Now that Ab-Soul’s latest studio album, These Days… has been released, the TDE wordsmith has discussed the project in a handful of interviews, radio appearances, and more this week. Most recently, Soulo took part in a Google Hangout session with XXL magazine’s Editor-In-Chief Vanessa Satten.
While speaking on These Days…, which includes guest appearances from Rick Ross, Lupe Fiasco and more, Ab-Soul revealed that Jay Electronica was the one feature he hoped to secure for the album, but was unable to.
“Man, I’m trying to hunt Jay Electronica down,” he said. “I’m saying I’m hunting him down. I can’t even get him on the line…It’s crazy. So crazy. But I mean hey, you gotta respect the mystery in him…That’s probably the only person that I was really like trying to get that I couldn’t reach.”
Ab-Soul later spoke on how These Days… compares with his second studio album, Control System. According to Soul, he was able to aim for a better quality of sound with this project.
He later revealed that he was more concerned with creating a project the fans could enjoy than he was competing against other artists releasing albums this year.
“More than anything the quality. The sound quality,” the rapper said. “You gotta think. Before Control System came out I didn’t get to listen to it like on Beats By Dre products. You feel what I’m saying…Ali’s recorded quite a few great albums since then. So, he had a lot of great tricks up his sleeve for this one too. We just really stepped it up with the sound quality for sure…This album in general probably took me about a little over a year to complete. When I turned it in at the top of the year we all agreed that I should probably just go back in. It sounded great already. I should just expound on it and make it a little bit more concrete.
“I think it should stand toe-to-toe to just about anything that drops this year,” he added. “I’m not gon’ say that I don’t wanna be number one or the best artist, but you know, all of that is cool. More so we just wanna have some good music to give to the people, man. We want everybody to feel good. We want everybody to have fun.”
As far as album favorites, Ab-Soul named “Just Have Fun” as his current favorite, but says he plans on revisiting the album soon and may find a new favorite.
“I think ‘Just Have Fun’ is probably my favorite song on that album,” Soulo said. “To be honest with you. So far…I’ll probably revisit it and see which ones are the ones that stand out the most to me. But I think ‘Just Have Fun’ is probably my favorite song on the album.”
Video of Ab-Soul’s Google Hangout can be found below.
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Just Have Fun is my favorite too. Mostly because it has the track “These Days” at the end but the track itself is solid. The rest of the album was very disappointing.
Yeah definitely a little disappointing.
jay elec wasnt trynna get bodied by another tde member lol
Chill, Jay Elect had a gem on Control… Kendrick ain’t really say anything, just pure hype
way to just quote Jay. Nice original thinking. Kendrick set the game on fire for a minute with his verse so he musta said something
He said king of ny, quoted kurupt and named rapper dudes
Nice controversy but jay elect had the verse
Doesn’t matter. Kendrick’s verse ended up the one being heard the most by people.
So it doesn’t matter if Jay lyrically had the tighter verse, Kendrick’s had more hype so it was better? ok
Some kids nowadays believe hype means everything, substance means nothing. They’re more checking for rappers clothes and GF status than what they actually rap about. Shame really, Hip Hop had so much potential.
lol thats weak. but he got time for big sean
why even collaborate with a fake five percenter? nigga say white people are devils but his main bitch is a white billionaire
We call that infiltration.
u both dumb
Jay Electronica is great when he drops music, but it pisses me off when the people who are waiting for him to finally drop his album don’t acknowledge that Killah Priest has already perfected a very similar style. Not only that, but Priest is still producing and dropping great music at a pretty consistent rate. Give that man his credit!
WORD
Good choice re: “Just Have Fun”. It’s the best song on here by a fairly wide margin.