The reason why Dr Dre was 2 Chainz’s most difficult collaborator
2 Chainz has been in the music industry for almost three decades, so he’s been around the block in terms of collaborating with producers. However, one name sticks in his memory as the most challenging person to work with throughout his career.
During a 2023 interview, Tity Boi revealed that he struggled to work with Dr Dre due to his attention to detail and the way he wanted him to pronounce certain words. Chainz told the legendary producer he had a teeth misalignment and didn’t want to be compared to Eminem.
“I was trying to explain to Dr Dre that a southern black kid with an overbite is gonna sound different than a suburban white kid from Detroit,” he said on Million Dollaz Worth of Game. “We’re gonna enunciate stuff different. He be like, ‘Nah, say it like this.’ It was such a great experience.”
He continued, “And he wants me to stack it. I might do one pass, just my voice… He like, ‘Stack it again.’ I’m not good at saying the same thing the same way… ‘Damn, this is five times. I don’t normally [do this].’ I could be on another song at my own studio.”
Despite their difficulties in the studio, Chainz stated that working with Dre was a bucket list moment and he could understand why how he became one of the most successful hip-hop producers of all time.
“I get why he is where he is,” he added. “He pays special attention to detail. He don’t go for the first thing that come up. He really cares. If I had to really zero down on the experience where the producer was literally sitting right here while I was trying to do my song, it would be Dr Dre, and I wouldn’t want it to be nobody else. I needed that experience – that was something on my bucket list.”
In another conversation on Drink Champs in 2022, Chainz admitted that working with Dre was a slow process. “I’m somebody that can do two or three songs a night,” he said. “But with him, it’ll probably take months to do that because of the process of just getting one verse done and making sure you enunciate things and make sure it’s clear.”
At the time, he confirmed the song with Dre hadn’t been released and wasn’t sure if it would ever see the light of day. While it’s unclear what song he was referring to, Dre was listed as a co-writer on Chainz and Lil Wayne’s ‘Presha’ from 2023’s Welcome 2 ColleGrove album.
In 2013, he also starred in a Beats by Dre commercial in which he destroyed a generic pair of headphones with a sledgehammer. ‘I Do It’ was featured in the advert and ended up appearing on his B.O.A.T.S. II: Me Time album, with features from Drake and Lil Wayne.