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Travis Scott · S2 E3
Kanye Calls
Meeting his hero, joining Kanye's Cruel Summer sessions, and getting a taste of the big leagues
A recording studio, late 2012. Twenty-year-old Travis Scott sits in the corner watching Kanye West tear apart a finished beat and rebuild it from scratch, and realizes that everything he taught himself in his Missouri City bedroom was just the beginning.
Kanye West, Bound 2 (2013). The closing track of Yeezus, the album Travis helped produce. The video is intentionally rough, shot on green screen with Kim Kardashian on a motorcycle. Kanye doesn't care if it looks cheap. That willingness to throw out the rulebook is exactly what Travis absorbed during these sessions.
“The most ironic thing is my grandfather has his masters in music composition, he was a jazz composer. My dad was a musician, too. He played more like soul music. And then Kanye took it to another level for me. He showed me there are no walls.”
— Travis Scott, BrainyQuote / various interviews
The Yeezus Machine
The Yeezus sessions are unlike anything Travis has experienced. Kanye doesn't work linearly. He'll scrap a finished track at 3 AM and start over with a completely different sample. The team around him includes producers like Rick Rubin, Hudson Mohawke, and Arca, all pushing the sound further from convention. Travis is the youngest person in the room, watching masters disagree, rebuild, and fight for every sonic decision.
Sources
Rolling Stone, "The Raw, Rushed Making of 808s & Heartbreak," paralleled with Yeezus sessions reporting
Complex, "Travis Scott's Oral History," 2015
Bound 2, Kanye West (2013)
Built around a pitched-up Ponderosa Twins Plus One sample and Charlie Wilson's soaring vocals, Bound 2 is the warmest track on the coldest album Kanye ever made. The rest of Yeezus sounds like a factory collapsing. This sounds like driving home after the collapse. Listen for how the beat deliberately clips and distorts in places: Kanye wanted the imperfections left in. Travis was in those sessions, learning that rawness could be a choice, not a mistake. That lesson runs through every Travis Scott project that followed.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which Yeezus track has Travis Scott's name in the production credits?
Which Yeezus track did Travis Scott co-produce?
Piss On Your Grave, Travis Scott ft. Kanye West
From Rodeo (2015). This is what happens when the student and the teacher get on the same track. The production is abrasive, aggressive, and deliberately ugly. Kanye screams more than he raps. Travis matches his energy. The song is a middle finger to every gatekeeper who ever said no, built on distorted guitar and industrial drums that owe everything to the Yeezus sessions where Travis learned to break things on purpose.
Piss On Your Grave, Travis Scott ft. Kanye West (2015)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The anger is theatrical but the frustration is real. Both Travis and Kanye rap about being underestimated by an industry that wanted them to stay in their lane. The title alone tells you everything about their shared attitude toward rules.
Travis has the mentors, the labels, and the studio time. Now he needs a project with his name on it. Next: Owl Pharaoh, a chaotic first mixtape that sounds like a kid throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
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