When Warren G met Michael Jackson: “I didn’t want to let him go”
Michael Jackson was a musical inspiration to a lot of hip-hop artists, and Warren G was certainly among those who idolised him. So when the chance came to actually meet him, Warren didn’t let it pass him by.
Speaking to HipHopDX in 2014, Warren explained how his meeting with MJ came about. He basically got a call one day, and the message it carried was a pleasant surprise: “Michael Jackson wants you to do some shit for him.” He wanted to make music with Warren, who, naturally, duly accepted the task.
“I went up in Larrabee North Studios [in North Hollywood],” Warren recalled, “and put together two tracks. He wasn’t in there, so I asked if they liked them, and it was like, ‘Shit, we love them. Do you want to go and meet Mike?’”
Jackson was at a different studio called Record One, so Warren made his way there. “I walked in the lounge where he was at,” he said, “and he was just a regular muthafucka, ‘Hey, what’s up, man? What’s going on?’ I was like, ‘Man, shit, I’m chillin’. What’s good? I just can’t believe I’m here right now meeting you.’”
Warren, in his excitement, pulled Jackson tight. “I hugged the n—a and everything, and I damn near didn’t want to let him go. Like, ‘God, I’m in here with Michael Jackson.’”
Not only that, but Jackson did apparently work on the tracks that Warren had made for him. But Warren never actually got to find out what Jackson did with them. “He did the records,” he explained to HipHopDX, “but they was explaining to me that when he do them, he puts them in the vault.”
The tracks were locked away, and not even the man who made the beat could hear them for himself. “I was just like, ‘Man, can I hear the shit? You don’t have to give me a copy. Just let me hear it.’ But I never got a chance to hear it.”
Warren could have gone down the legal route in order to access them, but he felt that would be a bad idea. “I didn’t want to send lawyers and shit,” he said. “I was like, ‘Fuck it. That’s Michael Jackson. It will come out hopefully one of these muthafuckin’ days.’”
It never did. Nothing ever came of the songs, but, presumably, they’re locked away somewhere. It is presumably disappointing for Warren that the songs never came out, but, all the same, the experience itself was special for him.
“That fucked me up,” he said. “I was like, ‘Damn I’m really something. Muthafuckin’ Michael Jackson called me. His people called me—out of all the muthafuckas he could have called—he called me.’ I just couldn’t believe it.”