NEWS: What Are Kanye West & Rick Rubin Up To?

What Are Kanye West & Rick Rubin Up To?

A text message posted to Instagram by Chicago rapper Towkio raises a few questions.

There are a few people in the industry who just can't seem to stop working -- Kanye West and Rick Rubin are two of them. West and Rubin's names came up, surprisingly, through an iMessage screencap posted by Chicago musician and close friend of Chance The Rapper, Towkio.

The text exchange is between Towkio and Rubin, and it delivers many more questions than answers.

This happened today..😳

A photo posted by WWW. (@towkio) on Jan 29, 2017 at 4:26pm PST

"I played swim for Kanye yesterday. He Loved it," writes Rubin, who seems to be talking about an unreleased track from Towkio. According to the text, he also played the song for former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij, who's produced for Frank Ocean, Solange, Carly Rae Jepsen and more. It's not clear if the three were all in the same room for the listening.

So it seems that Towkio and Rick Rubin are likely working together in some form or another -- what's less clear is what Rubin was doing with Kanye and Rostam. Was he just bouncing some ideas off the musicians? Are they all collaborating on something new? Is he working with both of them individually? Are they going to contribute to this Towkio record? Word to Sway, we don't have the answers, but we are intrigued by the whole situation.

Rubin famously collaborated with Kanye on the final stages of his 2013 album Yeezus, which was a down-to-the-wire affair.

Listen to Towkio's 2015 project .Wav Theory, featuring contributions from Chance The Rapper, Vic Mensa, and Nico Segal (FKA Donnie Trumpet). 

NEWS: Rick Rubin Annotates His Biggest Hits on Genius

Rick Rubin Annotates His Biggest Hits on Genius

Rick Rubin annotates some of his most celebrated productions on Genius. The Def Jam mogul and superproducer shares his thoughts on songs by Kanye West, Jay Z, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Seven-time Grammy award winning producer and Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin has worked with more rap legends than possibly any other producer, and his credentials extend to rock, pop, heavy metal, and just about every other genre that has found a place in mainstream music. Rubin has now created an account on Genius and provided us with first-hand annotations and the stories behind some of his biggest hits. 

He says he had organized a differently mastered version of "Only One," Kanye and Paul McCartney's Nori-dedicated single, that didn't reach 'Ye in time. Rick says his version is better. He also claims there are a wealth of alternate takes from the Yeezus sessions that are just as compelling as the album tracks.

On the first verse of Jay Z's "99 Problems": "Jay wrote the first verse in about twenty minutes, sitting in the back of the control room. He would just be kind of humming, and we’d keep looping the track, and maybe after thirty minutes he jumped up and was like 'We got it!' And he did it ten times, and every time he did it, it was different. Most of the words were the same, but the phrasing was different. He’d written and memorized the words and then was playing with different ways of doing it. It was incredible."

Rubin also shows love to some of his other favorite albums, including D'Angelo's Voodoo and Ghost's Supreme Clientele.

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NEWS: The Weeknd Receives The Allan Slaight Award

The Weeknd Receives The Allan Slaight Award

The Weeknd is honored with Canada's Allan Slaight Award for young artists.

If you see the phrase "young Canadians who have the ability to turn their talent into inspiration," you're probably thinking to yourself, "there ain't no award for that." However, it turns out that in Canada, there is. The Allan Slaight Award, named for a Canadian media magnate, was founded in 2010, and given to Drake in 2011. This year, Abel Tesfaye of The Weeknd ha won the award.

Below, watch a video from the awards ceremony, which shows Rick Rubin,Diddy, and Avery Lipman of Republic Records testifying to the singer/songwriter's deserving character. It's cool to see the nation of Canada recognizing a man who's had the hearts of R&B fans for three years running.