Kanye West is one of the very few artists out there who can generate headlines with his album's credits. While the liners to Yeezus don't feature quite as many big names as previous Kanye productions, they're still extensive, filled with longtime collaborators and upstart young producers alike. In an effort to shed some light on the making of this vibrant and polarizing album, we spoke with seven guys who helped put it together: veteran producer/engineer/ mixers Mike Dean and Anthony Kilhoffer, who have both been working with 'Ye since the College Dropout days; Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, who returns to the Kanye fold after taking part in 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (his experimental pop outfit Volcano Choir releases its second album, Repave, in September); producer and TNGHT member Hudson Mohawke, who began working with Kanye on last year's Cruel Summer and now has a production deal with G.O.O.D. Music; up-and-coming UK beatmaker Evian Christ; 21-year-old rapper/producer Travi$ Scott, who recently released his debut mixtape, Owl Pharaoh, and is currently working with Big Sean, 2 Chainz, and Jay-Z; and producer/engineer/mixer Noah Goldstein, who's had a hand in albums by Arcade Fire and Interpol, and has worked with Kanye since Twisted Fantasy-- he's the guy Jay shouts out on Watch the Throne's "Who Gon Stop Me" ("extend the beat, Noah!").

Read on for stories about what it means to be summoned by Kanye West, Yeezus' sculpture-like recording process, how the experience very nearly killed one collaborator, "oh shit!" moments in the studio, and how this crew managed to avoid obviousness at every turn. (All artwork below courtesy of the Yeezus fan-art Tumblr Yeezy Graffiti.)

"There's no pedestrian fuckery on this album. People are

working their asses off to make the best shit, and

Kanye's leading the pack." -- Justin Vernon

GETTING THE CALL

Justin Vernon: After Twisted Fantasy, I kind of assumed that I'd get the call again at some point. I get along with Kanye really well and I think his musical decisions are exquisite. He feels otherworldly-- he talks about being a god and shit, and his confidence in himself is inspiring. But at the end of the day, he's a musician working in the lab. We have fun. So when the call came for this album, I was like, "Shit yeah!"

Noah Goldstein: When I was 17, I saw Dr. Dre's episode of "Behind the Music", and he was sitting at the console, looking through the glass. I was like, “That’s the dude I want to be!” Then, a few years later, I was working on hip-hop mixtapes at this studio in West Philadelphia, and it was a terrible situation, a really bad neighborhood. I almost got in numerous altercations there. So I quit there after a year and a half, and said, "The only way I’m ever working in hip-hop again is if I work for Jay-Z and Kanye West.” It was super tongue-in-cheek. Then, almost exactly 10 years later, Kanye hired me to work on Dark Fantasy. And four months after that, we were working on Watch the Throne with Jay.

Travi$ Scott: My manager Anthony Kilhoffer has been Kanye's engineer/producer from the beginning, and he showed him my "Lights (Love Sick)" video during the Cruel Summer sessions. I was pretty much homeless when Kanye first flew me to New York. Later on, I was in Miami with 'Ye and Will Smith-- I was playing Will my album, he fucks with it. He's like my homey now. Then 'Ye's like, "You gotta come to Paris." I got a passport and went. It was just me, 'Ye, and Noah Goldstein at first. We weren't even doing actual studio shit. We were just chilling, running around A.P.C.'s offices, making music on my laptop.

Evian Christ: When Kanye's camp was working on Cruel Summer, they were apparently listening to my mixtape Kings and Them a lot. So when they decided to come out with this industrial, electronic, dark vision for Yeezus, they hit me up. In January, they told us, “Kanye’s in the studio on Sunday, it’d be good if we could have some stuff to play him.” That was on the Friday before, so I had two days to make some tracks that were specifically tailored to Kanye West. I don’t think I went to bed that night. I just made track after track after track-- nine altogether-- and sent them over. A couple of days later, they were like, “This is great, we’ve started working on one.” That track eventually became "I'm in It".

**Image by Leighton McDonald

"I'M IN IT"

Anthony Kilhoffer: "I'm in It" started out with a different sample and melody. Then Kanye removed the sample, and it lived as a six-minute arrangement for a while. Then Rick Rubin got ahold of it and structured it to flow as a three-minute piece. Oftentimes, songs start out at six minutes, then they get whittled down to the best parts over the course of months.

Mike Dean: We're all trying to push things to be weirder. I sometimes push for stuff to be more musical, and then Kanye pulls it back to hip-hop. "I'm In It", for instance, had these crazy guitar parts and all this stadium stuff, and then Rick, Noah, and Kanye pulled it back. I wasn't very happy with that at first, but it came out really well.

