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Kanye West’s creativity exploded into a new stratosphere on his groundbreaking fourth solo album, 808’s & Heartbreak but what most fans probably didn’t know is what sparked his vision for the project.

Longtime friend and collaborator No I.D. shed some light on that mystery during a recent appearance on Cipha Sounds and Peter Rosenberg's "Juan Epstein" show.

“The 808 records came out of doing The Blueprint 3 records,” the Chicago producer told the hip-hop nerdcast. “Matter of fact, when we did ‘Heartless,’ he just stopped and said, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘No what?’ He was like, ‘No way! This is my record!’ I was like, ‘Come on man. Can we just finish the guy’s album man?’ He was like, ‘Nope. I’m doing an album.’”

Inspiration came at a cost, though—at least for No I.D. He was the one that had to tell Jay Z that ‘Ye was dropping everything to create his own auto-tuned LP.

“In the middle of that, we do that in about 3-4 weeks then he goes on tour and Jay Z is like, ‘What happened? Where are my... what happened?” he added. “I tell Jay, ‘Yo, man it’s gonna be hard to finish this man, you probably need to come to Hawaii man. Come on man please come out there.'”

Jay went out and the current executive vice president of Def Jam floated him the “Death of Auto-Tune” beat and the rest is music history.

Listen to the entire interview below: