Paul McCartney compares Kanye West to John Lennon

Sir Paul McCartney has drawn similarities between his writing sessions with rapper Kanye West and those he held with late bandmate John Lennon.

The Beatles star worked with West earlier this year (15) on two songs, Only One, a homage to the Stronger hitmaker's late mother Donda, and FourFiveSeconds, a collaboration with Rihanna.

McCartney tells Britain's The Sun newspaper he met West at The Beverly Hills Hotel in California and likens the experience to his songwriting sessions with Lennon.

He says, "When I wrote with John, he would sit down with a guitar. I would sit down. We'd ping-pong till we had a song. (Writing with West) was like that. We sat around and talked an awful lot just to break the ice. One of the stories I told him about was how I happened to have written Let It Be. My mom came to me in a dream when she'd died years previously. I was in a bit of a state - it was in the sixties and I was overdoing it. In the dream she said, 'Don't worry it's all going to be fine, just let it be.' And I woke up and thought, 'Woah' and wrote the song.

"I told Kanye this and he said, 'I'm going to write a song with my mom.' So then I sat down at the piano. (Only One is) about his mom. And his daughter North comes into the lyrics too. But it's from the point of view of his mom in heaven singing to him, saying you're my only one. It's a very emotional song."