Evian Christ: That track is obviously very overtly sexual, and the production mirrors that. When I first sent it, I had some breathy sex sounds laid on the snares, and by the time Kanye was rapping over it, it definitely went into overdrive as far as emphasizing the sexuality. The first time I heard it with Kanye's vocals, I had to do a double-take on a couple of the lines. But if you’re gonna do a song like that, you may as well go all the way; if you’re gonna do a sex song, you may as well talk about fisting. To me, it was very definite-- he absolutely knew what he wanted to do on that track.

"Kanye's talking about a bunch of really stunningly visual sex shit

on 'I'm in It', but it's not like he's saying stuff like that to

his friends 24 hours a day." -- Justin Vernon

Mike Dean: Justin Vernon is one of the collaborators Kanye will always go to. He doesn't fit in with any genres-- you never know if he's gonna sing like the Bee Gees or some crazy distorted thing. And you don't know what he's saying half the time. He's kind of like Michael McDonald, like he's got marbles in his mouth. It's about the emotion.

Justin Vernon: I don't even know what I'm singing on "I'm in It"-- I'd have to look at it. Kanye's talking about a bunch of really violently and stunningly visual sex shit in there, but it's not like he's saying stuff like that to his friends 24 hours a day. I mean, sitting around the studio, we all have intelligent conversations about the state of women in the world-- I wouldn't say we had a conversation about feminism, necessarily, but we're sensitive to it.

The imagery of the song is definitely intense, but so is American Psycho. I loved that little American Psycho clip he did-- it puts things into context, because Kanye feels like a director, and I don't think everything he's saying in the songs is actually him saying it every time. It's like a movie, or a concept. On "I'm in It", it seems like I'm playing a character in the song, but I'm not necessarily guiding who that character is-- Kanye's editing creates the character. I definitely remember the "star fucker" section in the middle, though, just calling somebody out. That's my favorite lyrical content that I've gotten to do on a Kanye record so far.

Evian Christ: I love Assassin’s part in that song, too, he absolutely killed it.

Justin Vernon: I have no idea what the Jamaican dude [Assassin] is saying. At all. But it's fucking awesome as hell.

Noah Goldstein: Kanye figured out all those reggae voices on the album. Everything is him, to be real. Regardless of who additionally produced things, it's his curation. And this idea that he's not as hands-on in the studio now is bullshit. He is the consummate producer.

**Image by Connor Tingley

THE KANYE WAY

Anthony Kilhoffer: Everyone’s given a song and asked to go produce on it and bring it back the next day, then we’ll all sit around and critique it. It’s kind of like an art class [laughs]: “This is what we did this afternoon, what do you think?”

Evian Christ: The atmosphere in the studio is very focused. It’s a room full of people who are working towards the same idea, and you just know that when you hand something over to Kanye, it’s gonna come back even better. That makes for a very easy working experience.

Anthony Kilhoffer: We get to the studio at about two in the afternoon, and then work until maybe 11 p.m., go back to Kanye’s house, play what we worked on, then maybe go back to the studio around midnight and work until three in the morning. A lot of people think, “Oh, it’s a Kanye project-- spend a couple of days in the studio and then go out and party in Paris.” But it’s serious work.

Evian Christ: Logic would seemingly state that an album with so many people working on it would sound disjointed, but what Kanye manages to do is get the best out of everyone working towards one sound. You can’t really overstate how difficult it is to do that.

"To work well with Kanye, you’ve got to be able to take direction,

and if you’re told your idea’s not good, you can’t

take it personally." -- Anthony Kilhoffer

Mike Dean: There's always some competitiveness. During the mixing process, people can get edgy. Like, me and Anthony Kilhoffer will be working on the same thing, trying to beat each other, but we're still good friends.

Noah Goldstein: If Kanye says "go," you just go. You have to be fast. Especially with people like Kanye and Jay, they’re really good at what they do. The best. You have to be as good as them at what you do.

Anthony Kilhoffer: To work well with Kanye, you’ve got to be able to take direction, and if you’re told your idea’s not good, you can’t take it personally. Because it is art, a lot of people do get upset, but nothing goes through 100% without some comments or critiques.

Justin Vernon: Kanye's a world-famous star, but it's just like working on music with friends: You're trying to do the coolest shit. Just being around motherfuckers who have been doing this for a long time and are getting better-- like, there actually aren't that many of them in the world. There's no pedestrian fuckery on this album. People are working their asses off to make the best shit, and Kanye's leading the pack.

