Just Blaze was slated to record with longtime collaborator Jay Z on the recently released Magna Carta Holy Grail, but several things prohibited the producer from placing beats on the album.
“I haven’t really talked about this publicly,” Just Blaze says during an interview with New York radio station Power 105.1. “He came to see me before he started the album and was like, ‘Yo, we haven’t gone in. We’ve got to make this happen.’ So, he came in the studio, came Uptown and we decided on seven joints we were going to do. Then I left and went on tour. I was [gone] for like three months. He was hitting me like, ‘Yo, don’t give those to nobody. Don’t give them to nobody.’ So I went on the road and by the time I had gotten off the road, he had changed directions on the album. So he was like, ‘Come down, come down. Let’s work this out. I want to do some new records.’ But I was in and out of town. I was doing like three or four shows a week at that time. It’s tough being a touring deejay.”
Just Blaze says that he couldn’t cancel his deejay gigs, so he met with Jigga as soon as he could.
“We tried to make the connect happen after I got off the road, but at that point, he was so far into the album and it was like a week left,” Just Blaze says. “I’m like, ‘I don’t work well like that,’ especially not with him. Because we have that legacy, I can’t just go in and just make anything real quick and be like, ‘Yo, here. Take this.’”
Beyond the scheduling problem, Just Blaze says that another issue arose once he and Jay Z got together.
“We just didn’t find that zone,” Just Blaze says during the interview. “The thing with me and Jay is I think we spent the last couple of years chasing ghosts, meaning the ghosts of ‘P.S.A.’ and ‘U Don’t Know.’ I was around when he was working on the album.”
Timbaland, Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, Pharrell Williams, Mike Dean, Swizz Beatz and Hit-Boy were among the producers who contributed to Magna Carta Holy Grail.
Just Blaze says during the interview that the some of the beats Jay Z said he wanted have been given to other artists and that Jay Z may still use some of the others on his next album.
