Young Buck is one of rap’s most spontaneous artists, according to Lyfe Jennings, who has recalled a particularly memorable studio session with the former G-Unit rapper.
After teaming up on Lyfe’s 2006 track “Slow Down,” the pair collaborated again on “Buck the World,” one of the stand-out cuts from Buck’s 2007 sophomore album of the same name.
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The track, which recounts the struggles and hardships of the poor and disenfranchised over Jake One‘s hard-hitting backdrop, hears Buck, firmly rooted in the street life, face a number of uphill battles while Lyfe provides an added layer of discomfort.
“Woke up screaming fuck the world today I, had it up to here/ Ex-girlfriend got custody today cause, they say she feels/ That I’ll never be the daddy that she, wants me to be/ Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, sayin bye to my seeds, ohhh,” Lyfe sings on the hook.
Speaking to HipHopDX, Lyfe Jennings discussed Young Buck’s spontaneity and recalled how the Tennessee titan once disappeared into thin air during a studio session for “Buck the World.”
“Buck is a cool dude,” Lyfe told DX. “I think one thing you can say about him is that he is totally spontaneous; you never, ever, ever know what this dude is going to do.
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“When I first got to the spot to do the track there no one was in the studio, period. Buck and a couple of other dudes walk in the studio, we greet each other, whatever, and then he didn’t say anything, he just put on the track. He didn’t say, ‘This is…’ Nothing. He just hit play.
“I’m sitting there listening to it and he was like, ‘You ready?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I went in the booth and I’m just playing around with the track with the engineer and I come up with [the hook]. When I came back out the booth there was nobody in the studio — at all.”
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Buck had left the studio without telling Lyfe, but according to the session’s engineer, it was because of the singer’s aptitude for top-notch hook writing and his impressive vocals.
“He was gone,” Lyfe continued. “He told the engineer, ‘That’s it.’ The first take that I did, he was like, ‘That’s it,’ and Buck left.”
The next time Lyfe spoke to Young Buck was when the then G-Unit rapper called him to go and shoot a video for the track. “He was like, ‘Yo, we shooting a video, I’m getting your ticket. We going to Cuba,'” Lyfe recalled. “I said, ‘We going to Cuba?’ Then after Cuba, he never really let you know what his next move was gon’ be. It was always something you never woulda thought he’d do.”
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Even though he’s collaborated with a lot of big names across his almost two-decade-long career, Lyfe Jennings said there’s still a few artists he’d like to get in the studio with.
“I definitely still wanna do something with Erykah Badu,” he told DX. “She’s super, super cool people. I also definitely wanna do something with Common. That’s really like two of my — I just hope I get the opportunity to work with those two.”
Lyfe added that he and Common have spoken about doing something in the past, but with the Chicago rapper’s busy schedule in both music and film they’ve not yet found time to get together.
“He might have slowed down now,” he said. “We’ve reached out to him for several stuff we was gon’ do, but he was always shooting a movie or doing something else. So hopefully soon. That would be an event: Lyfe and Common.”
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Elsewhere in his chat with HipHopDX, Lyfe Jennings assured fans that he won’t be retiring from live shows after suggesting in December that he might. Instead, he’s just going to cut back on the number of shows he does.
He revealed he was considering stepping away from performing after a couple of clips of him seemingly singing out of tune went viral, leading to widespread criticism of his vocal abilities.
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“I love what I do,” he said, before explaining that “altered” clips weren’t going to send him running for the hills. “I just wanna cut back on shows this year. So if you see me coming somewhere — usually I might visit a spot two times a year — it’s probably the only time I’m gonna be there, so make sure you get your tickets early. We sell out usually anyway but it’s gonna sell out quicker now.”
Lyfe Jennings’ new single “Till You Gone” is out now. You can keep up to date with the singer and his forthcoming tour dates here.
