For his last album, Yeezus, Kanye West took an approach to composition that was rather of unheard of at the time. Getting in contact with former collaborators, old friends and promising fresh faces, West asked a bunch of different entities for new music, apparently giving very little artistic direction or guidelines. These artists sent him various demos, some of which were taken, played around with by Kanye and Rick Rubin, and then slapped onto Yeezus in very different forms than the original source material. One of those collaborators was Benjamin Bronfman, who previously worked on West's "Monster," and he sent in a demo that would eventually take shape as "New Slaves."
Today, Rolling Stone has shared the original demo, which was entitled "Cruel Cold Winter." Listen to it below.
Bronfman also described his interactions with Kanye as follows: "He kept saying, 'Just make it hot, make it really dope.' He didn't really get into specifics, which is funny – he's the type of person who will get really specific in person, but not on the phone... I heard that they were working on a follow-up to [2012's G.O.O.D. Music LP] Cruel Summer, so I was just kind of riffing."
Read more at Rolling Stone.
