Paul McCartney and Kanye West have been professionally linked for around four years, working together and with Rihanna, but it turns out their relationship actually stretches back a decade and has a touching origin story. McCartney tells GQ that the two were both attending the 2008 European MTV Awards in Liverpool when they broke the ice by getting deep in their feelings. McCartney recalls, “I’d just gone through my divorce [from Heather Mills], and I was kind of a little bit raw from it, and I said something to him about it, and he’d just broken up with someone [Alexis Phifer], and he just pulled out his phone and played this great little track—I don’t even remember what it’s called, but it’s one of his famous ones. So I sort of liked him, and I liked this tune. I’m not sure what he was doing there—I think he might have been hanging out with Bono.”
According to McCartney, Kanye recently “kindly” offered to produce his new album, Egypt Station, but Paul didn’t think his direction for the album would match Kanye’s and turned him down. “It was just a thought that was thrown away,” he said. The two apparently still text and chat “occasionally” over the phone, presumably for marriage advice like the two unlikeliest of best buds.
