The next thing I knew I was in a closet with this cool bearded white brother getting ready to record. I’d seen this guy working out of this tiny room in the back. He’d been there since I got there. I figured he must be a stand-in for Mike Dean—Kanye’s main engineer who hadn’t gotten to Hawaii yet—but it turned out he was the voice behind the distorted vocals on the song’s intro. We ended up smoking a whole bunch of joints and kicking the shit while I laid down my little verse.

This hippy motherfucker ended up being Justin Vernon of the band Bon Iver. But I didn’t find that out until later. During the time we spent working together I had no clue who he was and I didn’t think to ask. I had no doubt that anybody Kanye had flown down here was here for a good reason.

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My biggest contribution to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came several months after my trip to Hawaii. Kanye had to turn in his album the next day. But he wanted to get me on “Devil in a New Dress.”

I’d already recorded a verse to “Devil in a New Dress” in Hawaii. It was a real soulful joint built around an old Smokey Robinson. Kanye had already released the song as part of his weekly G.O.O.D. Fridays series. Except he hadn’t kept my verse on there. But when I met up with Kanye in New York at the final hour of his album he had a new version of the song. His engineer Mike Dean had added this mean guitar solo breakdown at the end of it that Kanye wanted me to come in after. But he wanted me to write a new verse. He didn’t like the one I’d done in Hawaii.

“I know that you can do something better than that,” he told me.

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That’s what he said. Then he stood up, turned around and walked out the studio.

It was good that he left. I needed a minute to process what had just happened. In all my years no one had ever asked me to rewrite a verse before. Even when I was a nobody ghostwriting for artists way bigger than me no one had ever said something like that.

I was shocked but I wasn’t offended. I wasn’t pissed. That surprised me too. I knew Kanye hadn’t said that to upset me. He was pushing me the same way he had been pushing everybody in Hawaii. The same way he was pushing himself to do something even greater. So the ball was in my court. I could either take his request as disrespect or I could take him up on his challenge. I decided on the latter and two hours later I had another verse. It’s one that many of my fans consider to be the best of my career.