DJ Snake refused to comprise his vision—even if that meant saying "no" to Rihanna.
During a recent interview with Zane Lowe, the French producer revealed RiRi wanted the beat for his "No Option" track featuring Nigerian artist Burna Boy. But after months and months of consideration, he decided to keep the record for himself and include it on his newly released album, Carte Blanche.
"She wanted this record for a year and we ended up using it. You know because I fell in love with this record and I don't know," DJ Snake said with some hesitation. "I don't want to say like the wrong things so all the Rihanna fans is going to kill me, but you know I just felt like there was no options. Like I had to put this record on my album."
Though Carte Blanche is stacked with notable collaborations, DJ Snake insisted star power wasn't a priority. In fact, the producer said he turned down the opportunity to work with additional big-name artists because it didn't "make sense" for the project.
"This is legacy man. I just gotta follow my heart. That's it," he told Lowe. "And I could have had bigger names on the album, like way bigger names. But you know the records were not right [...] I'm not chasing the biggest name drops, billing, and stuff."
He continued: "We got monsters on the album. It's all about everything had to make sense and it's all about the balance and it needs to be authentic and organic. I want to be proud of this album in 20 years. I don't want to be like, 'Yeah, but when I dropped this record, I kept this record just to get more plays or more radio plays, whatever.' No. I want this to be timeless and this is what we're doing."
You can check out DJ Snake's interview with Lowe above. The producer also discussed key tracks from Carte Blanche, his advice for aspiring artists, and modeling his career after Dr. Dre's.
