A-Trak on Kanye sampling Daft Punk: "I was afraid it would come off cheap"
The song would go on to win a Grammy...
A-Trak is taking his credit for introducing Kanye West to Daft Punk and the French duo’s 2001 hit ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’. West would go on to edit the song for his Grammy-winning single ‘Stronger’, an artistic choice that A-Trak was originally against.
"I was afraid it would come off cheap,” the former touring DJ for West told Billboard. “But, the thing that I didn’t anticipate was how much Kanye would flip the sample ... and turn it really into a futuristic hip-hop beat”.
During the four-minute sit-down at Meadows Festival 2017, A-Trak dives further into the success of West’s ‘Graduation’, which just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and the Chicago rapper/beatsmith’s ability to bring divergent sounds and ideas together: “That album was seminal ... in the cross-pollination of genres, which was also the mentality of Fool’s Gold when I started the label”. 2017 also marks a decade of taste-making Fool’s Gold.
Watch the interview in full below. And, look ahead at the future of music with A-Trak in this DJ Mag interview.
