59 “Betty Yung (Get Gravy Money)”
How did “Betty (Get Money)” come together?
I always thought [Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”] would be sick to do something with, I just never figured it was clearable. Somebody who had part-ownership of the rights to the sample hit me up like, “You should try it out.” At first, two of the three writers approved it, and one guy wanted us to make it cleaner — there’s a raunchier version, but the chant section at the end that’s the most popping got added at the last minute [as a result]. I love how it turned out.
You’ve said before that you don’t want to reach a “Post Malone-level” of recognizability. Why not?
Obviously, I want my music to succeed and I love seeing the numbers, but it would be nice if not everybody knew your face and you were [still] that popping. Anywhere I’ve gone recently, I get recognized immediately — it’s stressful sometimes. I just got invited to a birthday party, but they ran up on me with the cameras and the flash. They asked me how “Alley Oop” with Lil Baby came together. I made up a story that we decided to go on a boys’ trip to Tibet.
What can we expect from your new album?
[I’m] dropping it in September. It’s bigger than any other project I’ve done. There are not a lot of features — it’s pure Gravy. We did a lot of it from scratch with instruments to make our own samples and tried a lot of new styles. This time,
I’ve gotten close to the right people where I got a good set of producers and engineers to work with. Between the beat, instruments and intricacies of the lyrics, I really got better.