Pusha-T finally has some answers to his Madlib-produced album that may or may not be scrapped.
During the release week of Pusha’s latest album It’s Almost Dry, he linked up with Idea Generation’s Noah Callahan-Bever and his longtime manager Steven Victor for the debut episode of It’s Almost Dry Radio, which is his new live radio show on Amp.
Moderated by Callahan-Bever, the conversation touched on working with Pharrell and Ye, the making of “Dreamin of the Past,” and of course, what happened with his Madlib-produced album.
On working with Pharrell and Ye, he said: “The project got started from me playing ‘Hear Me Clearly’ for Pharrell…And he told me that, it was okay. He shrugged….He said, ‘Man I just think that you need to be more of a character.’ I told myself, once it was etched in stone that [Pharrell and Kanye] would each produce half of the album, I was going to go through the process. Whatever their process is, I’m going to go through it in full to make sure I have exhausted whatever they wanted to do. I wanted it to be produced because my biggest thing was making an album better than Daytona.”
On “Dreamin of the Past,” Pusha said he had to actually fight with Ye over the beat because they were working on their albums simultaneously.
“He had a beat in his folder which was ‘Dreamin of the Past,’ and I was like, bro, you know that’s for me…After a while I noticed he still hadn’t written to the record,” Push continued. “Ultimately, he gives me the record, but it is always very finicky when that happens. I get on the record and he was like, ‘Man I can’t get on it with you after that. You’re saying all this stuff now.’ I said, ‘Man you have to realize that everything isn’t heavy lifting. Sometimes it’s for me to heavy lift. You got to think about B.I.G. When B.I.G. came in on ‘Queen Bitch’ for like three bars.”
On the topic of Madlib, Pusha gave an honest answer about its direction.
“I was definitely going to work with Madlib,” he said. “I got some beats and they were actually chops from him. I just think he’s really dope at finding ill sounds and ill chops, and things of that nature. But at the same time, it was feeling like a beat tape situation. I felt like to step it up I had to be produced -to step it up from Daytona.
“When you think about Daytona, its just beats and hard raps. I wasn’t produced,” he adds. “The structure of Kanye West you know, taking these things out or whatever the case may be. Honestly, it was just that. It’s Almost Dry is an exercise, definitely on the Pharrell side, in being produced.”
Nearly two years after releasing his Daytona album, Pusha confirmed he and Madlib were cooking something up in the studio. He shared the information during an AMA session via Discord, saying he and the producer were sitting on a “hard drive full of gems.”
In a digital cover for KAZI Magazine, Pusha added that it was a “bucket list thing” for him.
“We’re taking our time. I’m crafting and writing to some of them,” he said. “That’s a bucket list thing for me. The fact that we’re in contact and everything is good, I see that happening. I can’t put a date on it, but I’m definitely on it.”