Image by Pathetic Pixels

UNDERMINE THE COMMERCIAL

Travi$ Scott: When 'Ye opened up that Maybach laptop and hit play on "Black Skinhead", I jumped off the stairs onto the couch. I was going HAM. That was when I heard the "na na na na" part for the first time, I lost my fucking mind. That's some soccer anthem-type shit.

Mike Dean: "Black Skinhead" almost got deaded because it was too much like a soccer song.

Travi$ Scott: We always undermine the commercial.

Mike Dean: On Watch the Throne, we were gonna use the hook of "We Are Young" before [Fun.] got it. [Watch the Throne producer Jeff Bhasker co-wrote/produced "We Are Young".]

Travi$ Scott: That was too much of a smash, though.

Hudson Mohawke: There are a lot of amazing songs that were left off [Yeezus]-- stuff that you might consider to be more melodic or in-line with Kanye's previous material-- purely because they didn't necessarily fit this rough-edged, 90s-industrial-type vibe. A lot of the record is trying to avoid obviousness. Through the entire process of putting it together, there were tons of easy slam dunks, but rather than just going for the hits and having an album that nobody's going to give a fuck about in a month or two, he intentionally sidestepped the obvious route each time. I think that's what going to give it more longevity and put it in a category of records that you'll go back to in 10 years time.

"Through the process of putting the album together, there were tons of slam dunks, but rather than going for the hits, he intentionally sidestepped the obvious route each time." -- Hudson Mohawke

"ON SIGHT"

Noah Goldstein: "On Sight" sets a new bar. Nobody's doing that. There's no chance in hell that anybody's gonna put that on and be like, "Oh, that's J. Cole"-- not to diss J. Cole. But there's only one person who can do that kind of shit.

Travi$ Scott: You gotta be really dialed in to understand something like "On Sight".

Hudson Mohawke: In the first incarnation of the tracklist, "Blood on the Leaves" was the intro to the album-- Nina Simone's voice was going to be the first one you hear. But that was changed at the last minute, probably for the best, because "On Sight" puts a message across that this is a very different record. "On Sight" is my favorite song on the whole album, but I felt like people weren't gonna fucking know what they're listening to when that distorted acid instrumental comes in-- even as the opener for one of my records, it would be pushing it. [laughs] But Kanye went ahead with it, and good on him for sticking to his guns, because that song really sets the tone.

**

THE SOUND OF YEEZUS

Justin Vernon: I assumed that he was gonna do the maximalist thing again with this album, but it's more like: "Boom! We just made a song, and it bangs, so fuck you." It's such an awesome contrast.

Mike Dean: For Twisted Fantasy, I probably spent 180 days in the studio. For this album, I only spent 30 or 40.

Anthony Kilhoffer: It was probably the fastest record we ever made. And instead of doing 30 songs altogether, we only did 20. Still, we would explore all kinds of options: different tempos or drums, whether a song should be synth-based on real-instrument based. A lot of younger producers just get a beat, put a rap on it, and that’s the song. There's no dissecting, or recreating, or considering the relevance in contemporary music.

Noah Goldstein: Part of my job is to be up on pop culture, but also keep track of what's going on in the depths of the music scene. I pride myself on my music library, which is so geeky, but it's true. I'm always thinking, "Are we doing something that's already being done?" If so, we should stop. One of my friends said the album sounded like Death Grips, and I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about, but OK." I know of them, but I can definitely say that we did not listen to Death Grips once the entire time we were making this album.

Mike Dean: People keep saying my guitar on "Hold My Liquor" sounds like Ratatat, but I don't even know them-- so I definitely didn't bite it. [laughs] I was doing some Queen shit.

"I can definitely say that we did not listen to Death Grips once the entire time we were making this album." -- Noah Goldstein

Anthony Kilhoffer: We want to set ourselves apart from what is currently in rotation. A lot of times, Kanye sets parameters of sounds and styles that we can and can't use. For instance: You’ll find there’s no bass wobbles on this album. Dubstep is really big right now, but it’s not something we could use in our production styles. He’s always trying to not take the easy way out. So it's about achieving clubby, contemporary sounds while setting yourself apart from Skrillex or RedOne. We don’t want to follow, we want to lead.

Mike Dean: We met up with Skrillex, but he never made any contributions to the album. Actually, there's one song that's sitting around that's pretty good-- it'll be on something eventually. It had been in the running since last year. It's a work in progress.

