DJ Premier is fresh off of the release of Gang Starr's new album, One Of The Best Yet, marking the group's first project since 2003. With the passing of Guru in 2010, nobody thought that another Gang Starr album would come out. It included appearances from J. Cole, Q-Tip, M.O.P and more but apparently, they had some other high profile features on deck.
Speaking to Take It Personal, DJ Premier, fresh off of working on "Sandra's Rose," tried to get Drake on the record but the rapper was working on his tour in support of Scorpion. "It just wasn’t the right time to just knock it out real fast. I needed it done really, really [quickly], like yesterday at that time," he said.
Although it would've been nice to hear Kendrick Lamar and Guru go bar-for-bar over Premier production, Kendrick Lamar's manager Dave Free said that the rapper is "locked in, focusing on what he gotta do next." This is also good news since that's probably a sign a new album is on the way.
Premier revealed that getting a feature from Nas was supposed to happen but "it wasn't clashing right at that time." "Nas was like, ‘I’m just not in writing [mode]; I just have no writing in me right now. And if I’ma do it, I gotta kill it, ’cause I gotta sound as good as Guru. I just have no writing feels right now, so I just don’t wanna half-ass it.’ And I respected that," he recounted.
Yasiin Bey was also supposed to hop on it but that didn't happen. Premier just expects the artist formerly known as Mos Def to hook up a verse later on in life.
Peep the chat below.
