DJ Toomp has revealed why Graduation was the last time he worked with Kanye West, explaining that it has something to do with Ye’s long list of collaborators.
During his visit to Math Hoffa’s My Expert Opinion podcast earlier this week, Toomp was asked what led to him not working with West again after the incredible music they put together for his third album.
Kanye called on Toomp in 2007 to co-produce the singles “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Good Life”, as well as the album’s outro, “Big Brother.” But according to the legendary Atlanta DJ, the creative magic would stop after Graduation because Ye began working with one too many collaborators for his liking.
“Ye started working a different way after that,” Toomp said. “He started really wanting to have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, you know, working on one meal type of shit it’d be different if you say, ‘Alright, we’ll bring these cats in. We’re gonna do an Italian cuisine. Okay, this day we’re gonna do a Jamaican cuisine. Oh, we’re gonna do Mexican cuisine.’
“But it was just so many different — you know how you walk through the mall and food court and you might get sick because you got the wings over here and the Chick-fil-A and all them scents hit.”
DJ Toomp explained he flew out to Hawaii for the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy recording sessions and realized one of the songs he contributed to didn’t have any of his work on it. Right then and there, Toomp knew things didn’t feel right.
“It was just too many cooks in the kitchen,” he reaffirmed. “I was in Hawaii for the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album. It was me, No I.D., [Rick] Ross was out there, Pusha [T], and that’s when he was dating Amber [Rose] back then. I worked on ‘All of the Lights,’ which had big crazy horns. I had my drums on there, but I woke up the next day and my joint wasn’t there. It was like a whole other beat.”
Toomp said he was used to working one-on-one with artists, so seeing what Kanye did made him feel a type of way and contemplate whether he should continue the working relationship. The way Toomp told it, when it comes to publishing, the splits would leave everyone involved with barely any profit because of the way Kanye was doing things.
“I know things change. But I think when you start producing like that the whole sound change,” he said. “They even took away from what [Ye] did from what he does to a certain extent, right, because even with ‘Good Life’ he started off playing with the Michael Jackson sample, and I tweaked it in and tuned it up to the ‘P.Y.T.’ key so we could really make it a song. So it’s like that collaborative effort made more sense.”
He added: “Even when we did ‘Good Life’ I raised hell when he wanted to get some drums from Timbaland. I’m like, ‘Man, this song is ready,’ right. He’s like, ‘I want to get some drums from Tim.’ I’m like, ‘Bro I got drums all in this ASR you’ve been fucking with them what’s up?’”
Widely considered Kanye West’s nest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy went on to top the Billboard 200 chart and earned a triple-platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. It also won Best Rap Album at the 54th Grammy Awards.
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