"I'm one of the few artists not on Kanye's album," Rundgren tells UCR. "I have three albums worth of Kanye stems on my computer. Because I kept getting called by Kanye to add vocals onto the record. When it got into the homestretch in July, I just said, 'That’s enough for me. I have no idea whether any of this is being used.' You don’t get much feedback from him regarding what it is." Having been brought into the fold by producer 88 Keys, Rundgren quickly learned that his own approach to production differed from Kanye's. "I’m still a producer, and I don’t just want to be like driftwood in the process," he explains. "If I can contribute something, fine. If I can’t, just let me know. I’m out of here. There is a possibility that I’m actually in there somewhere. There’s so much junk in that record!" He goes so far as to call Yeezy a "shoe designer," writing him off as a "dilettante." "Nobody would regularly make records like that unless they had stupid money to throw around," says Rundgren. "Nobody rents a stadium to make a record in. Nobody flies in the entire world of hip-hop just to croak one syllable, just so you can say that everybody was on it. "My involvement went on for a year, and in the end I realized why they hurriedly wrapped the whole thing up and put out what is obviously really raw, unprocessed stuff," he concludes. It’s because Drake was running the whole process. He was too afraid that Drake would one-up him, so he hurried up and released the album the weekend before Drake could get his out. And in the end, Drake ate his lunch anyway." Todd Rundgren Wants to Warn Us About ‘Dilettante’ Kanye West and We’re Giddy
So he’s mad his contributions weren’t appreciated and/or used. That’s too bad as I know the whole hip hop community were really looking forward to Todd Rundgren being on there.
As much of a Rundgren fan as I am, and as little as I care for Kanye, if I had to pick one of them as a legendary music icon in 2021 - you got the wrong one
Todd has time and again demonstrated that he has little patience for folks who don't have or at least who don't quickly develop a plan, with a fairly clear goal in mind, when doing studio work. So it's understandable that he'd grow frustrated with requests for vocal contributions spread over the course of a year, especially when it's not even clear if his contributions are going to be used. He'd feel that he's wasting time he could have used for other projects.
A Todd Rundgren/Kanye West collaboration would have been cool. Kanye's collaborated with other great music producers in the past to great results (like Jon Brion on the Late Registration album). Todd Rundgren has been known to be vicious. He had a (brief) feud with John Lennon, calling him out: "John Lennon ain't no revolutionary. He's a ****ing idiot, man. Shouting about revolution and acting like an ass. It just makes people feel uncomfortable. All he really wants to do is get attention for himself, and if revolution gets him that attention, he'll get attention through revolution."
Todd was probably looking forward to being part of one of the most anticipated albums of 2021. Possibly the first Gospel album he would've been featured on?
And didn't Lennon rag at length in a letter to some magazine to him about some other comments he made? Or was it these comments?
Regardless of what you think or care about it’s obvious he cares or he wouldn’t be this pissed off about it.
It’s pretty well documented that this is how Kanye works. Seems weird to agree to work with him and then get mad at the way he works. Paul McCartney was ok with it (though he was bummed he didn’t know he’d be on the same track as Kendrick Lamar).
Madonna said the same thing almost verbatim about the Rebel Heart sessions, but she was more diplomatic about it. She didn’t like this way of collaborating where producers were working on fifteen different projects at a time and everything was done over emails and texts, instead of being in the room together. Kanye West was supposed to be the overall producer of that album, but he couldn’t keep to a schedule. It’s a very different way of working compared to how veteran acts did it for so long.
It's sadly inevitable that as time passes, eventually many of our musical heroes will pass on. It also seems inevitable that as time passes, a fair proportion of our musical heroes will become grumpy old f*rts too.
Right? For once I'm agreeing with the old guy dunking on a younger musician, and this time people here are mostly on the other side...
Like, usually I'm the first to roll my eyes at "old musician yells at cloud" stories, but I have some sympathy for Todd here. I'd be pissed too if I took a chance on a critically acclaimed younger artist and had them disregard my contributions without any clear communication. Kanye is a talented man who has produced and recorded some great music in his life, but at this point he's just coasting on name recognition and shock value, while fleecing his well-off fans along the way. Though to be fair, Todd should have read up on Kanye before jumping onboard for this project. It's not exactly a secret that he has been a flighty ******* for a while
This is a rather mild” blast”. It almost seems as if he’s more confused about Kanye’s style of working which could be more of a generation gap thing really. There’s not much here for fans of Kayne or Todd to get too worked into a lather about. A few throwaway lines about stadiums and sneakers don’t really seem too inflammatory and I have yet to meet anyone who has been furiously gnashing their teeth that Todd Rundgren wasn’t on Kanye’s new album.Maybe they can mend ( mildly wind blown)fences and Kayne can “croak” a few lines on Todd’s next album.
