Kanye West hasn't exactly been making headlines for the best reasons lately. He did drop a new album which was well received by critics and fans (even though it was on the short side), but his comments outside of his music caused an uproar online. His support of certain politicians, including Donald Trump, as well as his (apparently misinterpreted) statement that "slavery was a choice," has rubbed many people the wrong way.
However, the latest controversy to plague the rapper is now coming from another musician. Damon Albarn, who found fame as the frontman of the Britpop band Blur in the 90s, before creating the band Gorillaz, isn't exactly a fan of West.
Albarn was recently interviewed by French magaine L'Obs, where he claimed that West "trapped" Paul McCartney when they worked together.
This began when halfway through the interview, the reporter discussed Kanye's process for gathering samples for Pusha T's new record Daytona. "I do not sample, I create music," Albarn responded, before going on a tangent about the rapper, saying: "Do not get me started on Kanye West. Kanye West trapped Paul McCartney."
West and McCartney worked together on three tracks back in 2015, including All Day, Only One, and FourFiveSeconds - the latter also featuring Rihanna. Albarn continued:
"I have a problem with this abusive collaboration: we're talking about Paul McCartney, but he's so precious!
"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,' and puts McCartney in the video of the song, but not in the song itself.
"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."
Albarn then added that he believes West "is one of those people who feed on other people".
McCartney has actually spoken in the past about the collaboration with Kanye West. His comments don't directly criticise West, but also go to show that the production process was very alien to the ex-Beatle. In the interview with DIY, he said:
"With him, it was much more made up as we went along – so much so that I didn’t even realise that I was making songs.
"We had two or three afternoons where we just hung out together in a Beverly Hills hotel in the bungalows out the back, and he had his engineer and was set up with a couple of microphones in case anything happened.
"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 favourite of mine anyway, so that just came without me lifting a finger."
Whether McCartney believes that the experience was as bad as Albarn said it was remains to be seen. Though I will say that the idea of West staring at images of his wife while he works is not too surprising.
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