2 Chainz has been steadily building up an impressive discography, and while we've come to appreciate his studio albums and various guest appearances, the man's vault remains full of unreleased gems. Gems that we might never end up seeing at all. Now, this isn't uncommon for artists, as most rappers are relatively selective of what they share with the world. Sometimes, they find themselves grappling with uncertainty, wondering whether or not they should simply fire off their music on a whim. And when you're sitting on a Lil Wayne collaboration album and a full Statik Selektah album in the cut, things tend to get a little tricky.
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Speaking with Justin Credible and Sour Milk of the LA Leakers, 2 Chainz opened up about some of his upcoming projects, as well as the dangers of overthinking as an artist. Around the twelve-minute mark, talk of Collegrove 2 comes up, and 2 Chainz confirms that the pair have "actively working on an album" throughout the quarantine period. "I'm dropping a solo album before we drop our group album," he reveals. "But we've been doing that over forty times this quarantine. I'll see him this weekend, but we've been going back and forth, bouncing ideas and FaceTiming for at least four or five months now."
"When I got the ["Money Maker"] record, I told him I'ma put this on my solo, but he still knocked it out," says 2 Chainz, with a smile. "The rest is history." The conversation then pivots to unreleased material, and how 2 Chainz decides when to release his music in the first place. "You gotta understand, I record at least three songs a night," he explains. "Out of those three nights, me personally, the hardest critic on myself, I like one of them out of the three. So during seven days I may have up to literally five to seven songs that I think could be a problem. What happens to an artist, we'll listen to [those songs] so much that we'll get demo-itis. So the song I did last night is automatically harder than the one I did last month because I just did it."
"I forget I get hard drives full of smashes," he boasts. "Sometimes I'm always trying to think of a rollout. I'm just a thinker." He also reveals that he's been sitting on a complete album produced by Statik Selektah. "I've been sitting on it for two-three years," he teases. "It's just timeless. Every time I listen to it I get the chills." Sadly, he doesn't seem like he'll be dropping that one any time soon -- though given that he's got a solo album and Collegrove 2 in the pipeline, we won't complain too much. Check out the full interview below.