Music

Kanye and Drake beatmaker threatens to leak tracks, says he hasn't been paid

by Jesse Locke

Scotland’s Ross Birchard (a.k.a. Hudson Mohawke) is a dizzyingly talented electronic producer who has worked for Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music label. There, he contributed futuristic beatscapes like “Mercy” before turning in productions for The Life of Pablo. The only problem is that HudMo hasn’t been paid, and could leak unreleased tracks from Kanye and Drake if they don’t cough up what they owe him.

The eagle eyes at Pitchfork first spotted the (since deleted) tweet with the producer’s threat:

Two days before that, HudMo made a hilariously flippant subtweet about “making careers for people who take my work, add one hi-hat and take all the credit” that may be aimed at similar targets:

Birchard has since backed off, explaining that his “wonderful friends and family” talked him out “exposing frauds in the biz” because he couldn’t afford “10 milly” for the legal consequences. Of course, he also snuck in the diss that “mainstream rappers have less business sense than ur mum” and casually mentioned that if anyone stole his laptop they would find “3 albums worth of gold.”

As tantalizing as those unreleased Kanye and Drake beats might be, we’re a lot better off having Hudson Mohawke keep doing what he does best (like the upcoming album from ANOHNI co-produced by Oneohtrix Point Never). Hopefully he keeps going with the snarky behind the scenes commentary too.