Hit-Boy recently gave his thoughts on Kanye West's issues with Universal, and in the process he revealed Kanye stopped working with him over a Beyoncé collab.
"He told me face to face he stopped picking my beats because I worked with Beyoncé," he wrote in an Instagram post, which also saw him agree with Kanye's assessment of the music industry as a leech upon artists. In an interview with GQ, the producer behind "N*ggas in Paris" opened up about the trouble with the contracts he signed, and why he spoke up about his issues with Ye.
"Just watching Kanye—obviously he always goes on these sporadic rants, but some of that stuff was resonating with me," Hit-Boy told GQ's Frazier Tharpe. "A lot of people on Twitter were like, 'Why even throw the Beyonce shit in there?' I'm going to tell you why. He on Twitter preaching, 'I love all my brothers and we need to stick together and all this shit.' But I feel like [he] put me in a position where I was battling the 'system' and I was battling with my brothers."
In a response to Hit-Boy, Kanye revealed he stopped working with the producer because he was signed to G.O.O.D. Music while Bey was not. "It would be different if Kanye was like, 'Your shit wack now, I'm not using you.' But n*gga, you telling me because you saw me working with somebody else that you're not going to pick my beats," explained Hit-Boy, who worked extensively with Ye from around 2010 to 2013. He notably produced "Clique," "Cold," and "N*ggas in Paris."
"I worked with so many artists and I never heard anything until I locked in with her," he added. "So that just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And I had to bury those emotions for years. The way he was speaking just sparked me to tell my side. This is how I feel. Like I'm fighting, to me, two oppressors. Corporations and somebody that is supposed to be a true mentor to somebody like me."
He went on to say that "there were points I've been driven damn near crazy over this, man," because for years many assumed he stopped collaborating with G.O.O.D. artists just because he wasn't working much anymore. "It's like every single year I'm catching big joints," he said. Since 2018, he's worked on countless records for the likes of Big Sean, Nas, Jay-Z, and Travis Scott.
Hit-Boy said that he still has "no clue" where the problem with him making "Flawless" with Bey came from, but he said the two of them still haven't been able to talk it out. Moving on from the subject of Kanye, he also elaborated on his own label issues, which he first detailed in the Instagram post he revealed his troubles with Ye.
In the initial post, Hit-Boy asserted that three lawyers have informed him the contract he signed with Universal is "the 'worst publishing contract they've ever seen.'" When he first signed the deal he was only 19, so it took a while before he registered how bad the deal is. "I'm watching shit, like The Last Dance, I'm looking at [Scottie] Pippen like, 'N*gga my contract worse than Pippen," he said. "There's no way the person who produced 'Racks in the Middle,' 'Sicko Mode,' 'N*ggas in Paris' and 'Flawless' should be in a fucked up deal, period."
