On November 5 Roc Nation emcee/producer made his first appearance on a G.O.O.D. Friday track. “Looking For Trouble”
also featured Pusha T, Big Sean, CyHi Da Prynce and of course, Kanye. Complex sat down with Jermaine, who talked about how it all came about.
“[That verse] was last minute. I got the beat the night before from my manager. But nobody told me they wanted to do it for G.O.O.D. Friday, and definitely not that G.O.O.D. Friday. I was like, ‘Oh man, that beat is dope. I’ll write to it soon.’ The next day I woke up in Kalamazoo, Michigan—I was on tour—and I was getting ready to go to Detroit because I had a radio promo event to do. So I got a call from Kanye and he was like, ‘What’s up? It’s Kanye. Can you get that verse today? I’m tryna put the song out tonight.’ I honestly didn’t think I could do it in time so I told him that. He said, ‘I’ll wait. We got engineers up all night so you got a while to do it. But if you can, have it done by today.’ I said, ‘I’ll make it happen somehow.’
“I wrote my verse on the hour-and-a-half ride to Detroit, did the radio promos, left that, went directly to the studio, laid the verse, and sent it to him by 5 o’clock. Mind you, I didn’t hear anybody else’s verses or the song itself, I just heard the beat and did my verse. I drove back to Kalamazoo and did the show. When I got offstage, he had just put the song out, and I sat back and watched all the comments as people went crazy. It was a beautiful night.
“I don’t know what it is [when it comes to features]. What it comes from is fear, that’s why I go so hard [on guest spots]. I’m a real competitor. It’s just a fear of somebody besting me and dominating me with a better verse. Not every song is like that, but on a song like ‘Looking For Trouble’ it is. It’s that spirit of hip-hop: Let’s see who can come the best. I don’t know if I’m going to have the best verse, but I know ain’t nobody just gonna kill me.”
