Fabolous and Ne-Yo have teamed up to make musical magic once again, this time on the remix to the latter’s song, “Link Up.”
Released on Friday (November 3) alongside an accompanying visual, “Link Up (Remix)” finds the pair adding their own flavor to a sample of Michael Wycoff’s 1980s R&B hit “Looking Up To You” produced by Hitmaka, Cardiak and Wu10.
AD LOADING...
The track adds to a long list of collaborations the pair have come together on over the years, starting with Fab’s 2007 single “Make Me Better,” which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. There was also “She Got Her Own” with Jamie Foxx the following year, “Crazy Love” from Ne-Yo’s Libra album in 2010 and “Should Be You” from his R.E.D. album in 2012.
Check out the Azzie Scott-directed video for “Link Up (Remix)” below:
With their musical chemistry being so palpable, Fabolous and Ne-Yo once toyed with the idea of a joint album to be produced entirely by Ryan Leslie – although, it never came to fruition.
“I think this year too I might be doing this project with Ne-Yo finally,” Fab told XXL in 2011. “We’ve been in talks for a minute. It’s really sounding like it’s gonna get done. Ne-Yo is really hyped about it. I just fell back on it, but now I see the wheels are turning a little bit.”
AD LOADING...
He continued: “I think we need that for the game. Some of the allure from the game is gone. You see people doing less numbers, so now let’s do some vanity projects where people are collaborating together.”
In other news, Fabolous recently revealed to HipHopDX that he will soon release a project called The Reload, which he’s been steadily working on since the pandemic.
“I’m working on a new project. It’s called The Reload,” he explained. “I’m actually trying to figure out when to be able to release it. Again, this project is stemming from places where I’m at now versus — I wanna say I’ve been working on it for a little while so it’s probably from around now to about 2019, 2020. So really with me working all through that time, I was able to give little pieces of myself in different times.
“I think the last piece I had gave was the Summertime Shootout [3] in 2019 and that was kind of fresh off the pandemic, but the music was kind of before the pandemic, which was weird,” he continued. [Editor’s note: the pandemic did not actually begin until March 2020, but the tape was released in December 2019.]
AD LOADING...
He added: “You kind of make music sometimes – unless you JAY-Z and you just write that week and put the album out that week – but you kinda make music recapping your life. So that’s why that project didn’t really recap the COVID experience, but there’s some of it in this project too. I think a lot has changed in our lifestyles and music and everything since COVID.”
After explaining how he made some changes during that time, Fab explained why the project is named The Reload: “[The pandemic] really made you analyze certain things in life and in music and I think even through there, I’ve grown and people have grown and your fans continue to grow that’s why it’s kinda called The Reload because it’s kind of like, me reloaded kind of thing.”
A release date has not yet been set.
