When Kanye West dropped his highly-awaited project Donda in late August, Don Toliver was one of few artists to make the final cut. While promoting his forthcoming album, he spoke to Ebro Darden about the collaboration and his experience working with one of his favorite rappers.
According to Toliver, he was initially “antsy” about getting in the studio with Ye for the first time, but the Chicago rapper helped to ease his nerves. “It was crazy,” he recalled. “That was, like, the one time where I was a little antsy about the situation, but he was cool. We were vibing, and he understood where I was coming from.”
The two eventually started “cooking” in the studio, but it was months before he even knew Donda was in the works.
“A couple of months before it really started wrapping up, the hype for it really started going crazy, me and ’Ye was already cooking in his little studio,” Toliver explained. “We were already making records. I didn’t even really have a full idea of what Donda was back then. I was just making records with him. Then I had just gotten this one call to pull up on him and when I pulled up, it was a situation where I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew he had made records prior to this situation.”
At the time, Ye sent him some songs, so he got to work. One of the many tracks he recorded was “Moon,” which ended up making it on the album. Though the “No Idea” emcee admits that the version he recorded sounds different than the final version, he said that appearing on Donda “was a crazy blessing for me at the end of the day.” Kanye later gave Toliver a huge NASA jacket as a token of his appreciation for the feature.
Toliver is now preparing for the release of his own album, Life of a Don, which is slated to come out on Oct. 8. The rapper shared the track list for the project on Thursday (Oct. 7), but features are not yet known.
See Don Toliver’s interview below.