Last month, Lil Wayne returned with his album, Funeral. While the 24-song tracklist was stacked with notable appearances by the likes of Lil Baby, Big Sean, and Jay Rock, it turns out the New Orleans rapper has more big-font guest spots in the vault.
Young Money President Mack Maine recently talked to Complex about the making of the chart-topping LP, where he revealed that DaBaby and Young Thug almost made the cut.
“We had two joints that didn’t make it that were just monsters,” he said. “We had one with DaBaby, but we had some clearance issues. They should still be collabing soon, whether it’s on Wayne or DaBaby’s next album… And we had one with Thug. It’s a beast. Thug wanted to do something fresh because he did his vocals in 2017, so he felt like his vocals was a little too old.”
The Young Money head acknowledged how DaBaby “gives Wayne his props” in interviews. In October, the Charlotte MC self-assessed his star power by comparing himself to respected artists. “I got the creativity of a Kanye [West], the consistency of a Lil Wayne, the versatility of a Drake to make male and female songs,” he told Billboard.
Maine also offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the feature selection process. “It’s always between me and [Wayne],” Maine said. “He’ll call me like, ‘I got this joint that such-and-such should be on,’ or ‘Yo, I got this joint. When you hear it, let me know who you think should be on there.’”
The missing features got swept up in Young Money’s process of whittling down Funeral’s song selection from about 100 to 24 tracks. “He’s in the studio every night. So imagine how many songs were accumulated within that period,” Maine continued. “He narrowed it down from a hundred-something songs to around 60. Let’s just say 60, because it might’ve been like 50s. Then I narrowed that down to 24.”
Elsewhere in the Complex interview, he spoke about how Wayne works with producers. “With Wayne, I don’t know the last time a producer actually has been in the studio him when he records the song. Basically, it’s myself and a few of my partners,” he said. “We just get a bunch of beats, and send them to him. Like he said on that Khaled joint [“We Takin’ Over”] back in the day, ‘Feed me rappers or feed me beats.’ You just got to feed him, and let him do him. That’s kind of how it goes.”
Funeral is Wayne’s first full-length since Tha Carter V.
Read the full Complex interview here, and catch up on all the lyrics to Funeral on Genius now.