Image by The Barrington

"I AM A GOD"

Noah Goldstein: The very first time I heard Kanye say "I am a God," we all were like, "OK, that's where we're going-- let's go all the way there."

Hudson Mohawke: "I Am a God" was one of the first songs he had for the record. It was like the blueprint. The original version was even more directly in-your-face and aggressive than the final, but given the song's title, it didn't need this fucking apocalyptic, earth-shatteringly massive production to get its point across.

Noah Goldstein: If you watch LeBron dunk in the middle of a game, you’re gonna get up and freak out. And it was like that when Kanye spit the first verse of “I Am a God”. It was really fucking early in the morning, and he just came downstairs, and was like, “Yo, let’s go.” It was the most emphatic performance. I was like, “Holy shit!” [laughs] I stopped and hit save really quick and thought, “Fuck, I gotta back up the drive right now, man. That was crazy.”

He does that shit a lot. He did it on “New Day” as well, from Watch the Throne. We were set up at the SoHo Grand, and he came in at fucking 9:30 in the morning and was like, “Yo, I got the ‘New Day’ verse, bring it up.” Then he spit it. I looked at him, like, “For real, man? That just happened? You just did that shit?” He just smiled at me.

"One of my favorite things about Kanye is that there's always some personal flaws in his lyrics. He's not trying to portray himself as some squeaky clean, perfect person." -- Hudson Mohawke

"HURRY UP WITH MY DAMN CROISSANTS" AND SUCH

Noah Goldstein: Sometimes I don’t realize which lines are going to really resonate, but Kanye always does. Actually, "hurry up with my damn croissants" was one where I was like, “Are you really sure you want to say that?” [laughs] And he’s like, “Yes! That’s staying in!” He literally has the best gut instincts of anybody I’ve ever worked with, as far as what music should be. So when he says a line has to stay in, I’m like, "OK!" I will not argue with the god.

Hudson Mohawke: There are so many classic lines. I tweeted this one yesterday: "Do you remember when we first met?/ OK, I don't remember when we first met." [laughs] They creep up on you, they're not obvious punchlines. And one of my favorite things about Kanye is that there's always some personal flaws in his lyrics. He's honest. He's not trying to portray himself as some squeaky clean, perfect person. It takes him out of the realm of so many other mainstream rap artists who only focus on the bragging side of things; you don't necessarily feel like you have any personal connection with a lot of those artists, whereas Kanye puts so much of his own personality into his music.

**Image by Pathetic Pixels

"BLOOD ON THE LEAVES"

Travi$ Scott: "Blood on the Leaves" is a crazy-ass song, bro. That's the Kanye West genius right there: Only he would think that "Strange Fruit" was missing a HudMo beat, and that the HudMo beat was missing "Strange Fruit". [laughs] When I heard that, I was jumping on niggas' backs and shit, like, "Ahhhh!"

Hudson Mohawke: ["R U Ready"] was either the first or second TNGHT track me and Lunice ever did together, and that happened to be one of the first things we sent over to [Kanye's camp]. So about a month after we made it, in the summer of 2011, they first got in touch with me. And while that entire original beat is still there on "Blood on the Leaves", the finished version-- with the Nina Simone part and everything-- is completely different. It's really become a fucking proper song. I think Kanye had wanted to use that "Strange Fruit" sample for a while, but it was like, "How in the hell are you going to get that to fit?" But it miraculously came together. Obviously, "Strange Fruit" carries so much political weight, and "Blood on the Leaves" is more about past relationships, but you can draw some parallels between the two. There's not an overtly political message in the final lyrics, but in some ways that would've been too easy.

LOVE AND HATE AND (NEAR) DEATH

Noah Goldstein: I really like the fact that people are loving this album or they're like, "This is trash!" I don't really like up-the-middle music, because where's the opinion in that? I'd rather have people hate it than be in the middle.

Mike Dean: Jake Tapper did a three-minute story on Kanye on CNN about the New York Times interview, and he said everything pulling a face, like smirking. So, on Twitter, I was like, "Fuck Jake Tapper." He answered back. He was like, "I actually like the album."

Hudson Mohawke: The last four months have been the hardest-going of my life. Actually, in the middle of the whole process, I died and was resuscitated-- I almost joined the 27 Club. [laughs] I just had a few silly nights out and overdid it with various things. So I spent a week in intensive care in the middle of making the record, next to people who were literally on their deathbeds. Then I got out of the hospital and got right on a plane to New York-- I was like, "I've gotta get on with this fucking record." It's character building stuff-- to get thrown into the deep end can be the best way to approach things. I wouldn't change any of it.