DJ Premier Blog » 2010 » November » 05

DJ Premier Says Kanye Collaboration Never Materialized, Adds Last-Minute Scratches To “Mama’s Boyfriend”

Despite some major leaks and several varied track lists hitting the ‘net, Kanye West is sticking by the Nov. 22 release date for his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

With contributing producers Pete Rock and RZA adding their signature New York sound to the record, fans were also teased with talks of DJ Premier making the final cut. But Preemo says fans may have to wait a bit longer for the much-anticipated collaboration.

“I asked him about it at the BET Hip-Hop awards, and he said didn’t get a chance to do it,” DJ Premier told VIBE yesterday from Headquartez studio in midtown Manhattan. “But he said ‘I’m doing the album with Jay-Z, and I need two tracks for that.’ And he even kept hitting me to get more tracks for the album he’s about to drop. But right now, my priority is getting my artists up and running.”

Premier recalled Kanye paying him a personal visit to play new records from his forthcoming LP, a listening that led to Preemo creating a beat on the spot for the project. While that record sits on ice, the boom-bap master revealed that he did lend his trademarks scratches to a record “Mama’s Boyfriend,” an iTunes bonus from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

“[Kanye] actually hit me the day before he had to turn the album in to do some scratches on a song called ‘Mama’s [Boyfriend],'” Premier says of a record West debuted a capella this summer at the Facebook headquarters. “We just did it like five or six days ago… They sent me a private hard drive. I had to know certain passwords and go through all these steps to get the song. Kanye even sent me an email saying ‘destroy all the roughs I sent you.'”

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