Dreamville’s own J.I.D shared his debut album five years ago, and since then he’s gone on to make a name for himself as one of the most impressive lyricists out right now.
After sharing The Never Story in 2017, the 31-year-old went on to drop off DiCaprio 2 the next year, followed by his collaboration with Bas on Costa Rica and again with EARTHGANG and Spillage Village on 2020’s Spillingion.
J.I.D attends Roc Nation Brunch in 2020 — Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
Since then, the Atlanta native has been hard at work crafting a prequel for his beloved debut – one which he shared the tracklist for on Monday (August 22), revealing that he’s got an impressive slate of features lined up, including Lil Wayne, Ravyn Lenae, Lil Durk, and Yasiin Bey, just to name a few.
Before the 15-track effort hits DSPs this Friday (August 26), J.I.D sat down with Complex for an interview, giving fans a better idea of what they can expect to hear on The Forever Story.
“[My family] is basically a part of how I became who I am,” he shared. “It gives inklings of why my [mindset] is a certain type of way. I gave more detail and in-depth stories [on this album], but there’s still more layers to be peeled back, which I am going to do because this is going to be a long process of trying to understand me.”
“This is just a good piece of the origin story, and this is me finding that space to be more visible and present with words,” the “Surround Sound” hitmaker confirmed.
Elsewhere in the conversation, J.I.D admitted that he invested in a singing coach for this project. “Really being able to sing is fire, a lot of n*ggas can’t do that,” he said. “So I’m trying to rap at the highest level and sing at the highest level.”
The rapper shared his “2007” single recently, and though it was initially meant to be the project’s outro, he spontaneously decided to deliver it to the world a week before his album’s arrival. Speaking on his father’s narration, he said, “You can understand where I got it from.”
“He’s a creative n*gga, he be writing poetry and shit. We’re really like exactly the same, so that’s probably why we bump heads,” J.I.D told Complex. “It was nothing to explain to him to do that, he knew exactly what to do. He did that in a couple of takes. He’s a natural with anything, honestly.”
Read the full interview here, and tap back in with HNHH this Friday to stream The Forever Story.
[Via]