Following the release of their acclaimed Alfredo album, Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist took some time to connect with Ebro Darden for an interview on Apple Music’s Beats 1. Off the top, Ebro takes a moment to congratulate Alchemist for the role he’s been playing in helping the “purist” resurgence, laying down albums with Conway, Freddie Gibbs, and Boldy James.

“I need a new phone,” laughs Al. “I mean, I feel blessed. You know how long we’ve been doing this, and I’ve been pretty stubborn for a bunch of years. I guess the stubbornness is starting to pay off a little bit. I’m just sticking to my guns and trying to make good contributions, make some quality rap. And I have access to some of the best rappers, in my opinion.”

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“Alchemist is one of my favorite producers,” chimes in Freddie. “Definitely the producer of the year this year, dawg. He killing it. Everything he do is classic.” He reveals he’s been thinking about Alfredo for ten years, though only now has gotten around to doing it. “I think this album is speaking to the times we in, as well as giving a different look at rap.” 

“If something can loop for one bar and not get too boring, that’s magic to me,” continues Alchemist, speaking on his process. “Sometimes it’s not about the intricacies, but it’s about the mood. Especially with a rapper like Freddie — you’re listening to every word he’s saying, the pockets he’s rhyming in. In some songs I felt Freddie was the drum. On “Look At Me,” Freddie was the drum. I didn’t even need to put a drum on there, he gave me the rhythm of the song.”

Check out the full interview, courtesy of Apple Music’s Beats 1, below. Are you still bumping Alchemist and Freddie Gibbs’ Alfredo?

Given that Future and Juice WRLD previously linked up for a collaboration album called WRLD On Drugs, it’s clear that the pair possessed a strong sense of creative camaraderie. Unfortunately, Juice’s untimely death left Future mourning his young collaborator, a loss he still carries to this day. Speaking with Zane Lowe of Beats 1, Future took a moment to dete from talking High Off Life to pay respects to Juice WRLD, opening up about the young rapper’s legacy as he sees it.

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“It was like working with a different breed,” he explains, reflecting on their time recording together. “It’s something different. Juice one of them, like I say, you know, he had the answers for it. They had an answer for this. It was special. I know it was a special moment. I’m like, “Wow, this is a special fucking moment,” without a doubt. That was one of them things, man, I’m still writing on, I’m still working out. Let’s try to perfect it. And the way I see it perfecting of like, how can I put into words of what was happening with… Why it happened, how it happened?”

“Anyone that got a chance to work with Juice, got a chance to meet a man, especially, it’s a blessing,” he continues. “Just working with him. He’s a great kid, a special kid. He just want to know more. Sitting around say, just trying to figure out everything and having an answer to everything, man.”

Be sure to check out the full interview below. Aside from discussions on Juice WRLD, Future also opens up about the meaning behind his latest album, as well as a variety of other topics. In the meantime, sound off below — have you been keeping High Off Life in steady rotation?

Future spoke with Zane Lowe, Saturday, about working with Young Thug, Future, and his new album, High Off Life, for Apple Music's Beats 1.

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"That's my twin," Future says about Thug during the interview. "There's me and then there's him. ... When you mention Thug you mention me. It's like one."

Young Thug is featured on "Harlem Shake" off of Future's new album.

Future is fresh off the release of his brand new album High Off Life. The Atlanta rap superstar dropped the new body of work today, including features from Drake, DaBaby, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Youngboy Never Broke Again, and more. The project was certified gold in the minutes following its release and, in order to spread the good word, the Fire Marshall dropped by Apple Music to speak with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio.

Touching on several hot topics surrounding the album, including his new track “Accepting My Flaws,” his constant evolution as an artist, and more, Future also gave a rare admission about his children, predicting that they’ll all be big stars one day.

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“I’m just a studio junkie. It’s just what I am, I don’t love nothing else but making music,” said Future before touching on his family. “Jackson 5. Some Jackson 5 shit. Marley. Marley. More like Bob. Man, 1000%. All my kids, bosses, because I’m a boss. So one thing about that, you just create bosses. You got DNA. And their DNA, there’s boss in their DNA. So it’s a problem.”

With all the headlines this week about Future being confirmed as the father of 1-year-old Reign Wilburn, Eliza Reign’s daughter, it’s nice to see him praising his little ones. Do you think they’ll form a rap supergroup one day, as he envisions?

