Hit-Boy talks about his King’s Disease Success with Nas.
Hit-Boy is on the promo run for his forthcoming album “Surf Or Drown” as he sat down with ProducerGrind for a new interview. During the conversation, the multi-platinum producer discuss his recent success with Nas, with whom he dropped three collab albums in the “King’s Disease” series.
“When I work with Nas, it’ll literally just be me and him in there… I’m doing the beats, he’s doing the rhymes,” he said. “And then a lot of times when you work with younger artists, they gon’ pull up with five, six, seven, maybe 10 ni**as with ’em, and it’s like, I’m really here to do my job.”
He continued, “Some people flourish in that, and plenty of times I’ve had my own sessions with a bunch of people in there. But when you’re really trying to cultivate something special, you gotta protect that space and that energy. That’s why I feel like me and Nas can flow like this because most of the time, it’s just us in the studio.”
“It ain’t no bunch of outside opinions and people throwing off the zone we in, throwing off the vibe. It’s just like, bro, we gon’ do what we feel, what’s really inspiring us. If we not looking at each other and having that face like, ‘Oh, this sh*t hard!’ then we gotta go back to the drawing board — and we keep that as the base of everything.”
How is Hit-Boy’s new album Surf or Drown? Read the whole review
In the interview, Hit-Boy also revealed he engineered the majority of the songs in collab projects with Nas. “People don’t even know, out of the 54 songs that Nas dropped, I probably engineered 50 of them muthaf**kas,” he said. “Like, really sat there and recorded him, punching him in. It’s beyond just the beat-making sh*t. And that makes me a better artist, that makes me a better producer, really being in the trenches with him.”
Nas and Hit-Boy’s King’s Disease trilogy has been immensely successful, with the duo winning Nas’ first Grammy Award for Best Rap Album for the first King’s Disease in 2021. In the following year, King’s Disease II was nominated for Best Rap Album but lost to Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost.
The latest addition to the trilogy, King’s Disease III, was released in November 2022 and has continued to garner critical acclaim. It has helped Nas tie Jay-Z for the most Top 10 debuts on the
Nas and Hit-Boy, a formidable duo in the music industry, have teamed up again for the song “The Tide,” which appears on Hit-Boy’s upcoming solo album Surf or Drown.
Hit-Boy’s new project is due to drop this week on 24th March, with music contributions from Nas, Dom Kennedy, Currensy, Devin Morrison, James Fauntleroy and more.
