Q-Tip is one of the most legendary rapping producers, so it only makes sense for him to work with Kanye West. The song "Mama's Boyfriend" was one of the earliest songs teased and talked about leading up to the release of Ye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with Yeezy actually debuting some of the verses at Facebook's head office.
The song was said to be produced by Q-Tip, but the only version that ever surfaced had an unofficial beat attached to it, so speculation continued around what the original Tip production sounded like. In an interview at the Red Bull Music Academy, the rapper shed some light on the construction of the beat for the track.
“I don’t know if anybody’s heard this song. You can look it up online, ‘Mama’s Boy’…With Ye we try things—we do so many different versions of things. We were in Hawaii. He did another version with Soulja Boy too. He did so many versions,” he said, but explained that the reason for it's lack of a proper release was that it never fully satisfied Ye's perfectionist tendencies. "He and I were working on it a couple times, and we had this one that we were going to probably do, but it didn’t line up.”
Q also spoke of how Kanye wanted to flip Billy Joel’s “Moving On Up,” for the record, which Tip successfully incorporated into the beat. “He was like, ‘I want a Mobb Deep vibe,’ so that’s the kind of vibe I gave him.” he said.
Listen to a snippet of Q's version of the song at the 1 hour 36 mark.
