Kanye West Talks Creative Process on Cruel Summer

'Ye shares insight on the making of the G.O.O.D. Music album.

Minus a string of enthusiastic tweets, the notoriously press-shy Kanye West has largely abdicated promotional responsibilities for his new G.O.O.D. Music compilation, Cruel Summer, instead letting Big Sean, Pusha T, Teyana Taylor and others handle interviews. In a new promotional video, however, Yeezy has opened up about the making of the album and where his mind is.

"We started off just by getting everybody in the lab together," he says in the clip. "We reached out to other camps just to do something new and exciting in hip hop, minus all the politics."

Rather than being purely a manifestation of his own vision, Kanye said the album was the result of a grand collaborative effort that went even beyond the music.

"One track might have 30 people's opinions on it. It's not just about a tracklist and a name. It's about the communal style of work," he explained. "We spend just as much time working on the actual album packaging, the video concept, the song... Everything is equally as important. It got to a point where I had to have the artwork in front of me while I was working on the songs, and I would listen and say, 'Does this song sound like this packaging looks?'"

"We take it really seriously that we make the best product we can, but also we're light with it, too. We wanna have fun," he continued. "This isn’t the beginning of the conversation, this isn’t the end of the conversation. It’s our offering as a collective of a sonic snapshot of what’s happening right now, 2012.”

Cruel Summer hit stores on Tuesday [September 18].