Billie Eilish has been working on new music during her time in quarantine, the singer told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe.

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“We’ve been in the ‘stu,’ which just means Finneas’ basement, basically. We actually, we wrote a whole song in its entirety—an entire song, which is kind of rare for us. I really love it. It was like exactly what I needed to say when we wrote it.”

She goes on to say she feels great despite the situation: “Honestly, I feel great,” she says. “The song I was talking about earlier that we wrote a couple weeks ago that felt so right was … I wish I could sing it for you, but I can’t. It was just about, there was this part in it—I needed to say this—which was I know I’m supposed to feel unhappy right now because of this break and because I’m not seeing anybody … I feel like there’s this kind of thing that I feel like is floating around of like you’re supposed to be missing people. You’re supposed to be missing this person and be missing people in general. I kind of have this feeling of like, I miss my really close friends, I miss people, of course I do, but I also at the same time am liking the space.”

Eilish’s Beats 1 radio show Me & Dad Radio debuted May 8.

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Several months ago, 50 Cent revealed that he would be stepping up as the executive producer of Pop Smoke’s first posthumous album. The Brooklyn rapper had been working on so much new music before he was tragically murdered at the start of the year, and 50 Cent made it his personal mission to bring the rapper’s mother to an award show to fulfill Pop Smoke‘s prophecy. 

The album is set for a release this month and, according to Fiddy, that’s still the plan. However, he will need to hunker down and get all of the featured artists to send their verses back pronto. During a new interview with Ebro Darden on Beats 1 Radio for Apple Music, Fif offered an update on the album.

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“We’re definitely gonna make the date,” he said, revealing that things are still on schedule. Noting that he still needs to get some collaborations back, 50 Cent said that he only wants things to happen organically. 

“I definitely want to get Roddy Ricch and a few of the people that I know that would fit on these records organically,” he said. “I’m going to send it to them and I’m going to say, ‘Play it. Listen, if you don’t just feel like this is it, don’t even touch it. Please send it back, delete, and just move on.’ Because he had so many pieces set up that were so good that it’s not tough to put it together.”

The album is set to release later this month. What are you expecting from it?

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While Kanye West and Jay-Z’s creative partnership has taken a few hitches following the release of 2011’s classic Watch The Throne, one thing has endured — the music they made during their brief but spectacular reign. And while both rappers obviously contributed to the album’s success, the work of the producers should not go uncelebrated. As Mike Dean was involved in the creation of several key Watch The Throne tracks, including the Hit-Boy produced “N***as In Paris,” he recently opened up about some of his favorite moments behind-the-scenes.

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Speaking on Beats 1, Dean cited his work on the smash hit to be the “boldest” production work of his career. “The “Paris” record from Watch The Throne, we were pushing boundaries, making samples out of Jay-Z and chopping them up,” he recalls. “That was one of my first dope-ass endings. I went in the studio one day, had a hangover, and I kind of felt like how that ending sounds.”

To think, it wouldn’t have been possible were it not for Plain Pat, who introduced Dean and Kanye to begin with. He reveals that the pair originally connected after they both produced on Scarface‘s The Fix abum, with Kanye having laced the iconic “Guess Who’s Back.” From there, Mike and Kanye developed an appreciation for one another, and a longstanding creative relationship was forged as a result. Check out the full interview below. 

Though Doja Cat has seemingly become a master of social media, her relationship with it feels somewhat masochistic at times. As she tells Zane Lowe, she believes Twitter to be “a cesspool and the worst thing that ever was created,” a conclusion no doubt fueled by a recent scuffle she found herself inadvertently thrust into. You may recall last week when an army of Barbz picked up their pitchforks and deemed it high time to cancel Doja’s name, all because of a single misunderstanding gone awry.

Today, Doja took some time to chop it up with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, where she explained her side of the story. “Okay, so there’s someone who’s verified on Twitter and they’re not even a stan account or anything,” she explains. “They’re just some random guy who was just, he saw this art that someone drew of me, Nicki and Meg, in that order. So Nicki was in the middle and it was a Rolling Stone cover, but Nicki was in the middle, rightfully so. Meg was on the right and I was on the left and this guy commented, “I’d like to see Doja in the middle.” 

