Kanye West ‘Trapped’ Paul McCartney Into Collaboration Says Gorillaz Member Damon Albarn

Gorillaz member Damon Albarn apparently had a serious issue with Kanye West’s 2015 single “FourFiveSeconds,” saying that he even warned Paul McCartney about working with the famous hip-hop artist prior to their studio sessions.

In an interview with French magazine L’Obs on Thursday, June 28, Albarn stated “Before he decided to work with Kanye West, I sent a text message to McCartney saying, ‘Beware,’ but he ignored it, he does what he wants, it’s Paul McCartney.”

The Blur frontman then went on to compare West to a vampire, saying that the rapper feeds off of other artists in creating his music. He states that the “Yikes” artist only cares about his own image and that transitions into the fact that McCartney had no actual vocals on the song itself, yet was still present in the music video.

“I have a problem with this abusive collaboration: we’re talking about Paul McCartney,” Albarn said. “We do not hear him in the song, Kanye West thinks only of Kanye West, uses a name to make headlines, to say ‘McCartney is in my song.'”

Recently, West has also utilized other somewhat out of place artists in his music, with Kids See Ghosts containing features from both Kurt Cobain and Louis Prima, obviously posthumous utilizations of their content, but still is in the same vein as the McCartney feature, thinking “outside the box.”

Although Albarn described the union of the two artists as such, a recent interview McCartney did with DIY Magazine painted a different picture of the two very different, but iconic, artists. The former Beatle stated that he spent most of the time he was around West just engaging in jam sessions, and days would pass where the two would simply talk to each other while McCartney played on his guitar. One of the riffs McCartney composed ended up being the hook to “FourFiveSeconds.”

His exact words to the publication were “I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim on his computer. I’m thinking, are we ever gonna get around to writing?! But it turns out he was writing. That’s his muse. He was listening to this riff I was doing and obviously, he knew in his mind that he could use that, so he took it, sped it up and then somehow he got Rihanna to sing on it. She’s a big favorite of mine anyway so that just came without me lifting a finger.”