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Kanye West channeled Eighties rockers Phil Collins, The Police and Boy George for inspiration for his new album 808s & Heartbreaks.

West takes a new musical direction for his latest LP, singing instead of rapping on the majority of the tracks - and he admits he listened to a lot of different styles of music as he experimented to perfect a stripped down sound.

He tells MTV News, "I listened to Phil Collins, Boy George, The Police, Gary Numan. I ended up getting more polished as a designer, you know I designed the tracks.

"I'm kind of a minimalist - the more and more skilled I get at interior design and architecture stuff, the things that appeal to me are very minimal but functional spaces so I wanted my tracks to be minimal but functional."