YEEZY. This Is long, but it is a very good read. If you don’t know the name Jeff Bhasker, you should. He just won a Song of the Year Grammy for fun.’s “We Are Young,” a record which he produced. However, most rap fans probably recognize his name from the production credits on Kanye West songs. Bhasker told complex magazine about how 808s & Heartbreak came together, why Kanye’s concerts are so much better than the average rap show, and even revealed how “Find Your Love” wound up going to Drake.

Check out the full story after the jump

1. Meeting Kanye West

Jeff Bhasker: “I started playing keyboards in Kanye’s band around the time Graduation was released. I was friends with Kanye’s DJ, A-Trak, and they needed someone to fill in on keyboards. I was producing at the time-my first cut I got was the title song on The Game’s first album—so I was trying to make my name as a producer. I thought it was a cool opportunity to do a live thing and Kanye was awesome. I started from there, but eventually I became his musical director.

Then he started inviting me to the studio to work on his records. Being his keyboard player, we did a lot of stuff. You might remember his SNL performance when it’s broken down to just piano and him rapping-that was a good foundation that we built on collaborating because we would get in the studio and just start with the piano.

The first album of his I worked on was 808s and Heartbreaks. We would be writing songs together, but a lot of times we would start with just the piano, a vocal idea, and a drum beat and take it from there.”

2. Perfecting the “Stadium” Sound

Jeff Bhasker: “I think a big part of [why Kanye’s live shows sound so good] is because Kanye is such a great producer who has a sensibility of how to produce the music at a show and how it should sound. A lot of times, [during a rap show] the band playing the music doesn’t sound right. Hip-hop is not played by a band. The Roots are one of the few people who can pull it off and still make it feel [like rap] but its’ a very specific feel and it’s very careful in design in how the instruments are used.

There’s certain rules that we follow: No crash cymbals, no hi-hats. We add to the music and make it better through the live musicians, rather than change it or make it a bastardized version of the music. We worked really hard on that and it started from him.

My role as music director and a collaborator with him, was to help him realize his vision. He puts on a great show, visually, sound wise, and the set list. We worked really hard of crafting all those elements to be the best they can be.

We perfected the show through repetition and being uncompromising. We’re not afraid to change something. A lot of times we don’t have a lot of times to prepare. So you have to will yourself to do it no matter what the time is.

That’s the thing about Kanye, if we have five minutes and he wants to change something, there’s no, ‘We can’t do it.’ The time that you explained why you can’t do it, you could have actually done something. So thats more the philosophy of, ‘Go!’ That’s the key: Go, do it, don’t waste time, and you never know what you might actually be able to accomplish if you stop worrying about how you can’t do something you should figure out how you can do something.

3. Recording 808′s and Heartbreak

Jeff Bhasker: “We did that album in about three weeks. Then we went on a world tour and polished it off in studios in China, Singapore, Brazil, and all over the world. It got finished while we were on a world tour. That album went fast which was a cool thing about it; that kept it pure. It’s not an over-thought version of what it was supposed to be. It was a very zen brush stroke.

“With Kanye albums, we do go in very deep, re-think things, layer things, and change and tweak. But 808s has this sort of rawness to it which is cool, very minimal. It taught me a big lesson that keeping things simple can still have a lot of power and still be great.

“[The use of Auto-Tune came about] from the live shows. When we performed ‘Good Life,’ we set up the Auto-Tune so that Kanye could sing the T-Pain part. Once we figured out how to make that happen, it was so fun to do because it’s like playing an instrument. Auto-Tune enabled Kanye to take his songwriting further. He’s always been a great lover of melody, even before auto-tune.

“It wasn’t really much of a departure as people might have initially thought because he’s always been doing melodic things. Like when he said, ‘Drug dealing just to get by.’ He’s always had great melodies. We took it to another level and did it more than he’d ever done it before. At the time, I was into songwriting so it was a good time for us to work together because we were both excited about melody, lyrics, and songwriting.”

