Justin Bieber’s Swag collaborator Cash Cobain has hailed the pop star “mad cool”.
The 27-year-old drill star – whose real name is Cashmere Lavon Small – came to feature on the title track on Bieber’s surprise album after he shared his love for his track Trippin on a Yacht on social media and he slid in his DMs to suggest they work together.
He told GQ: “I wrote bro like, ‘We got to get some work in.’ So I’m like, all right, boom—took bro’s number down and then we was chopping it up for, I don’t know, a couple days.”
On the informal Swag sessions at Bieber’s home – which he shares with wife Hailey Bieber and their baby boy Jack Blues – he said: “I pulled up on him and in his crib. He had like, mad other producers, rap people in the room – like, it was people I know and s***, just creating and s*** like that. We was just sitting in a circle, [passing] the mic and just saying s*** on the beat. I was just saying mad dumb s***.”
Praising the Baby hitmaker’s attitude, he said: “You might think Justin Bieber would be on some other s***, but bro is mad cool. It was just natural…. He was just like, ‘Swag. Swag, bro.’ He on some swag s***. That’s [all] him right there.”
The finished song was the result of a day of ad-libbing. Cobain insisted: “That was just off the first day we met, for real.”
Praising the production, he said: “That s*** hard, especially that first song.
“That first song is like a ‘90s type beat. They went crazy—I’ve never heard nobody really try to emulate that sound.”
Bieber reportedly relished having “full creative freedom” over his new album.
The chart-topping star is no longer under Scooter Braun’s management, and he’s not “having to stress about creating the perfect single, or perfect album”.
A source told Rolling Stone magazine: “Breaking away from Scooter Braun and his team has been something that Justin has wanted for so long, and now that he’s fully free, he could finally share this album with his fans and with the world.
“Having full creative freedom, sadly, is something new for him as an artist. Not having to stress about creating the perfect single, or perfect album, allowed for him to create the best body of music he’s ever made.”