Exclusive: Mr Hudson Talks ‘The Blueprint 3′ Feature, ‘Young Forever’: ‘We Were Just Showing Off For Girls’

August 31, 2009 by TJ
Filed under Exclusive, Interviews, News

Mr. Hudson

London-based singer/songwriter Mr. Hudson is already making quite a name for himself as the go-to guy to feature in hip hop. The charming platinum-haired crooner and producer got his big break when Kanye West allowed him to produce multiple tracks on his auto-tune love story 808s & Heartbreak. Hudson also lent his vocals to fan-favorite “Paranoid.”

Though Hudson has been “on his grind” for quite awhile — he started playing piano when he was 8, drums at 10, started songwriting at 15, producing songs for artists for a number of years, and released an album, A Tales of Two Cities, in 2007 with his former band The Library — he’s still excited about the “new crazy things” that’s happening to him.

Now the relatively unknown Hudson has landed a gig many can only pray for: a featured spot on Jay-Z’s long-awaited album “The Blueprint 3.”

“It doesn’t get much bigger does it,” Mr. Hudson told Neon Limelight Friday (August 28) of the opportunity.

According to Hudson, whose own album Straight No Chaser is due in October, the collaboration was a spontaneous request by West, who produced the track. “I think basically we were just showing off to a couple of girls in the studio,” he joked. But after an introduction to the girls and the rest of the team working on the song, West asked him to hop in the booth and sing something. The whole thing took no more than an hour.

“When I came out of the booth having done my vocal — while I was in the booth all the [G.O.O.D. Music] guys had come back from, I think, sneaker shopping and they were having a couple of drinks — When I came out of the booth [it was like] I had won the Super Bowl.”

“Everyone was like ‘Hudson, you crushed it. You destroyed the booth.’ I think those are both good things.”

Another fellow G.O.O.D. Music artist was there to congratulate Hudson on his feature: Kid Cudi. “Kid Cudi came up to me like, ‘Yo, Hudson, fam, you went in. You went in hard.’ I was like, ‘is that a good thing?’,” he laughed. “So apparently I went in hard, I crushed it, and destroyed the booth.”

Even after “destroying the booth,” Hudson wasn’t sure if the song would actually make the album. It wasn’t until the next day after a flight back to London with a nasty hangover following a night of partying that he got the news. “I woke up in London and then got this message saying Jay-Z loves it, it’s going to go on the album.”

You can hear Mr. Hudson go in hard when The Blueprint 3 hits stores September 11.

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