Dave East’s promotion of his sophomore album, Fortune Favors The Bold, has ventured into uncharted territory—specifically that of Pablo Escobar’s notorious Colombian Narcos cartel.
During a recent interview, the New York MC flexed how genuinely unique the plug talk embedded in his new album is by detailing his experience recording the project in one of Escobar’s drug cartel-controlled properties in Medellín. “We had the studio set up right in the crib,” East told Ebro Darden for Apple Music. “We actually stayed in one of Pablo’s stash houses.”
While East clarified he’s not inspired by the “destruction” the Narcos caused but rather their “hustle,” it appears he was also influenced by their style. “Pool inside the crib, some flavor, flavor, flavor crib,” East said in part. “But yeah, I did maybe 12, 13 records off the album in that house, right in the crib.”
It was apparently the epitome of when Hip-Hop meets high-level trapping, considering East says they would enjoy prepared meals and spontaneous dips in the pool in between sessions. “They had the chefs in there making breakfast, [I’d] wake up, Mike [of Mike & Keys] already be in there making beats. We’d get to that pool in the crib, jump in the pool,” he said.
The thought of East dining on refined, balanced Colombian breakfasts, likely complete with flavorful cultural staples such as Arepa con Quesito and Huevos Pericos, poolside at Escobar’s in-home grotto before spitting pure coke-flow bars is comforting, in a sense. It lets me know that East painstakingly perfected the powder talk and further confirms he emits similar frequencies Pusha T vibrated on during his chart-topping run last year amid his It’s Almost Dry album saga.
As if that wasn’t enough, East received even more inspiration in the form of interaction with Escobar’s one-eyed brother. “I met his brother, his brother got one eye, I guess they sent him some … He was locked up, they sent him some mail or something in the jail, and when he opened it it blew up in his face,” East said.
Long story short, if the bundle bars didn’t work, at least East had the option of deferring to his storytelling bag to unfold tales of his Escobarian exploits.
