Pusha T was the special guest on SHOWTIME’s Desus & Mero on Thursday night (April 7), where he chopped it up with the Bodega Boys about his upcoming album It’s Almost Dry, the creative process behind his lauded coke raps and the making of his latest single “Neck & Wrist” featuring JAY-Z and Pharrell.
Halfway through the conversation, King Push shed light on his collaborative relationship with the Brooklyn rap legend and recalled Hov’s reaction when he sent him the unfinished song, loaded with his sneering dope boy bars and Pharrell’s Hell Hath No Fury-esque beat.
“It all happens over email,” he said. “I’ll have a beat and I’ll be like, ‘Man, this is crazy.’ I’ll write to it and I’ll say everything I can say crazy to it. And I’m like, ‘Man, who belongs on this beat?’ And if I don’t feel like anybody can match up but I feel like it needs a feature, because I can’t say anymore, I think I’ve done it all — this happened with ‘Drug Dealers Anonymous.’
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“So I recorded [‘Neck & Wrist’] and I sent it to him, I just emailed it to him. He hit me back with whatever, whether it’s emojis. I think he said, ‘What the hell you want me to say to this?!'”
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Push added, “I know I can count on him to say things that I just can’t say. Bro, it’s Hov! A lot of times when I do features, I do features for people to really take the record to the next level, really step it up. Like I said, these albums come few and far between, so it’s like, ‘Man, it gotta be masterpiece-level.'”
JAY-Z certainly had a lot to say on “Neck & Wrist.” Aside from making boasts that only a billionaire could make, the Marcy Projects mogul responded to Friday actor Faizon Love’s claims he lied about being a “drug lord” in a 2016 VladTV interview with slick wordplay that may have gone over many heads.
“The phase I’m on, love, I wouldn’t believe it either/I’d be like, ‘JAY-Z’s a cheater’/I wouldn’t listen to reason either/All I know is he’s a felon, how is he sellin’?” he opens his verse.
Hov also addresses the critics who argue he wouldn’t be a successful as he is today if The Notorious B.I.G. — with whom he was planning a supergroup called The Commission — was still alive.
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“They like, ‘If BIG was alive, Hov wouldn’t be in his position/If BIG had survived, y’all would have got The Commission’/Hov was gon’ always be Hov/It ’twas the universe will ’cause Allah said so, and now I’m here,” he declares.
Elsewhere in his Desus & Mero interview, Pusha T spoke about the joy of being a father to his 1-year-old son Nigel Brixx Thornton, who he and his wife Virginia welcomed in June 2020.
“I don’t know why I waited so long!” he joked. “My son is 20 months and he’s by far the best thing I’ve ever created. Ever. [I feel that] every single time [I see him]. For the first 18 months, he didn’t even care if I was around, but these past two months, when I leave he cries and he’s now like, ‘Daddy!’ Coming in the room, looking for me.
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“It’s selflessness. And I’m very selfish, I’m a super selfish person; with my son, I have totally taken my self [out of it]. It’s all him first.”
Watch the full conversation below.
