Is it bittersweet having success with your solo career without your brother, Malice?
No man, I don’t think so, ‘cause I think it will be greater later. I feel like I’m looking forward to the next Clipse project. Malice calls me and is like “Man I’m ready to rhyme, I got some shit,” like he still has that fire and that’s the best thing to me. I think it was dope that he sort of went and did this whole other project because I personally think it did something for him, I think it will make for great Clipse music. I’m actually like sort of scared of it because Malice has always been really good at what he does and what he brings to the table and the Clipse. I feel now that he got this whole other spark so I’m curious to see how it goes.
You’ve worked closely with Pharrell and Kanye, what’s the difference between their process of putting a song together?Working with P it’s like, by the time you get to the studio the track is there. And an idea is there and we might go back and forth to try and find the hook. With Kanye when I get with him it’s more of a blank canvas, starting from scratch. He has the idea beat-wise, he’ll give me that I’ll write to that, the part that I like lay it down. Then he takes it from me. And then he builds this whole roller-coaster ride around it. It’s more of a surprise because like I said you don’t know what he’s thinking. You don’t know what he hears, he hears shit you don’t hear, I know I’m going to run into a problem of demo-itis, where as like I’m married and in love with what I’ve heard, and he comes back and changes it.
You said the first thing you wrote in Hawaii was your “I’m So Appalled” verse, just rhyming with Jay and Kanye for your first look on that album must’ve been crazy…
It was actually just ‘Ye on it. I had already raved over the record because it leaked. I was like listen, there is no way this cant be on your album, you’d have to be crazy. He was like “Really, you think so?” I was like c’mon man we got to stop treating rap like oh it came out it’s dead. When it’s good, we have to make people love it and digest it. We can’t treat this like mixtape throwaways like everybody else does. Everybody else does half-ass music. So what people don’t know is that what Kanye did during that album is literally, I walked into the studio and I had the pick of 17 records and he was like do what you want to do to any of these, do what you like. First thing I heard was “Runaway,” I was like oh I love that, and I wrote that 5 times. He thought it was a big record and he was really adamant about that and he was really particular about my verse like “C’mon you got to get that right.” “I’m So Appalled,” I was like man listen this is one of them ones he was like listen you love it, go, just go rap. Everybody had that shot, and I even did “Lost In The World.” I stopped hanging out, we would get up play ball every morning, go eat breakfast, I might go eat breakfast but I would let them go play ball and I would go to the studio and try to write a cadence or something special for “Lost In The World” because I love that record so much. I didn’t get on that one, but that was the type of freedom you had to try and get on the records.
Photo: SNEEZE Magazine / Matthew Salacuse
Interview by Joe La Puma
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