Justin Vernon, the US artist better known as Bon Iver, made a fleeting reference to his past collaborations with disgraced rapper Kanye West as he admitted he was reluctant to talk about the controversial artist.
Vernon and West, who legally changed his name to Ye in 2022, were once closely linked after the rapper was introduced to Vernon’s Blood Bank EP by his keyboard player, Jeff Bhasker.
After West invited Vernon out to Hawaii to collaborate, they produced “Lost in the World” – which sampled the hook from Bon Iver’s “Woods” – regarded as a highlight of West’s 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Vernon was credited on a further two songs on the album – “Dark Fantasy” and “Monster”, the latter also featuring rappers Jay-Z, Rick Ross and Nicki Minaj –and on three songs on 2013’s Yeezus.
In 2015, West brought Vernon out on stage during his Glastonbury headline performance, introducing the indie musician as “one of the baddest white boys on the planet”.
In a new interview with The Guardian, Vernon spoke about the feeling that fame and exhaustion might have made him a “s***head” to his friends and family: “The attention came to me and of course I’m going to react, like: I’m worth it, or something. Then, subconsciously you steer towards a little more self-destruction.”
He appeared to suggest that West had veered into that self-destructive territory, having notoriously championed Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign and sparked uproar over a series of antisemitic outbursts, the most recent of which took place in February this year.
Vernon, meanwhile, has been critical of Trump’s America in his music and endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. He has also collaborated with pop star Taylor Swift on her albums Folklore and Evermore, with whom West has previously clashed with.
“I don’t really want to talk about Kanye,” he said in the interview, “but it’s a good example of observing when people have their head up their ass a little bit, or they’re so busy, and so needed, that you start getting soft.”
Vernon said that his own problems weren’t “that hard”, having earlier confirmed that he won’t be touring his new album. “Just stop it,” he said.
“I know there’s a lot of pressure on you, but the answer is either yes or no, and if it’s no, you better get the f*** out of here because you can’t keep acting like this. I could see the quality of my character slowly diminishing from trying to be too much to too many people.”
In a four-star review of Bon Iver’s new album, SABLE, fABLE, critic Helen Brown wrote: “Although he’s spoken of making “radiant pop music”, his version of that (with the help of producer Jim-E Stack) is to brighten his earthy, acoustic landscapes with synths and drum pads.
“It’s not dissimilar to what Sufjan Stevens likes to do when finding the silver linings in his own clouds… You can almost feel the soft, supple rubber of the 80s-style drum pads flexing beneath Ben Lester’s easy-going pedal steel solo.”
