30 Seconds To Mars is currently hard at work making sure their third album, tentatively titled "This Is War," is a worthy addition to their catalog and it appears rapper Kanye West will be helping them do-so.
West posted a photo on his blog last month of him in a studio with 30 Seconds To Mars frontman Jared Leto and Brandon Flowers of The Killers. He wrote, "I was working on this dope-ass song with Jared [Leto] and Brandon [Flowers] stopped by. I played them some of the new Jeezy beats, and before everybody bounced, Brandon hopped on the keyboard and I hopped on the MPC."
MTV News contacted the band’s management about the track and they confirmed that the Leto is indeed working on a song with
Kanye for the band’s upcoming album.
Leto later confirmed on the band’s website that the song in question was titled "
Hurricane" (and even included a
photo of
Mr. West operating an MPC sampler) but didn’t elaborate further until
MTV News caught up with him at his Los Angeles home.
"I had actually brought up [the idea of working with West] some time ago, but it's pretty unbelievable that it actually happened," Leto replied when asked about the Kanye West collaboration. "He came by here, he was here in the studio, and we did some initial kind of listening, and he did some singing, and we knew we needed to kind of follow up and finish things, so I went over to Hawaii [with] an engineer and a small crew, and we had a great time."
Leto also confirmed that while West will be singing on the track, he won’t be using the auto-tuner he’s become quite fond of since his 2008 release "808s & Heartbreak"
"This is Kanye singing," he says. "I happen to think he has a really great voice. I like his voice a lot. My favorite is when he sings, as opposed to rapping, and I told him that as well, that I really liked him as a singer. But the Auto-Tune thing doesn't really bug me."
"I wanted to work with him before [“808s & Heartbrake,”] but ... there was something about the direction that he headed in that album that lent itself to the song," he adds. "I wrote 'Hurricane' in Berlin in the winter in 2007. It was winter, it was getting dark at like 3:30 in the afternoon, and it could go either way. It could be incredibly comforting or incredibly depressing. Thankfully, it was a little bit of both. It was inspiring nonetheless."
"This Is War" is expected to be released in September 2009. It is being produced by acclaimed producer Flood.
Report by David Lowe-Bianco.
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