The KickDrums Talk About Their Collaboration with A$AP Rocky & Lana Del Rey

After the preliminary snippet of a collaboration between The KickDrums in what Lana Del Rey and A$AP Rocky hit the internet a day ago, it was clear that “Ridin’” was going to be huge. Slated to appear on The KickDrums mixtape Follow the Leader which was released yesterday, the song was mysteriously left off which immediately caused people to speculate as to why. MTV recently caught up with the Brooklyn-based production duo to get to the bottom of it. Choice excerpts appear below while the entire interview can be read here.

Why did “Ridin’” get cut from the mixtape?
Well, we had like a general consensus to go ahead and leak it. I don’t think even the people involved had any idea it would have such a large impact in such a short amount of time. But A$AP really wanted to use it for his album and as much as we love the song and are super excited to put it out and are disappointed that it’s not out, we’ve got to respect that. If he wants to put it on the album, that’s that.

When did you hear that A$AP Rocky wanted to keep “Ridin’” for his album?
We didn’t hear anything from the label until literally not more than an hour ago. Basically, A$AP came through to record for the mixtape, so we had the song done and everybody loved it. The last I talked to him he was like, “You guys can use it for your mixtape and I’ll use it too for my album. You cool with that?” We thought it was perfect. Then when all the press came in [yesterday] that’s when the label stepped in …

Whose idea was it to pair Lana Del Rey with A$AP Rocky?
That was my idea.

Were both artists cool about the idea to collaborate?
The thing about that is, I had recorded the song with Lana Del Rey separately and it was open; she was working on her album and the album took a different direction so I had the song and I was like, “Well, what can I do with this to make it something that’s over the top so it’s not just Lana Del Rey on a Kickdrums’ beat?” The track would probably have never seen the light of day if the pairing between her and A$AP hadn’t turned out so good. So, yeah, everything was cool until literally today. But I guess that’s the way it goes.

A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey sound natural together on the song.
That’s why we were so excited about it, because you have two different artists … I mean, she’s a fan of hip-hop, and he’s a fan of hers, and the beat managed to just kinda bring them together. That’s actually the idea of this whole tape, the genre-bending that we as the KickDrums naturally do, ’cause we grew up with a bunch of different influences, like listening to everything from Nirvana and Pink Floyd Raidohead to Dr. Dre and Jay-Z. We kinda just fell into being hip-hop producers. I wouldn’t say it was by accident, but I’d always been in bands and Matt’s always been an electronic DJ, so we were always making different music. Then we put out a beat CD and 50 Cent ended up using one of the tracks for his album ["When Death Becomes You" featuring M.O.P. from the Get Rich or Die Tryin' soundtrack]. So from then on we were kinda well known as hip-hop producers.