It's true: Justin Vernon did, in fact, record several songs with Kanye West
Supposedly the rumors were all over the place at Lollapalooza last weekend, but we didn't hear about it until Stereogum said something: would Kanye's new album feature a guest turn from Justin Vernon of Bon Iver?
Well, now we know. Yes. It will. In a far-reaching interview posted on Pitchfork today, Vernon confirms it all, saying he worked on several tracks, actually, at least one of which seems pretty likely to appear on the formerly-titled-and-now-untitled album, West's fifth, fourth if you pretend 808s and Heartbreaks never happened. Vernon:
[Kanye] was like, "I like how you sing so fearlessly. You don't care how
your voice sounds. It'd be awesome if you could come out to Hawaii and
hear the track, and there's some other shit I think we could throw down
on." I was just like, "Yeah, cool man!" I surprised myself by not
being nervous or apprehensive. I said, "When should I come out?' And he
was like, "How about tomorrow?"
Of course, earlier this year, the Roots put out an album that sampled Jim James and Joanna Newsom, so this is hardly anything new at this point. But still, it's an intriguing combination.