You might not realize it, but 2 Chainz has been absolutely rapping his ass off for at least the last couple years. If you don’t want to take our word for it, take it from Eminem, the Rap God who gave Mr. Chainz an implicit cosign when he worked with him in the studio. Speaking during an appearance on DJ Drama’s Shade 45 program, Streetz Iz Watchin, Tity Boi recounts aspects of recording with Shady and confirms he’s working on Em’s new album. Peep the interview below.
Chainz says being in the stu with the Detroit legend was a sign he was doing something right. “That’s how I know I can rap,” he tells Drama before getting into how their studio session came about. “He didn’t want to talk about nothing but rapping. That was a great phone call to get.”
According to Chainz, his studio session with Eminem came together when Em’s fellow D-12 member Denaun Porter, whom Tity has apparently known for a long time, gave him a call. Porter told 2 Chainz, whose Pretty Girls Like Trap Music album landed at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in its first week of release, that Em wanted to work with him. He didn’t believe it at the time.
“I’ve heard it all, you know what I’m saying? I’ve heard it all. You know, this like rap talk. It’s like, you see a rapper in the club and you’re like, ‘Let’s do one.’ It’s cap, you know what I mean? So you know, he’s like, ‘The boy wanna do something with you.’ And I’m like, ‘Whatever.’”
For Chainz, things became a bit more real when he was informed that Em was at Rick Rubin’s house and they wanted him to pull up. At first, Chainz wasn’t quite feeling what they were pitching.
Speaking on the specifics of what was then merely an impending studio session, Chainz says they wanted him to redo a hook—which he says he was against doing since he’d rather write one and get his publishing rights—and do some adlibs, which he could have just emailed them.
Upon his arrival at Rick Rubin’s crib, he noticed Em was doing some things that were stylistically similar to techniques Tit had used on his own projects. The Atlanta rapper liked what he heard, but he made it clear he wanted to do more than a hook.
It was at that point Em apparently offered him a chance to do a remix. That was a no-go for Chainz. “I tell him straight up… Eminem, what would you need a remix for? Remixes are used to carry records to No. 1 spots. When have you ever did a remix for someone or for yourself? That’s cap at it’s finest,” Chainz says.
Apparently, the idea of Chainz having a main verse on this specific Em track hadn’t occurred to Em himself, and he’d asked the Atlanta rapper who else he could imagine being on it. 2 Chainz made it clear he was the choice, and asked where he could smoke and hear the instrumental over the speakers. From there, he went to work.
Chainz says he went into the verse-writing part of the night feeling competitive, wanting to K-O Em on his own track. By the time they were finished recording the song and it was time for Chainz to put in the aforementioned adlibs, Em told him he didn’t even have to worry about that.
In the second part of the interview, Chainz tells Drama about his recent hangout session with Kanye West. Last week, Chainz posted photos of himself with Yeezy and his family onto his Instagram account, and it looked like they were having a good time. What’d they talk about, though? Apparently, JAY-Z, who appears to have thrown a few shots at Yeezy on his newly released 4:44 album.
“Yeah, JAY-Z came up. You know, I knew that when I was going over,” Chainz explains. “You know for the most part, bro was like, ‘You know, we still brothers’ and stuff like that. He had a couple of things that was personal that he probably wanted me to keep, but we talked about the music climate right now, you know what I’m saying.”
Tity goes on to say he and Yeezy talked about his Pink Trap House, the music climate and the process of ‘Ye getting back into music. He says Kanye’s been getting back into actual, hands-on producing lately, and that he and ‘Ye have some work coming very soon. We can’t wait to hear it.
Check out Tity’s interviews below. In the first video, he begins discussing Eminem at around the 17:35 mark. He talks Yeezy at the very beginning of the video below that.
[ via XXL]
