but we all believed that we had something special to offer music and culture. It was frustrating that we couldn’t convince these record labels and gatekeepers that what we had was special. But it happened eventually, and by ’05, it was so thrilling to have believed all this, and it finally started coming true.”

Despite these warm feelings about the past, that doesn’t mean that John Legend is all good with Kanye West. In another interview with Complex, he stressed that Ye has a long way to go in making amends with the people he’s deeply hurt and offended over the years.

“I feel like what he’s done to society has been really harmful. What he said about entire communities has been really harmful. The Black community, the Jewish community, those things have been really harmful,” John Legend told the publication. “I know he’s apologized in that one statement in The Wall Street Journal, but I don’t think that’s sufficient to cover the harm that he’s done.”

Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images For American Express

The post John Legend Recalls How Kanye West Fought To Get Him Signed Early in His Career: ‘He Bet on Me’ appeared first on VICE.

Every artist has their own way of making music. The creative process is a little different for everyone, and that’s before you even think about genres. Oftentimes, those differences justify why genres shouldn’t mix. However, sometimes, there’s magic, differences and all.

This was true for Kanye West and Paul McCartney back in 2014. They’re both musical savants in their own right, but how those songs turn out seems a little different. You would never confuse “Hey Jude” with “Stronger” or “Here Comes The Sun” with “New Slaves”. However, together, they made the extremely underrated “FourFiveSeconds” with Rihanna.

For the Beatles legend, he just felt lucky to stretch out his wings and try something fresh with artists he otherwise wouldn’t expect to work with. “We ended up just talking a lot,” Paul McCartney recalled to DIY back in 2018. “I played a few little things and one of them ended up as ‘FourFiveSeconds’ with Rihanna. It’s more a question of me feeling lucky that these people are interested [in working with me] and think that I can bring something to it. For me, I feel great. I like diversity.”

The biggest takeaway McCartney had from the recording experience was just how different Kanye West approached the songwriting process. While the former would tinker around with songs on the guitar or piano, the latter was big on improvisation. For their session, Ye spent a lot of time looking at his then-wife Kim Kardashian.

How Kim Kardashian Inspired The Making of this Underrated Kanye West and Paul McCartney Song

“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,” Paul McCartney said of his process.

“With [West], it was much more made up as we went along – so much so that I didn’t even realize that I was making songs… I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim [Kardashian] on his computer. I’m thinking, ‘Are we ever gonna get around to writing?!’” Paul McCartney continued.

What he didn’t realize was that Ye was conjuring up the song in his mind the entire time. He kept looking at Kardashian while he was listening and eventually knew what to do with McCartney’s strumming.

“It turns out he was writing. That’s his muse,” Paul McCartney said. “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 favourite of mine anyway, so that just came without me lifting a finger.”

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