This time three years ago, Kanye West was in the studio working on “Ni**as in Paris,” the Top 10 hit from his collaborative album Watch the Throne with Jay-Z. Now the rapper is gearing up to release his seventh studio album and the follow-up to last year’s masterpiece, Yeezus.
While some have speculated an impending surprise release, Kanye has opened up and offered sparse details about the as-yet-untitled effort including specifics on its release date. The rapper says the album will most likely arrive this fall.
“I hope I can get one of these songs out in the next couple of weeks, just to have something up and running,” said Kanye. “But I think most likely September. I go back and forth. Like, should it be September or should it be October? Should it be November?”
West is aiming for a September release and hopes to unleash the album’s first single “All Day” soon. The rapper shared a few lyrics from the song and briefly discussed its inspiration in a recent interview with GQ magazine:
“It’s like a pendulum. The pendulum gains momentum by swinging in the other direction. Even lyrically, I think about certain lines that I say on my new single, which is called “All Day”, that usually Jay would say, but Jay’s not on there. So I say, ‘All day, nigga, it’s Ye, nigga. Shopping for the winter, it’s just May, nigga. Ball so hard, man, this shit cray, nigga. You ain’t getting money unless you got eight figures.’ Right? Jay would have said that. And then eventually I would have came in with, like, whatever I come in with. But the balance of a meal is that when people walk in, they want water first. People definitely weren’t getting water first on Yeezus. I do fight with myself to say, “Keep fighting.” But also, you know, you can’t win every single fight. It’s a long war, and if you’re out there trying to, like, blow up every single building, you won’t win the war.”
West also opened up about his creative process for the Yeezus follow-up and explained how one particular song changed the direction the album was heading:
“Well, when I work on an album, it’s fun at certain times. There’s some accomplishments, and sometimes there’s a bit of frustration. And it’s usually like a nine-month process, right? This is a multi-lifetime process that we have now embarked on. Meaning starting now, you’re just starting to see a glimmer of what the idea of West will mean. So right now, at this age and with this visibility and with the skill sets that Kim is now giving me, I think I have a good chance of success in building something that has longevity, high integrity, high success rate, and is very fulfilling, not only for me creatively but also in adding fulfillment to people’s lives. Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding magic.”
“I had an idea of the way I wanted to do the album. And then I got a new song that’s so good that the album has to be balanced against it. This song is a song that can be in the club like “Don’t Like” or “Niggas in Paris.” Whereas before I was working on the album and I had these beautiful songs, they were just more songs. They weren’t saying, “Okay, tuck your whole summer in.” They were just saying, “Hey, I’m a great musician, I make these beautiful songs, and they have all this meaning, and nobody can make anything that means this much.”
The as-yet-untitled album will reportedly feature 12 tracks, with “mostly a mixture of soul samples and tamed ‘Yeezus’-esque darkness… nothing abrasive.” Read the complete interview over at GQ and watch out for Kanye’s new single “All Day” to be released soon.
