Fiona Apple, Kanye West, Beck Eyed For New Q-Tip Album

Carl Williott | July 2, 2015 8:52 am

Just a few months after Yeezus dropped in 2013, Kanye West had already begun talking about the follow-up LP. Soon after, in December of that year, Q-Tip claimed he and Rick Rubin were tapped as producers on the Yeezus follow-up. Yet here we are a year-and-a-half later, still without that project and without any solid details about its producers, Q or otherwise. But Q-Tip assures Billboard that he is collaborating with Kanye — only, it appears it’ll be for Tip’s next album.

The Tribe Called Quest vet says he’s putting the finishing touches on his long-gestating album Last Zulu, which he hopes to get out this year. And in addition to working with his G.O.O.D. Music boss West on the LP, he says he’s in talks to get features from Fiona Apple and Beck.

“Marsha Ambrosius and I have been writing, we have Beck, and talking to Fiona Apple, and some other singers — they’re all going to be singing the choruses,” he told the site. (No mention of Dr. Dre, though.)

Tip also assures fans that Swish has not been scrapped. “Rick [Rubin] and I were gonna do the record, and Kanye went through different phases musically, so we’ve yet to reconnect on his project,” he said. “We’ve met a few times and he’s kept me up to speed here and there on what’s happening. He’s done the same with my record. We’ve been talking about some ideas for my record as well. We’re still in step. It’s not like [Kanye] scrapped any of it, that’s a rumor.”

Now’s a good time to go back over the record of these two guys promising new projects. You might recall that Q-Tip also said that Cruel Winter was a go back in October 2012. And Kanye has already promised the album would be released within a year of Yeezus, changed its title once (that we know of) and promoted a tour film that still hasn’t been released. So with these two, they can give us as much advance notice as they want, but we’ll only know when we know.