Maintaining every sense of perspective you could imagine, Kanye West has been telling the NME about the stress of having the whole future of hip hop on his shoulders. Speaking about working on new album 'Late Registration' (out 29 Aug), West said: "I think I carry a lot of stuff on my records. Sometimes I feel like I'm carrying the whole of hip hop itself, the state of music too. I've just tried to push the envelope."
Pushing the envelope, of course, involves sampling Shirley Bassey's Bond theme 'Diamonds Are Forever' on that recent single 'Diamonds From Sierra Leone'. In the NME interview Kanye compares the song to Jay-Z's 'Hard Knock Life' on the basis that both sample well known kitsch songs (fair enough), but also to his own past single 'Jesus Walks' on the basis that both align the rapper with major icons (James Bond and, erm, God).
West: "'Diamonds...' is like 'Jesus Walks', aside from the religious aspect of that song, it's taking a rapper that you already like and having him associate himself with something bigger than him, an icon. It's not to compare James Bond with Jesus but both of them are pop icons."