Jeezy just released Pressure, his eighth studio album, on Friday, and he stopped by HNHH HQ to discuss the new project. In our conversation, he spoke of his approach to features, suggesting that he made an effort to include some solo tracks that tapped into the classic Jeezy sound, while also bringing in some other personalities to bring new energy to the songs.
"A lot of the features aren't really features," he argued. "They're things that I probably couldn't do myself, that I thought somebody else could do better. "Bottles Up" is featuring Puff, but he's doing what Puff do.... I kinda got the idea from Nas' "Hate Me Now," I thought it was a good song, but it needed that talk. And he's one of the guys who can talk that talk. I wanted to give my fans a body of work that was genuine but a little on another level than I would normally do."
At the end of the sit-down, Jeezy responded to some comments made by Joe Budden on a recent episode of Complex's Everyday Struggle. Budden argued that Jeezy was fighting a "quiet storm," and struggling to find the relevance he had with his early material.
"First of all, somebody else's opinion would never... especially not that guy," said Jeezy, laughing off the criticism. "He's a rapper, he's gotta figure that out. I'm relevant at the bank. I'm relevant at these mortgage companies. I'm relevant in these companies that I actually own stock and equity in. Listen, I never got into this to be popular, that's high school shit. I got into this to be wealthy, let's talk about that. It's called quiet money, but I don't know about storm."
Watch the full interview above.