Pet Shop Boys want to work with Cardi B.
The ‘West End Girls’ hitmakers – comprising Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – were thrilled to learn the ‘WAP’ singer is a fan of their music and would love to get into the studio with her, but insisted she needs to make a move for it to happen.
Discussing how she’s a fan of theirs, Neil told Rolling Stone: ” Oh, we like Cardi B. It’s because of her mother, isn’t it?
“There was a great moment—she turned around to some guy, an American comedian, on one of those chat shows. [John Mulaney on ‘The Tonight Show’, in 2018] She said, ‘You look like the Pet Shop Boys.’ And he did look a bit like me on the cover of ‘Discography’. He had a shirt and tie on, and her mother probably had ‘Discography’. It was a great moment, but we still haven’t done the collaboration with him.”
Told the “world is waiting” for a collaboration with Cardi, Neil added: “I think it is. But I think the ball’s in her court.”
Last year, Neil called out Drake for sampling ‘West End Girls’ without permission on his latest album ‘For All the Dogs’, but he revealed the situation was resolved swiftly afterwards.
He said: “I was driving in my car back from the supermarket, and my brother phoned me to say his son, my nephew who’s a Drake fan, said, ‘Oh, does Neil know ‘West End Girls’ is on Drake’s new album?” So I stopped the car and played it on Spotify.
“We get a lot of requests, so I thought, maybe we agreed to this? But this, I thought we’d remember it.
“I emailed our manager and she said, no, we haven’t agreed to this. So we put up a social media post, because we thought it was the best way to bring it to everyone’s attention.
“Within 15 minutes, our representatives got a call from Drake’s people, and they were very apologetic—in fact, they said Drake wants to speak to them. In the end, we didn’t speak to him, but the whole publishing thing was sorted out.”
And the pair are actually fans of Drake’s version, which features in a song called ‘All the Parties’.
Neil added: “But I like the way he sings it, though! I really like the track.”
Chris said: “I would like to know how Drake gets that vocal sound, because I would quite like to hear you singing like that.”
His bandmate agreed: “Yeah, we can never seem to get it. We need to know his trick. What is it—how does he do it? It’s a bit AutoTune, isn’t it?”