Paul McCartney Discusses Defending Kanye West’s “All Day”
Image via LA Times/Inez & Vinoodh
When Kanye West and Paul McCartney became buddies at the beginning of 2015, it turned a lot of heads. Having produced a number of songs together, “Only One,” “FourFiveSeconds,” and “All Day,” the two proved what they were capable of as a unit, even if many were surprised at McCartney’s willingness to work with Kanye at the time. In a new interview as part of BBC’s Mastertapes series, McCartney sat down to discuss the making of “All Day” among other topics.
Recalling the collaboration process, McCartney said, “I get this track back, a thing called ‘All Day’: He’s taken my melody and he’s made it seriously urban, which is funny because the lyrics use the n-word—a lot! ‘How long have you been at the mall? All day, n-word.’” He explained that he had to defend Kanye’s use of the n-word to people, with Oprah Winfrey in particular taking issue with the song.
He explained, “People like Oprah, who are a little conservative about that stuff, she says, ‘You shouldn’t do it, even black people shouldn’t use that word.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s Kanye! And he’s talking about an urban generation that uses that word in a completely different way. It’s the context. So I was actually pleased with it.’”
During the interview, he also talked about how he felt after The Beatles broke-up, saying “I was depressed. You would be. You were breaking from your lifelong friends.” He further elaborated, saying, “I took to the bevvies [drinks]. I took to a wee dram. It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time. It was difficult to know what to do after The Beatles. How do you follow that?”
Check out a few clips from the show, which will be released in full on May 28, below.
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