Hit-Boy is having a big year between producing all of Nas‘ King’s Disease, executive producing Big Sean‘s Detroit 2 and Jay Electronica‘s “The Blinding” to name a few.
The Los Angeles producer recently sat down with Bootleg Kev to discuss his career in a 52-minute interview during which he looked back on the Watch The Throne days and spoke on unreleased music that JAY-Z and Kanye West recorded during that time.
“We had made other records in person, like ‘N-ggas in Paris’ was a beat I just emailed.” he said. “The records we was making while we was in the studio was totally different. They didn’t even see the light of day… I thought them songs were going on Watch the Throne. Like, n-ggas was hype on them, didn’t make it, then this beat I just randomly emailed ended up being damn near the biggest song on the album.”
Hit-Boy was signed to Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music as a producer for two years but has hardly worked with him since. According to the producer though, it’s all love with “nothing but respect on my side.”
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“You know it’s funny, at a point, I was telling my manager like, if it’s not Ye, Jay or Beyoncé, don’t book no sessions,” he added. “I can’t think about how long I was on this wave, but I was on that wave for a while, and that’s something that’s crazy to be able to even say. But I guess this is why when people wanna call it a resurgence now, it’s just me spreading my sound out more and just locking in with more people and just dialing in on that level I guess.”
The producer picked out Nipsey Hussle‘s Grammy-winning “Racks in the Middle” as one of his most memorable studio sessions, as well as the first time he met Hov.
“When I first met Hov, that shit was crazy,” he said. “That was a Watch The Throne session. We was working out of the hotel in New York, The Mercer hotel, so I had been up there a few days and I’m like, ‘Damn, is Hov gonna come through?’ I’m just fucking with Kanye every day, we making beats together, he recording on my shit, we just cooking, we was working on John Legend stuff.
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“A few days into me being there, mind you it’s like a snow storm and shit, cold as hell. I walked out to walk down the block, I’m freezing to get down there. Soon as I get there I get an email from Ye, like, ‘Yo, you gotta come back to the studio.’ So I walked back to the spot and I walk in and Hov is just sitting right there. And he was just cool as hell… I had heard bro was on some like mean type shit, so for him to be so cool, that shit was just fly man. And then we made ‘N-ggas in Paris’… that’s just like, you can’t even fucking write that.”
After producing Nas’ whole album, Hit-Boy wants to do the same for other artists and he’s setting a high bar for himself.
“I wanna do an album for Kendrick Lamar, I wanna do an album for JAY-Z, I wanna do an album for plenty of people,” he said. “I already worked with these people too, but if I can get an album with Kendrick, if I can get an album with JAY-Z, that would be lovely.”
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Hit-Boy previously produced Kendrick’s “Backseat Freestyle” for good kid, m.A.A.d city in 2012. He also spoke on recent reports of K. Dot shooting a music video, saying, “I seen that, I know he about to go crazy.”
Going forward, Hit-Boy is set to produce an entire album for Benny the Butcher titled Burden of Proof. The producer recently linked up with another Griselda rapper, producing “Fear of God” on Conway the Machine‘s From King to a GOD album.
