30 Seconds To Mars Reveal Details Of Kanye West Collaboration

'My favorite is when he sings, as opposed to rapping,' Jared Leto says of the MC's part on 'Hurricane.'

Earlier this month, Kanye West got people talking (and not about the whole "gay fish" thing) when he posted a photo of himself, Killers singer Brandon Flowers and 30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto on his blog and wrote that the trio were working on a "dope-ass song" for 30STM's new album.

Aside from saying that he worked the MPC sampler while Flowers played some keyboard, West revealed very little else about the song (he did, however, add that the "sh-- was dope"). Leto wrote a post on 30STM's site a few days later — in which he revealed that the song was called "Hurricane" — but there's been no other updates on the collaboration.

Until now. On Monday, when MTV News went to Leto's Los Angeles home, we asked him about working with Kanye on the track, and here's what he had to say:

"I had actually brought up [the idea of working with West] some time ago, but it's pretty unbelievable that it actually happened," Leto said. "He came by here, he was here in the studio, and we did some initial kind of listening, and he did some singing, and we knew we needed to kind of follow up and finish things, so I went over to Hawaii [with] an engineer and a small crew, and we had a great time."

Leto said that "Hurricane" features West's voice, au naturel, a decision he made even though the rapper/producer has trafficked almost exclusively in Auto-Tune as of late (like last year's 808s & Heartbreak). And surprisingly, the notoriously headstrong West listened.

"This is Kanye singing. I happen to think he has a really great voice. I like his voice a lot," Leto said. "My favorite is when he sings, as opposed to rapping, and I told him that as well, that I really liked him as a singer. But the Auto-Tune thing doesn't really bug me."

But there is one similarity between "Hurricane" and West's 808s: the icy sentiment. Seems both come from the same cold, dark place, be it the recesses of West's love-torn heart or, you know, Berlin, where Leto wrote the track.

"I wanted to work with him before 808s, but ... there was something about the direction that he headed in that album that lent itself to the song," Leto said. "I wrote 'Hurricane' in Berlin in the winter in 2007. It was winter, it was getting dark at like 3:30 in the afternoon, and it could go either way. It could be incredibly comforting or incredibly depressing. Thankfully, it was a little bit of both. It was inspiring nonetheless."