4. The Making of “Love Lockdown”

Jeff Bhasker: “I helped write songs more or less in some cases. Most of them came from him and then we would put the music together. For example, ‘Love Lockdown,’ there was like five writers on that. We deciphered what the demo might be saying. Kanye just freestyled it. We went back and filled in the words. In that sense, it was contributing to the songwriting.

You need collaborators that understand songwriting to make the song as good as it can be, even if its not like, ‘Okay, let’s try this melody or that melody.’ It’s like going along for the ride and being there to say, ‘Why don’t we change this word?’ or “If it went to this chord here, it would be better.” So collaboration is a murky, abstract thing. It’s about having love for song itself, and not being like. ‘I don’t know where you going with this.’

It’s not easy getting it exactly right. ‘Love Lockdown’ was born, two days later he said, ‘I’m gonna perform this at the VMAs.’ It was still in a very rare state. It happened instantly and a lot people thought he was out of his mind, but Kanye is the best out of his mind person we have in music. That’s why he is who he is. He puts himself on the spot and is always challenging himself to accomplish his dreams and his goals which is really inspiring. It’s hard, but it’s also satisfying because the more you do it, the more you get used to growing.

It’s like what I said about the shows, there is no ‘can’t.’ There’s only ‘How do we accomplish this?’ Whatever you end up with is what you got. Having that intention behind it comes through in his performance and it’s not just about him. There’s a lot of great artists out there, they put themselves out there, but he really put himself out there with ‘Love Lockdown.’ That’s an extreme version of it, but that’s why Kanye resonates with people. The energy of him doing it was just as exciting as the song. It’s not like, ‘Oh, well, this is a new song by Kanye West.’ It was an event.”

5. The Making of “Amazing”

Jeff Bhasker: “That was actually the first song we did for the album. I brought the beat and the music. I started the idea and he was like, ‘That’s hot.’ Before that it was a little like, ‘Ehh, that sucks.’ That was the first one where he was like, ‘That’s really awesome.’ So I brought that music and he brought his editorial to it and then wrote the melody, and said we’re gonna get Jeezy on it.

We were searching for sort of a tribal-ish drum sounds and that just came out. Its very simple and kinda dark sounding piano figure. A lot of times, it’s just getting inspired. Like I said, when he sets those parameters and you’re driving down that road, you can hit on something. That’s what he’s looking for and that was the first track that he was like, ‘Yes, thats what I’m looking for.’”

6. How Kanye communicates his Ideas

Jeff Bhasker: “Not everyone has vision. Kanye has vision. But then he brings it to life, too. He’s good at both. So it’s a twopart part process, you gotta have a great vision and bring it to life. He explains his vision in a lot of different ways. Kanye communicates directly. He just says what he wants, there’s no bullshitting around. You might have to get used to the idea of communicating very directly, for some people it kinda throws them off at first.

Like, when I work with Bruno Mars, we’re good friends so we can comfortably say to each other, ‘This sucks’ without taking it personally. It’s important to not take things personally and be able to objectively critique yourself and people you’re working with in order to have a get a result.

Also another thing that he does really well is set parameters. He knows, ‘I’m gonna sing with Auto-Tune and there’s gonna be 808′s.’ He sets the parameter for things so you have a guide; here are my options, here are the roads I can go down. It’s not wide open, he’s setting a lane for you to drive down.”

7. The Making of Drake’s “Find your Love”

Jeff Bhasker: “We actually wrote that for Rihanna. She actually cut it, it was just another writing day in the studio. I think No I.D had that drum beat and that’s the classic, ‘Jeff jump on the piano,’ and Kanye started humming in my ear. We started coming up with a melody and I started crafting the music and we wrote that relatively quickly, within an hour. When you think about it sings, ‘I’m more than just an option, hey, hey, hey,’ that’s right up Kanye’s alley, that’s his style, that’s all Kanye.

I’m not exactly sure how Drake got it but they were both managed by Gee Roberson who was probably the messenger for that song. For one reason or another it didn’t make it to Rihanna’s album, so Drake took it and made a smash out of it.

