Producer Tony Visconti has singled out Kendrick Lamar as an early inspiration for David Bowie‘s new album ‘Blackstar‘, which is out on January 8th next year, as the pair purposefully looked to avoid rock and roll.
“We wound up with nothing like that, but we loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didn’t do a straight-up hip-hop record,” he’s told Rolling Stone.
“He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. The goal, in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll.”
Visconti has also revealed there is a guest contribution from James Murphy, and that the album’s title and lead track had to be cut to under ten minutes to bring it line with iTunes’ regulations.
“It’s total bullshit,” he continued. “But David was adamant it be the single, and he didn’t want both an album version and a single version, since that gets confusing.”
‘Blackstar’ is Bowie’s first studio album since he emerged in 2013 from a decade of inactivity with ‘The Next Day‘.