A short YouTube interview clip in which the speaker describes major lessons learned from working with Kanye West. The speaker emphasizes "being relentless" and uses a visual-artist metaphor—directing a hired painter to make surprising, bold changes—to show how relentless creative direction can transform work and reveal unexpected genius.
Have you learned anything from Kanye? I've probably learned more from him than any anybody else that I work with. What are the big ones? Being relentless. It's like being a visual artist. And I hire a painter to do what my vision is. And I'm saying, well, put some brown here and then stick red across the brown. Make this paint even thicker. Do a rag and actually take the rag and just do this to the whole painting. You're like, why would I do that? I just spent five days doing these. Like, and then you do this and. And the painter, the technician's like losing his mind or her mind. And then. Oh, wait, wait. Okay, that's it. We got it. That's it. And then the technician goes back and looks at it and goes, whoa, what the heck? I. I would have never done that. That's a genius.
