Of the many revelations that came to light in Quincy Jones' interview with Vulture this morning was the fact that the legendary producer regretted his 2017 project, Q: Soul Bossa Nostra. The 15-song album was recorded as a tribute to Jones and featured re-interpretations of songs associated with him by contemporary hip-hop and R&B artists.
Among the new versions was a re-imagination of Michael Jackson's 1982 Thriller song "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" featuring Robin Thicke and T-Pain.
Jones told Vulture, "I was not in favor of doing it, but the rappers wanted to record something as a tribute to me, where they’d do versions of songs that I’d done over my career. I said to them, 'Look, you got to make the music better than we did on the originals.' That didn’t happen. T-Pain, man, he didn’t pay attention to the details."
T-Pain took to Twitter on Wednesday evening to share his side of the story. "For the record I told my managers (at the time) and I told Quincy Jones in his face 'I don’t want to remake any of your past records because I know I’m gonna fuck it up. I’ll never be able to reach the greatest of MJ.' It took them hours to pump me up to even go in the booth and I still hated it when I came out of the booth."
He goes on to say, "But also to be real. It just seems like Quincy Jones is pissed off at the whole world. I have nothing but respect for the guy so I don’t know why we didn’t hold the song or tell me exactly what he wanted when I kept taking the headphones off begging for direction from the God."
You can hear the song he's referring to below. For more stories about Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and Bono, make sure to check out the Vulture interview in full here.
