Following in the footsteps of Grizzly Bear, Rick Rubin and many others, A-Trak has taken to Genius to annotate some of the most famous tracks he’s worked on. It includes his annotations of songs he worked on with Kanye West (“Gold Digger“, “Stronger“, “Robocop“) and some other works.For example how he went on to introducing Daft Punk to Kanye.
On Stronger:
‘I gave him that sample. I’m the culprit. And I didn’t want him to sample it, that’s what’s funny. It sort of happened because Swizz Beats sampled “Technologic” for that Busta Rhymes record, “Touch It.” We were on tour in Europe in 2006, spending a lot of hours on the bus listening to the radio. Kanye heard “Touch It” and thought that beat was cool. I said, “He just swooped up Daft Punk.” And Ye said, “Who?” I just couldn’t believe that Kanye had never heard Daft Punk.‘
On Gold Digger:
‘He had this rough version, but it felt too pop to him. He wanted to give it some hip-hop cred. I had an idea for a scratch, for the part where he raps “Get down girl, go ‘head, get down.” I knew which sample to use. He said, “I think it could be cool. We’re going to LA this week to finish things up.” But he was over budget, Def Jam wouldn’t pay for any more flights for that album.Next thing you know, it’s show time at Sasquatch. At the last minute, he gave me the track for “Gold Digger,” because he wanted to perform it. I ended up live-auditioning. I pulled up the sample for “get down” and I scratched during the choruses, and as soon as we got off stage he was like “Alright, you’re coming to LA, we gotta record this. I’ll pay for the flights, I don’t care.” I went to L.A. and recorded the scratches, and the rest is history.‘
You can read more about his annotations here.
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