Jay-Z only needed one take to record 4 minutes of spitting bars.
What many consider to be one of Jay-Z’s greatest verses ever was recorded in one take. Hip Hop fans have been raving about Hov’s verse on DJ Khaled’s “GOD DID,” and now his longtime engineer Young Guru recently revealed that not only is it a banger, but the rapper dropped it all in one take.
The verse even impressed Young Guru, who has been working with Jay-Z for about two decades now. According to the engineer, in all of his years working with Jay-Z, he had never seen anything like that verse. The track is off of DJ Khaled’s new album, which dropped last Friday, August 26.
“People think I’m still not amazed when he walk in and do these verses. And this one was different because normally, we’ll sit down, we’ll do a song, three verses, two verses or whatever, and he’ll have a verse and then we’ll figure out what’s next,” he said while speaking with Genius’ Rob Markman and GQ’s Frazier Tharpe.
He went on to say that the “Empire State of Mind” rapper walked into the studio, spitting the verse already. While he was rapping, he asked Guru to put the beat on so he could record. Guru shared that he did not have the beat at the time, and after Hov shared it with him, he began to loop it but was stopped by the New York native.
Jay-Z then told him to contact Khaled because he wanted the entire instrumental in putting the words to the beat.
He revealed that he also didn’t know Jay-Z had almost four minutes prepared and enough bars for his verse already.
“I’m just in amazement of watching him do this again at 52 years old. It’s like, I never stop being amazed. That’s why I tweeted ’cause it’s just like, ‘Yo, I don’t really wanna have a conversation after this,'” he added.
He was so impressed that he even Tweeted about it before the song dropped.
“HOV is the greatest of all time. This can’t be debated anymore!!!” he posted at that time.
