Pusha T Recalls The Making Of “Pain” With Future & Kanye West

Earlier this month, Pusha T released his latest single “Pain,” featuring production from Kanye West and a hook from Future. Now, in a recent interview with the UK’s DJ Semtex, the G.O.O.D. Music rapper explains how the record came about.

Pusha recalled that the record came about while he and Yeezy were recording for his impending debut album in New York City. He said that both he and Kanye were unsatisfied with the collection of beats that they had on file, prompting Kanye to dig through his personal archive for inspiration. After the beat was completed, Pusha explained that his first thought was to enlist Future to deliver a darker hook.

“One day, we were in New York City and…[Kanye and I] were starting to work on the album…we were going through beats, whatever, and we didn’t really find anything,” he recalled. “He was behind the keyboard and he had all these discs, and I said, ‘Man, these your discs and that’s your keyboard…everything I need I’m sure is in one of these discs right here.’ So, he’s like, ‘Man, alright man,’ he throws off his sweatshirt and he pulls up this ‘Pain’ sample, and from there he just starts building around that.”

He continued, “We were having a discussion at the same time about who was hot, and I was telling him, ‘Man, Future’s hot…Future had seven songs in the club…I only knew two of them, [but] the other five, everybody was chanting word for word, about 800 people in the spot – I felt slow’…so we made this record, and I said, ‘But if I use Future, I wanna use Future in a different capacity.’ I hear Future, Future sounds like a witch doctor to me. There’s something real dark and there’s something real eerie about his vocals, so I don’t want to use him in a club capacity like everybody else…as [Kanye’s] making the beat, I was like, ‘Man, we throw [Future] on that, we just let him do what he does.'”

Check out the full interview below.

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