July 20, 2009 11:02

Jay-Z: 'the anti-auto-tune record was Kanye West's idea' Jay-Z Tickets

Plus rapper explains why he'll never say 'bling' again

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Jay-Z has revealed it was actually Kanye West who inspired his anti-auto-tune stance.

The rapper's latest single is called 'D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune)', and is seen as an answer to West's recent album '808s And Heartbreak', which used autotune, which uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances, heavily.

However with West producing Jay-Z's 'The Blueprint 3' (out September 10), the rapper actually gave him credit for the idea to make an anti-auto-tune record.

"He actually sparked the idea," Jay-Z told Billboard. "When he heard the beat he said, 'Man, this is just so hard! This has to be against everything - no auto-tune, none of that type of stuff!' He didn't know what I was going to do or where I was going to take it, but it was actually his fault."

The pair had actually recorded several tracks using auto-tune for Jay-Z's album, but after they recorded the single they decided to scrap anything using the production technique.

"In hip-hop, our job is once a trend becomes a gimmick, to get rid of it. We've done that since the beginning of time," explained Jay-Z of his adversion to auto-tune. "Now people are using auto-tune even in [fast food chain] Wendy's commercials, and it's like, 'Oh no! That's has to go!' It's become part of main culture. It's the same thing like when the old lady in Oregon starts saying, 'Bling, bling.' It's like, 'I'm never saying that again'."