Quincy Jones III says Michael Jackson turned down working with Tupac out of loyalty to The Notorious B.I.G.
Quincy “QD3” Jones III, son of the legendary Quincy Jones, says that Tupac’s team reached out to Michael Jackson in hopes of him appearing on “Thug Nature,” but the collaboration never came to fruition because of The Notorious B.I.G. QD3 recalled the incident during BET’s oral history of The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory.
“So I set up a meeting at Neverland [Ranch],” Jones III explained, as noted by HipHopDX. “I go up there and told Michael about it. And do you know what Micheal said? He liked Biggie.”
“Thug Nature,” which samples Jackson’s 1983 Thriller hit “Human Nature,” ended up being scrapped from The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory entirely. It wasn’t until the 2000 Death Row compilation, Too Gangsta For Radio, that “Thug Nature” saw the light of day.
Continuing with BET, Jones III described what it was like working with the late west coast legend. The two collaborated numerous times, including All Eyez On Me‘s “Heaven Ain’t Hard 2 Find.”
“‘Pac would take all my beats including the ones I would never play for people,” he said. “I learned a lesson that you gotta be spontaneous more and he taught me how to just think and just do it. ‘Pac would get irritated when you sat there and fiddled with sounds almost like you were disrespecting his time a little bit.”
He added: “I would say he was manic. There would be moments that called for quiet voice and candles and all that and he would be screaming and smoking Newports. He was on fire with this manic push. He was always pushing. You could tell he wasn’t comfortable in some way and there was something that was making him uncomfortable.”
