Macklemore's new album GEMINI will be available in a few hours time. One of its standout tracks is one that the rapper has been teasing for a few weeks now: the zany, energetic Offset collaboration "Willy Wonka." As someone who knows his way around a hit, Offset seems to challenge Macklemore to come with quotables and in-the-pocket triplet flows. The result is a track that should appeal to both artists' fanbases in some way or another.
Macklemore, who's always been someone who put his rhymes on paper before stepping in the booth, was impressed by Offset's studio approach. Plus, the two hit it off immediately. "I really like Offset as a person, he's one of those people [who] immediately he's the homie, we have a lot of common interests," Macklemore told Rolling Stone. "We got in the studio and at first I was like, 'Do you want to write to this?' And he looked at me like, What the fuck? He was like, "Write?! Nope." Just turn the beat on in the booth. Just like Yachty did and just like Jay does and Wayne and a bunch of other people, he just took it bar-by-bar every couple bars and freestyled that catered to the melody and put words to it and absolutely destroyed his verse. It's one of my favorite Offset verses ever.
Ryan Lewis is not producing the album as he did Macklemore's last two efforts, which is an approach the rapper also touched on with RS. "I think the biggest difference with this is that I wanted to catch a spirit," he said. "I didn't want to be doubting myself. I think Ryan is so good at finding what the wants out of people and bringing out the best in people. I think at times it can be daunting a little bit when someone's constantly like, "Nope, rewrite it. Nope, rewrite it, rewrite it." … It's a balance of both of us being heavy critics so we can make the best art possible. But with this project, I felt very inspired to just go in every day and try something new. And with that I gained a new level of confidence that I was lacking."
Look out for GEMINI to be released Midnight on Friday.
Quotable Lyrics:
I got more flavor than Willy Wonka
I took three bitches to Benihana's
I took a jet out to Punta Cana
She got her lips 'round my my anaconda