Today, mercifully, is Rap or Go to the League day.
After kicking off the festivities with a Tonight Show performance of album opener "Forgiven" Thursday night, 2 Chainz stopped by the Breakfast Club headquarters Friday morning to go deep on the record's lyrical themes and the recent career highs that informed it.
"This Rap or Go to the League was something I worked on for over a year," Chainz said around the 3:30 mark in the video up top. "You know, Pretty Girls Like Trap Music did very well. We essentially had damn near a Statue of Liberty in a pink trap house in Atlanta. It was basically the same type of effect as the Eiffel Tower. You know, this is way after the album and people are still following the campaign. I did a haunted house, obviously in October, that was a pink haunted house that we made over half a million dollars doing it."
Seeing this, Chainz added, showed that "these ideas ... just keep going" by way of helping and employing others. For Rap or Go to the League, Chainz wanted to symbolize his larger life journey with the prominently featured yellow crate on the cover.
As for LeBron James' role in helping craft the new album, Chainz pointed to his ability to zero in on the cuts best suited for the final tracklist. "Surprisingly, he was with it, he was cool with it," he said around six minutes in, when asked how James responded to the initial invite. "Because I already told him that I was gonna give him the credit, I obviously was gonna pay him. ... One of the things I brought him in for was I have more than enough songs. I over-record on purpose."
Ultimately, Chainz and James and the rest of the team whittled League down from 21-25 songs to a 14-track release.
Later, Chainz talked working with his "Rule the World" and "7 Rings" remix collaborator Ariana Grande. "The song feels really good," he said around 16 minutes in. "She sings like an angel. I feel like it's going to be a No.1 record."
Ultimately though, 2 Chainz wants his latest to stand on its own as a "well-organized body of work."
Also tucked into the Breakfast Club interview is some intel on a forthcoming JAY-Z verse. "I tried to get him on this album and he told me 'maybe next album,'" he said around 24 minutes in. "We'll get it going, you know . . . The timing apparently wasn't right. This would've been, like, a bucket list. There's a few things on my bucket list. This is one of the things on my bucket list. I'mma check it off one day. He knows I'm passionate about this music stuff."