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After his comment promoted major backlash from a gaggle of offended Barbz, Doja felt compelled to step in and defend him from the increasingly vitriolic cyberbullies. “I say, “Dude, stop responding to these people,” she continues. “They’re scum. They’re so awful. Stop talking to them. They have nothing good to say to you or anybody else.” So anyway, I’m standing up for this guy and then I’m just getting upset with everybody. And then I said, “These people are idiots. They’re children, they’re scum.” Because they were, those five people are scum. They suck. They literally suck. They don’t even know who they are.”

“And basically, so then people started spinning it, of course, because that’s the internet,” explains Doja. “They start spinning it that I’m talking about every single person who likes Nicki Minaj when they don’t even know I’m the biggest Nicki Minaj fan. So they’re stupid. They don’t even know me. So they’re saying things that they have no idea what they’re talking about. But that’s basically how that panned out.”

For more from Doja, including her early days following underground rappers like Aesop Rock, Atmosphere, and Immortal Technique, check the entire episode of At Home With Zane Lowe. 

Westside Gunn is having an interesting year to say the least. On one hand, the Griselda rapper recently dropped off the critically acclaimed Pray For Paris, an album many have already deemed his best yet. On the other, Gunn found himself sidelined by the coronavirus for weeks before ultimately emerging as a fully recovered survivor. During a call with Ebro Darden, Gunn detailed his experience battling COVID-19, a fight he claims “almost took him out.”

“I’m feeling good now, these short breaths, this shit was like a tornado through my chest,” he muses. “I smoke a lot so I’m trying to build my lungs back up. I was going to go out for a walk, but even when I went outside to do that, I was like nah let me wait another week. Next week, I’ll probably try to walk for 30 minutes.” When Ebro inquires how serious things got, Westside turns the camera on a small machine he uses five times a day to help with his breathing.

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“At first I was in LA, we went out for dinner, I had signed a new artist Armani Ceaser,” he reflects. “It was my daughter’s birthday. The next day, I woke up and it’s cold in the house. But I woke up sweating. Something not right, and everybody talking about corona. And I won’t front, I was one of those dudes joking about it. Man, this the government! [laughs] We just making jokes all day about this shit.” He soon realized that the sickness was serious, and he planned on making his way back to his Atlanta home. “First I stayed in bed for two days, let them enjoy LA, they were on vacation. But that plane damn near took me out. When I made it back, I went to urgent care — I know some ladies up in there.”

After getting an inhaler and a prescription for Zipac, Westside admits he did start feeling better. “But then I started smoking,” he says. “Benny came over, he wanted to chill. We smoking back to back. The next morning, I hit my wake and bake, bro I couldn’t even get off the couch. Something just hit me. I FaceTimed my family, they didn’t pick up. I could breathe but the whole room was spinning. I couldn’t even lift my head off the couch or nothing. I got enough legs to open up the door, basically damn near collapsed. Security had to get me, carry me to the wheelchair. I was like ‘I can’t breathe!'”

For more from Westside Gunn, be sure to check out his full conversation with Ebro Darden below. Have you been enjoying Pray For Paris? 

Fresh off the momentum of the wild and rambunctious Quarantine Radio, Tory Lanez came through in the clutch with his bar-heavy album The New Toronto 3, a project many fans are already praising among the year’s best. Following its release, Tory hit up Ebro for a conversation on Beats 1, dropping a few interesting tidbits about his future trajectory as a free agent.

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When Ebro remarks that Tory wasn’t really in his R&B bag for this go-around, the rapper admits he’s been hoarding some of his best records. “I’m out the label, bro,” says Tory. “I’m gone. I’m out. I’ve already recouped my publishing deal, my album deal. I exceeded five albums. This is the last one, and I want to give them a mixtape. I don’t want to give the label I was with at the time, not the label but the team I was with, I didn’t want to give the team those records I felt were my Earth Changing records. That’s why I haven’t released any of my golden songs.”

“The closest thing to that was when I released The Chixtape 5. This one is a similar situation in that I’m giving a little bit more effort,” says Tory. “It’s past the standard I needed it to be at for me to feel comfortable with it. It’s just enough to let them have this and it’ll still be good enough. It’s still good records on there, it’s not bad records.” An interesting take, but an understandable one to a degree – the only question is whether Tory will be able to outdo himself even further on his first independent release. In any case, we look forward to seeing his attempts.

For more from Lanez, including his recording process, his love of storytelling, and of course Quarantine Radio, check out the full clip below.