It’s been a long time coming. After dropping over a dozen mixtapes and signing with Nas a half decade ago, Harlem’sDave East has finally delivered his official debut album, Survival.
“I feel like every project I name it based on kind of what I’m going through,” East explained to Billboard. “So, when I dropped Paranoia I really was paranoid, you know what I’m saying? I’d just gotten my deal, I was still living in the projects, I was still in the same mix, but people knew Nas had signed me. So it gave me a different feel.
And then I did the Karma projects, and when I did Karma I was falling out with a lot of people. I had the fame for a little while, and like day one friends of mine – we was falling out, over me being ‘Dave East.’ And so I had to just put in my mind that as long as I was nothing but good to a person, and that my heart was genuine, that I got good karma coming, and that there was nothing bad gonna come my way. You know what I mean? And then Survival — that’s what I’ve been doing this entire time. I’m surviving now, I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m trying to broaden my horizons, get into things that people don’t know me for. I feel like ‘survival’ was the one word that could tie all of that together.”
“It’s a beautiful project,” he continued. “A lot of people are familiar with my previous projects, but I feel like this one here is really gonna connect some dots of all the bits and pieces of stories I was talking about, I really get into detail on this album.”
Locked in at 20 tracks, including “Godfather IV” with Nas, the album comes equipped with contributions from DJ Premier, Rick Ross, The-Dream, E40, Timbaland (“Seventeen”), Mozzy, Fabolous, Teyana Taylor, and more.
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