A new remix of The Weeknd’s 2015 song “Tell Your Friends” unexpectedly hit SoundCloud on Wednesday (May 24) and gained the attention of multiple outlets due to the guests it featured and its purported XO branding. The lineup of Kanye West, Nas, Ghostface Killah, Drake, Belly and Vancouver rapper Young Braised led to posts on several sites, but The Weeknd quickly squashed the hype by announcing the track was a bootleg creation.
“This isn’t my soundcloud,” he wrote. “We didn’t upload anything. These are fake mashups.”
The inclusion of Young Braised, a total unknown compared to the rest of the artists, led to questions about his role in the mashup. HipHopDX was able to speak to the Canadian rapper and learn that he was shocked to see his name on the fake remix.
“[I] got a few messages about this, including from my friend Brock at Exclaim! who was surprised to see my name there as well,” Braised told HipHopDX. “Honestly not sure how it came to be and wish it stayed up long enough for me to hear it myself, but [I’m] assuming someone grabbed my verse when I put it at the end of Kanye’s version early last year and ran with it. Honoured and perplexed at the same damn time.”
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The unauthorized remix has since been taken down from SoundCloud. A mashup of The Weeknd’s Starboy cut, “Secrets,” and Drake’s More Life single, “Passionfruit” has also been removed.
