Drake’s recent 100MB content dump stirred up some memories for Young Guru, who recalled the crazy story of JAY-Z recording his verses for the Scorpion cut “Talk Up.”
Earlier this week, Drake released a treasure trove of content, including unreleased music and videos, giving fans a behind-the-scenes look.
In one clip, Drake anxiously awaits a verse from JAY-Z, who only has a few hours to turn things around even though JAY-Z is performing.
“He would come off stage, take a shower, maybe have a drink, and then go back with Guru [to write and record],” Drake said in the clip. “This process will last two hours.”
Drake talks about Jay Z recording “Talk Up” on Scorpion. Drake wanted to be there in case Hov wanted to hear his thoughts on the poem while he was recording with Guru. Would love to see them recording together in the studio pic.twitter.com/Sm7GZDggho
— Jeremy Hecht (@Jeremy_Hecht) August 6, 2024
JAY-Z’s longtime engineer Young Guru filled in the rest of the details on Instagram, revealing Hov was desperate to make the record.
“The story behind it is crazy,” Guru recalls, saying that while performing on the On The Run II tour, Hough had a tiny window to write his verses.
“He wrote the poem after a full two-hour performance,” he said. “He wrote the poem after a full two hours of performance.”
JAY-Z set up a mock recording studio at the concert venue to record his songs for Drake
In a follow-up post, Guru explained that he was performing at the afterparty, so he only had two hours to record JAY-Z’s lyrics.
“HOV hit me and just said ‘set up a studio on the premises’,” he added. “The promoter waited in the parking lot for two hours and I couldn’t tell him why I was late. By the time the HOV was finished, the network we set up from Livenation had disappeared. Everyone was gone. I had to connect my phone to A computer is required to send the conversation to @ovo40.
Thankfully, they succeeded and Guru even made it to the after-party in time. “When you hear this work, I sometimes wonder if you understand what it means!!!” he exclaimed. “Classic night!!! I killed my group, haha.