In 2019, Kanye West did a collab with YNW Melly for the song “Mixed Personalities.” However, that almost did not happen.
Melly’s manager, 100KTrack, appeared on an episode of the Off the Record podcast. In it, he explains the story that made the “Mixed Personalities” collaboration happen.
During this time, West was focused on doing collabs with newer artists. He had first heard of Melly through CyHi the Prynce. Afterward, he had gotten him and his manager to L.A. to preview the upcoming songs.
“We playing music, [YNW Melly] played one or two records, he’s bumping his head,” 100KTrack said about the session. “Then we play ‘Mixed Personalities’ and he goes crazy. He’s like, ‘Bruh! This is me! This is Ye!…’ So me and Melly looking at each other like, ‘Damn! He fucks with it?’ He’s like, ‘Bruh, I wanna jump on this.’”
YNW Melly’s Problem
Despite how much Ye wanted, 100KTrack could not let him in initially. 100KTrack said that YNW Melly was going to be the only one in the album. However, that is not entirely true. “Ingredients” also had a feature with Fredo Bang. It is possible, however, that that collab was added due to the delay. The issue was mainly that they had already turned in everything and were just doing the finishing touches.
“He’s like, ‘Why? Why?’ I’m like, ‘Cause look bro. Remember, this is his album we’re playing. We already turned in the music. I already got Cole Bennett about to shoot this video. This is one of the main singles that we believe in.’ I’m not tripping. This is three to four weeks of this album about to come out. We already got the structure. We got the video treatment.”
However, as we all know, West pulled some strings. He was able to push back the initial release date of sometime in 2018 to January 2019. The podcast, as well as the music video, can be found below.
Written by Justin Acosta
Twitter: @hahalacka