Kings of Leon Can't Believe Kanye West, Paul McCartney Shout-Outs

When he's not calling out George W. Bush, stage-crashing Taylor Swift, drunk tweeting, rapping aboard Delta flights or giving a toast to the douchebags, Kanye West makes some of the best and most commercially successful music currently being produced.

What's more, through his blog and via guest spots on his songs, West has hyped a wide range of musical talent, from protégés like Lupe Fiasco to unexpected collaborations with the likes of Bon Iver and 30 Seconds to Mars' Jared Leto.

Still, few of West's cross-genre musical contemporaries have actually made it into his rhymes -- an honour usually bestowed on pop icons like Michael Jackson or cultural figures like Stephen King. So it's all the more impressive that on 'Dark Fantasy,' the opening track on his upcoming album 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,' West raps "Sex on fire / I'm the King of Leon," giving the southern band, and their massive hit, his ultimate seal of approval.

And he's not the only one, during a recent interview with The Sun Sir Paul McCartney praised the group as "really cool" while stating they were one of his favourite current bands.

"Someone told me [about the Kanye West reference] and I was like, 'No way. That can't be true,'" Kings of Leon guitarist Matthew Followill tells Spinner. "That stuff is just kind of weird -- going from no one caring to rappers singing about you, and Paul McCartney saying you're the best music out there."


But while name checks and accolades are welcome offshoots of success, the Kings have started to realize that being popular public figures can also result in losing certain freedoms -- as West recently found out during an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer -- especially when it comes to making off-handed comments like mocking the Arcade Fire in Spin Magazine or, indeed, giving an explanation for turning down Glee on Spinner.

"We've talked about that lately," Followill admits. "We used to say stuff all the time, and no one would give a s---. It's not that we'd even say bad stuff, we'd just say things and at the time we'd be like, 'Maybe I shouldn't have said that,' but then no one would even hear about it.

"Now it's like, my God, we can't do anything without it being in 10 different publications -- I guess we just have to watch our mouths a bit more."