Following the release of his new collaborative album with Harry Fraud, Dave East recently checked in to Ebro Darden’s Apple Music 1 radio show to talk about what went into the creation of HOFFA. In one clip, Ebro marvels at the vocal inflections that the Wu-Tang: An American Saga actor experimented with on the new project, and that conversation surprisingly leads into an anecdote about some advice had had previously received from J. Cole.
The Harlem rapper revealed that J. Cole actually called him out about his monotone delivery during a studio session together.
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“I got a chance to lock in with J. Cole, just me and him in the studio with the engineer,” Dave East explains. “And he asked that same question, like, ‘Bro, I’m a fan of what you do, I really respect your pen but you rap with one tone.’ And I really sat and listened to myself, and a lot of my shit is one tone.”
Apparently, Dave East and J. Cole have linked up for more than just the “a p p l y i n g . p r e s s u r e” music video, as the Karma 3 rapper revealed they spent a significant amount of testing out different tones for him to use. “Me and him in the studio, and we testing out tones. Lalalalala! All this, I’m doing with J. Cole, but he’s just really trying to see how high I can take my voice and how low I can take it. And he was like, ‘Yo, apply that to your music.'”
Elsewhere in the interview, Dave East also touched on his working relationship with Harry Fraud. According to Complex, Dave East was very appreciative of the good communication between him and his close collaborator.
“You can really focus on the music. When you have 50 producers, they all got lawyers, they all got interns, everybody has to sign off, nah,” the HOFFA rapper explained. “We did this so smooth and you can hear it in the music.”
See the clip in which Dave East discusses J. Cole’s influence on HOFFA below.
Do you think J. Cole’s advice for Dave East was helpful? And are you still bumping HOFFA a month and a half later?
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