When he did "H to the Izzo" I remember calling my mother
like, yo, we gonna be all good, don't worry!
I would say as a producer,
him and Just Blaze during that
really ushered back into soulful sample.
That whole technique.
I finally just decided to move to New York.
And I made more of these sped up soul beats.
And I just had a plethora of them.
And Jay came out,
I'll never forget he had the Gucci bucket hat
and he heard one joint.
He heard another joint,
I remember him pulling his hat over his head
and just getting so excited.
When he was doing the sped up soul samples,
yeah Rza had done it before,
but it had kind of gone by the wing side.
So then here comes Kanye giving Jay-Z
these ill beats with the sped up soul samples,
everybody's like oh snap wait,
that was kind of dope.
And Kanye kind of took it to the extra level
where he just had like everybody rocking to it,
so it wasn't like this little clique of people
that were like, yo, this is the ish.
It was like everybody.
He picked the beats for The Blueprint
and when he did "H to the Izzo"
I remember calling my mother like,
yo, we gonna be all good, don't worry!
I think personally he made it fun again.
How he created, how he flipped,
how he used things.
And he made it better because he was
rapping on his own stuff.
At that point, I was considered one of the
Rocafella producers.
All the time I always wanted to rap,
but I just wasn't really that good.
I just recently got extremely good.
If I do say so myself.
That was one of the things that really got us
to pay attention,
because now he's a double threat.
Now he's providing the music and the content.
The first line on "Dark Twisted Fantasy"
is "can we get much higher?"
And he seems to think of that line every time
he goes into the studio.
He brings the people in there,
and they just try to go higher every time.
Hawaii was my first experience with
the whole GOOD Music family period.
First of all, it's intimidating.
You walk in Hawaii
and all you see is signs that say
no Instagramming, no tweeting, no talking!
You can't hear nothing,
we can't talk about anything but the album at hand.
You know what I'm saying?
The bar is set.
Like, without anybody speaking a word,
that's the first thing you see.
Like, just period.
Now, we getting to talking,
and now we're getting to Yay cutting down your verses,
and, "No, that's not good!",
and so on and so forth.
You know he wants the perfect project.
And then I listen to him about certain things
like taking a tink!
And making it a tink, tink!
Like, no one hears that.
[laughter]
Like, "No, that sound, I can't stand it!"
Like, "Add, this, this, this!"
But when you hear the finish,
the finish part, you're like,
ok I know why you took the tink out.
Kanye has nitpicked so many of my verses in the past,
and all of our verses,
and the songs and stuff,
so it's like, man, my goal is to try and write
a verse that he ain't gonna say nothing about.
As a producer, Kanye West has made an impact on hip hop
because whenever he drops a new song
that has like a new sound that becomes a big hit,
and everybody loves it,
immediately produces one to follow and bite it.
He's influenced so many producers to this day.
You hear 40, you hear Mike Zombie,
you hear just so many people
that have taken little compartments of what he's done.
And he's drawn inspiration from, you know, J Dilla.
That's one of the key components of Kanye
being who he is right now.
So he's had some good teachers.
And now he's bringing up a whole new
generation of producers.
You can listen to something produced now
and be like, oh I know he made that.
Or I know he made this.
Kanye I could never tell.
We listen to
and then we listen to
you listen to
and you listen to
you listen to
and you listen to
Every piece of those projects sound nothing alike.
And that's the beautiful part.
And that gives a lot of producers now hope
that you can go from grungy,
dirty garage sounding hip hop,
to soulful, barbeque style flowing hip hop.
And no one's gonna say anything
because you're pushing an envelope
that hasn't been open yet.