Sir Paul McCartney listens to hip hop music for "educational" purposes.

The Beatles star has revealed he "occasionally" goes to see hip hop artists performing live so he can understand more about the "music of now".

He said: "I listen to it for, you could call it, education. I hear a lot of it and go to concerts occasionally. I went to see Jay Z and Kanye when they toured. I've seen Drake live. It's the music of now.

"I think Kanye's a great artist. Take 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'. I played it when I was cooking, and it was like, 'This is good. There's some really innovative stuff.'"

(Image: Instagram / Only One)

The 74-year-old singer teamed up with the 'Bound 2' hitmaker on three tracks recently and has revealed how the recording process went.

He told Rolling Stone magazine: "The only deal I made with Kanye was that if it doesn't work, we won't tell anyone. I didn't know his system. I'd heard things like, 'He's got a room full of guys working on riffs, and he walks around going, 'I like that one.'

"It reminded me of Andy Warhol, these artists who use students to paint their backgrounds and things. It's a well-used technique. I thought, 'I don't know how I'm going to fit into that, but let's see. Here goes nothing.'

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"I whistled it for him. His engineer was recording it, and it went into the pool of ingredients. Kanye was just collecting things. We weren't going to sit down and write a song so much as talk and spark ideas off each other.

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"It was only when I got this song ['All Day'], the Rihanna record ['FourFiveSeconds'] and 'Only One,' the three tracks we did, that I went, 'I get it. He's taken my little whistle-y thing.' It returned to me as an urban hip-hop riff. I love that record."