Fans looking for new DJ Premiere beats won’t have to wait much longer. However, fans looking for a traditional Primo collab won’t find it anytime soon.
No, Jigga will not come out of retirement. Pop princess Christina Aguilera has enlisted the help of DJ Premier for her next release, which is titled Back to Basics.
Think it surprised his fans? It most likely surprised him even more.
“It was kind of a shock because I was like, ‘How the hell does she know about me?'” he says of his initial thoughts to Billboard.
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“I’m one of those guys that really doesn’t expect pop artists to really be up on me. My first question was, ‘What does she know about me?'”
Apparently, Aguilera knew enough to recall his early work with Guru and wanted to get a nice jazzy sound for her album.
“It had elements of Miles Davis and Billie Holiday and little horn pieces,” she says of his work. “The way he combined that, I was like, ‘Hm. I bet he would get where I’m trying to go with this record.’ It was taking a chance. God knows if he would even do it because it was kind of his first time, I think, even venturing into the ‘pop’ world. I knew that it would be a different and new thing for him.”
Although she’s been known for making pop-songs and chart toppers, she wanted something fresh for the up-coming album.
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“I really like to go left field, think a little bit out of the box and go with someone, maybe a little bit more obscure, that I really respect. Not to say that Premier is that, but just to say that I’m not going to go to the obvious person, say, the Neptunes, Pharrell or Lil Jon. I really like to go someplace different that people haven’t approached,” she said of Primo.
With both artists admitting an odd pairing exists, Aguilera hopes fans of both genres can appreciate their work.
