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The reality of the world we live in is this: It’s very possible that Fleet Foxes will never perform a folk rendition of a Kanye West track. Yearn for it all you want, but that’s just something that’s most likely not going to happen. We did just get pretty close, though.
The band’s Robin Pecknold and Casey Wescott were guests on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music show today, and along with their own “If You Need To, Keep Time On Me,” they also performed “Do What You Gotta Do,” written by Jimmy Webb and most famously recorded by Nina Simone for her 1968 album ‘Nuff Said!. Kanye stans know that this recording was sampled on The Life Of Pablo‘s “Famous.” So if you really want to push it, you could say that Fleet Foxes just covered Kanye West. In reality, though, two of the band’s members performed a song that Kanye once sampled.
“I just love what she did to the melody,” Pecknold said. “I just love her melodic phrasing and stuff on this song.”
Check out Pecknold and Wescott’s cover above or here, beginning at around the 13-minute mark, and listen to Nina Simone’s version and Kanye’s “Famous” below. Also, revisit our review of Fleet Foxes’ Hollywood Bowl performance here, and our look at what Kanye’s quiet 2017 might mean here.
