I’m happy to have a son who’s amazing to this day, and I’m still playing catch-up as we speak. The gifts of time makes you the dad to that kid. We just young with money and freestyling it, and we thinking the gifts make you the dad - but the time makes you the dad, not the gifts. Yeah, because there’s no real book on how to be a dad for our culture that I’ve seen or had available. When you listen to that record, is there a moment where you thought in retrospect like, “Damn, I didn’t get the dad thing right?” Then, I thought about what you’ve been able to do as a father. What I liked about the Nas record was him taking accountability as a bad father to his daughter Destiny. I wanna be doing what Nas and Swizz doing. I was like, “This is the Nas I want.” I want to be far away from what you and Hit’s doing. He even hit you with those ad-libs from Illmatic. He wanted to get on something that was more - what I feel - something I think him and HitBoy would do. I’d be like, “Nah, we can do that verse over.”īelieve it or not, we did three other Nas songs before settling on the one that’s on the record. And I just don’t accept anything from the artists, I push them. It’s just a tone that was set a long time ago from all of the Hov music to LOX music to even the current music. I’ve worked with a lot of the greats, and the bar that was just set with the Ruff Ryders alone make people wanna step up. I think they know the caliber of where I come from with artists. What I enjoyed about the EP was that you have a knack for getting artists to speak candidly about certain topics - whether it’s Nas addressing being a bad father on “Runaway” or Jay Electronica talking about SZA blocking him on “Khalas.” Why do you feel artists feel comfortable with getting open on your records? I mean that sounds good, but do we have a project? I feel like right now, we’re back in the era with the rapper/producer combo taking over the genre led by Nas and Hit-Boy, Curren$y and Jermaine Dupri… They just happened to stumble on the chemistry, and I gotta respect that. When I see something that’s working, as a fan of the art, I want Hit-Boy and Nas to win. We can come back to what we’re doing, but I like this for you right now, because I’m not a selfish person like that.” It was a long time ago, but when I seen him and Hit-Boy get the chemistry and tapping into the younger generation - they was being nominated and getting Grammys. I think you’re the only producer that can get Nas outside of his Hit-Boy bag and rap on their beat. I just don’t want to do anything, but the times that I did, I don’t like it when I look back like, “Damn. Even with the promos and different things, I took it seriously, like it was my album - because technically, it is my album. Put how you want people to look at you today out.Īnd I started taking the project very seriously. Don’t just put some s–t that’s on the drive. Everything counts.” Everything counts at this point. That’s easy.” And then something hit me and was like, “Nah. They made it simple where it was like, “Just give us five tracks.” So I was thinking, “I can pull five tracks off my drive. How we looking?” I said, “What? Damn.” I can’t lie. I still remembering get the phone calls, like, “Yo. Let’s do it.” I swear it feels like he told me this a month ago. When he’s telling me this, this is like a year or two before the anniversary. He said, “We got this concept with all the producers, and you gotta be the producer that represents New York.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Premier is going to represent a different place, you, Hit-Boy and a couple other people.” I said, “OK. How did we get here where you’re releasing your first body of work in five years?īlame Nas! One day me and him were kicking it, and he told me Mass Appeal was going to have a lot to do with HipHop50. 2, wanting to create more music, fatherhood, upcoming projects and more. I don’t want to keep doing the nostalgia thing.”īillboard met with Swizz Beatz to speak about Hip-Hop 50 Vol. If I can’t grow as a musician, I can’t inspire people. “With this EP, I gotta do these entry points to get on the train and know what stop I want to get off at,” he says.
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