(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi / The Art Institute of Chicago)
Though all-star crossovers have been a trope in the commercial music space for quite some time now, practically everyone was left confused by the momentary alliance between Paul McCartney and Kanye West back in 2014 and 2015.
Long before the Chicago rapper’s highly publicised fall from grace, he joined forces with the English singer-songwriter on ‘Only One’ and ‘FourFiveSeconds’ as well as the grimier industrial cut, ‘All Day’. All three songs exploded upon release, yet Macca’s contributions remained unclear till he himself explained them.
At no point did the two sit down and write music together in a focused and intentional manner; instead, they spent time chatting and bouncing ideas off one another while an iPhone recorded everything on audio. Ultimately, Ye extracted and sped up one of McCartney’s musings on the guitar and used it as padding on ‘FourFiveSeconds’ along with additional vocals from Rihanna. Likewise, ‘Only One’ featured an extract of the Liverpudlian playing the electric piano from their sessions. The story behind ‘All Day’, however, has several more layers.
During an interview with BBC’s Mastertapes Special, McCartney recalled telling West about the time his daughter Mary was born in 1969, and how he spent a lot of time in the hospital room staring at a print of Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period masterpiece, The Old Guitarist. The painting shows an old man holding up the titular instrument, with his frail fingers pressing down on its fretless and stringless neck. Of course, McCartney being McCartney kept trying to figure out what the chord could be.
After pinning down a melodic interpretation of the finger placement as seen in the early 1900s artwork, he explained, “I started to try and write something just using two fingers all the time.” With a chord pattern established, it subsequently evolved into ‘When the Wind is Blowing’ by Wings. While whistling a tune over those same chords to West, McCartney unknowingly laid out the blueprint for ‘All Day’.
“After Christmas, I get this track back,” he said about the first time he listened to the aggressively processed version of his demo. “He’s taken my melody and he’s made it, like, seriously urban. The lyrics are like… y’know, there’s the N-word a lot.”
He was blown away by Ye’s work, even though people in his circle tried their best to convince him that associating yourself with an in your face song like that can never end well. Still, he remained firm in his commitment to the piece, even though he was essentially booted off of the creative process beyond a certain point.
“People like Oprah [Winfrey], who are a little more conservative about that stuff,” he remembered. “She said, ‘You shouldn’t do it. Even Black people shouldn’t use that word.’ Yeah, but it’s Kanye, and he’s talking about an urban generation that uses that word in a completely different way.”
Among the many people who were sceptical of the unorthodox partnership was Damon Albarn, who even suggested that West ‘trapped’ the legend in an ‘abusive collaboration’. What’s more, he even sent McCartney a warning text about working with the rapper, which he claimed was ignored.
Amid all the criticism, ‘Only One’ went to number one on the UK Hip Hop/R&B per the OCC and ‘FourFiveSeconds’ went number one on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in the US. Additionally, ‘All Day’ was nominated for ‘Best Rap Song’ and ‘Best Rap Performance’ at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards.
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