That was made maybe a little after 808s. It’s like an evolution of sound, Graduation was a bit more keyboard emphasizers were introduced, then 808 introduced darker, less sample bass. So there’s definitely a lot of similarities in all that in a progression of the sound going all the way through Dark Twisted Fantasy, bringing it back to a little harder hip-hop edge sound, but also a very dangerous, almost angry sound.

The progression of the music, you can hear the thread and progression. ‘Find Your Love’ has more of a traditional soulful, R&B vibe. But it’s got that Jamaican beat in there, so it’s more hood. But even the lyrics, ‘I better find your loving, I better find your heart,’ its very sensitive, in a god way. I think that’s the good thing, everything doesn’t have to be a false bravado. Having a vulnerability in the music is really powerful too.”

8. Why Kanye pushes his Peers to work harder

Jeff Bhasker: “He pushes everyone around him and everyone who works with him. It’s infectious. He surrounds himself with people that are of the highest quality at what they do and then turns you on your head. He breaks you out of what you normally do. It all goes together in his music, regardless of genre. He’s just an inspiring person.

I think that came across a little bit more when it was the, ‘He’s a producer, not a rapper’ and he said, ‘Well I’m gonna show you I rap.’ I think that came across more that, ‘Hey, I have a goal and I’m gonna accomplish it.’ Now he’s just looked at as the best rapper, but people forget he wasn’t always seen that way. Now he challenges himself by doing fashion-doing anything-and he’s not gonna take no for an answer and he’s not gonna let someone else tell him what he can do.

He’s gonna define what he can do and when you get around that it rubs off on you or else you’re not gonna last very long in that environment. I think everyone who gets around him, he pushes and gets the best out of them. If you wanna be good at something, you have to be around the best people. He’s not gonna settle. Once you realize he’s not gonna settle then there’s nothing left to but deliver something great.”

9. Why mistakes in the studio eventually lead to success.

Jeff Bhasker: “I’ve felt like I wasn’t able to deliver at times but another great thing about him is, he’s more concerned about you trying. A lot of times, we’ll try something before a show and it wouldn’t necessarily come off and you think, ‘Oh, he’s going to be mad because I messed up.’ But he’s always been quite forgiving. I get the feeling through working with him that he’d rather we try and fall down than not try. He’s quite comfortable with taking a risk that might fail. It’s that old saying, ‘You have to be willing to fall in order to succeed.’

Not being willing to fail, or accepting that you might fail, holds a lot of people back from trying something. I think he’s aware of that. Even if we didn’t deliver, as long as we keep trying we will eventually deliver. But if we don’t try, that’s more upsetting to him than not being able to deliver. It’s funny to ask, ‘Have you ever not been able to deliver?’ Sure, we fail all the time, but eventually we succeed. We try again and we keep trying until we get it.”

10. How Kanye influences and inspires the people around him.

Jeff Bhasker: “I do like talking about all the great qualities he has because he’s misunderstood sometimes. I don’t think people really understand how inspirational and what a great person he is. He’s an example of what a human being should be. I think a lot of people who don’t really understand him would be shocked to hear that statement. But I think that should be the main thrust of what comes across.

He’s always trying to do the right thing and what it means to you. Always trying to believe in yourself and don’t be oppressed by other people’s perception of you. Its all in his music and in the way he lives his life. He’s one of the hardest working people around and really self-examines himself in a very healthy way.

He’s one of the strongest people that I’ve come across, going through that time where his mother passed away just to have the strength to deal with that. We didn’t cancel any shows and we kept working and he transmuted all that emotion into his music. I do want people to know how inspiring he is, I don’t want people to lose sight of that.

I guess when it comes down to it, he’s an influential motherfucker. I try to take all the lessons I learned and apply them too doing the fun. album. It’s a similar thing: The indie, the alternative, and the mixing a bit of a hip-hop into it which is awesome. It’s redefined rock radio a little bit. It’s important to keep pushing boundaries. Not just following the trend, you want to set the trend. Not for the sake of setting it either. Art is supposed to be original.”

via complex