Back in September, before the official release of The Blueprint 3, we brought you the exclusive news that Jay-Z was already in the lab putting together his next opus.
“My next album, which I’m working on now — that’s exclusive, no one knows that — is gonna be the album that really … it’s not gonna be a #1 album,” he explained. “That’s where I’m at right now. I wanna make the most experimental album I ever made.”
B3 has been certified platinum and Jay is about to start another tour in support of the newly hailed classic, taking Young Jeezy and Trey Songz on the road with him. While Jay — who has been letting his hair grow, signifying he’s back in the studio — hasn’t announced who he’s working with on the project, we’ve got a bit of the scoop. Hov and “On to the Next One” producer Swizz Beatz are going to collaborate again.
“Crazy,” Swizz told us about Jay’s new work. “It’s crazy. I’m working on the intro right now, matter of fact. It’s stupid.”
Swizz hinted that the beat he gave Hov had an innovative, trailblazing sound.
“We been talking about that international vibe since the last album,” Swizz said. “But the sound changes. You got too many people trying to do too many things. They throw it off. I’m actually going out there doing the legwork, sitting there with the master composers, and we gonna pull this thing together.”
Swizz is also working with Young Jeezy on his upcoming Thug Motivation 103 album and has contemplated taking Jeezy’s sound in a different direction with this worldly vibe.
“I wanna go out there and collect certain jewels of information so I can pull Jeezy to the side and be like, ‘Come here with me right quick, I wanna play you something. Vibe out to this,’ ” Swizz explained. “The only person that I know right now is open to this [new sound] is probably Jay. We share a lot of creative levels. He’ll be like, ‘I need all that. Tuck it.’ He’s there. He’s to the zenith. I wanna get a lot of other people to that level. If we got multiple [artists] on that level musically, then what happens to our music industry? It becomes exciting. It becomes more in-depth.”
Swizz is literally on to the next one with his new LP — the Bronx native will be traveling the globe to research new sounds and work with international collaborators.
“I see myself taking it on a worldly level,” he said. Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are just a few of his planned destinations.
“I said, ‘If I’m gonna do a new album, it needs to be about something.’ The music industry is suffering so much from a lack of creativity,” he offered. “I can’t do it by myself. I wanna be a major contributor to the change of the sound for the new decade. … With this album, I’m giving a large percentage, almost half [the profits from] the album to schools in need of art and music. We teaming up, we got 44,000 students. We’re doing major, major stuff that’s still making sense but still keeping the freshness. I’m not watering anything down. We’re just adding different dimensions to the house you’re already living in.”