Todd Rundgren has spoken out on his frustration towards Kanye West and the many hours of production work he put into the rapper’s latest record DONDA.
In conversation with Ultimate Classic Rock, Rundgren says that he worked on the record for over a year, even going so far as participating in a few sessions with the rapper. Over that time, he racked up “three albums worth of Kanye stems on my computer.”
The two originally linked up through West’s long-time friend and collaborator, 88-Keys, who Rundgren says is a “terrific guy.” “He’s a big fan of mine and wanted to see us work together,” he said.
Rundgren said he didn’t mind the styles of music West was working on.
“If you want to sing about Jesus, go ahead, I don’t care. I’ll help ya do it, you know? If you want to sing about your troubles with your wife, go ahead and do it. I don’t care”
He then details what became the breaking point for him, citing roughly around July this year as when he decided to call it quits.
“I just said, ‘That’s enough for me. I have no idea whether any of this is being used.’ You don’t get much feedback from him regarding what it is.”
“If I can contribute something, fine. If I can’t, just let me know. I’m out of here… There is a possibility that I’m actually in there somewhere. There’s so much junk in that record!”
He said that after almost a year of uncertainty of his place in the project, he came to the conclusion that West is nothing more than “a shoe designer. … He’s just a dilettante at this point.
“Nobody would regularly make records like that unless they had stupid money to throw around. Nobody rents a stadium to make a record in. Nobody flies in the entire world of hip-hop just to croak one syllable, just so you can say that everybody was on it.”
He also thinks that the album was rush-released due to the impending release date of Drake‘s Certified Lover Boy, which ended up being released a week after DONDA. West and Drake have had some very public beef as of late.
“He was too afraid that Drake would one-up him, so he hurried up and released the album the weekend before Drake could get his out. And in the end, Drake ate his lunch anyway.”
NME pointed out that CLB outstreamed DONDA in just three days over in the US.
Read the full conversation here.
