Lost Files: Unreleased Songs We Want to Hear
Gaga and K-Dot's duet and other songs locked in the vault.
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Lost Files: Unreleased Songs We Want to Hear - Pretty much the entire Internet is singing the praises of Kendrick Lamar's new album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city. Well, everyone except Lady Gaga fans. Gaga's "monsters" were no doubt disappointed that the pair's reported collaboration didn't make the album. Gaga and Kendrick worked on a song called "Partynauseous," but due to legal red tape and artistic disagreements, it wasn't cleared for the album. That doesn't mean we don't want to hear it though. In fact, we'll make it the first track on the following playlist of dope, unreleased music we'd love to listen to. Click on to check out the best mixtape you'll never hear. —Alex Gale (Photos from left: John Ricard / BET, Ian Gavan/Getty Images for Coty Beauty UK)
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2Pac's Sex Tape Banger - Last year, a sex tape of Tupac made the rounds. The 20-year-old clip features Pac receiving oral sex from a groupie while holding a blunt and talking to Money B. Honestly, that's not much of a surprise—judging from some of his lyrics, that sounds like a typical Monday for Pac. The real shocker was the unreleased track that was playing in the background. We're not the only ones who want to hear it in full: Beverage company NOHO offered $1 million for the rights to use it in a commercial. (Photo: Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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Nas feat. Frank Ocean, "No Such Thing As White Jesus" - This widely reported powerhouse collaboration between Nas, Frank Ocean—which New York Times writer Jon Caramanica, who heard Ocean's hook, called "what Nas needs right now"—won't ever see the light of day: The producer, Hit-Boy, lost the recording session on his hard drive. Back up your computers, kids. (Photos from left: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Heineken, Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
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Jay-Z's Primo-Produced Diss Track - In a 2010 interview, legendary producer DJ Premier revealed that he produced an unreleased Jay-Z song that features the God MC smiting old foes. "He was getting a little slick at a lot of people," Primo recalled. "I won’t even say their names. He said a lot of slick s--t about a lot of people from the era he was coming through when he was just coming out with Reasonable Doubt. He was airing them out and doing it properly. If he had done it, he would have been respected for it. He did it so dope, and so cleverly, and he was so witty with it. But he erased it, so it’s going to be a memory I take to the grave." (Photos from left: Shareif Ziyadat/FilmMagic, Brad Barket/PictureGroup)
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Jay-Z feat. Mavado, "Honor Hov" - According to a 2011 interview with engineer/manager Young Guru, who's worked on most Hov album and claims to have "four or five albums" of unreleased material, Jay-Z did this track with dancehall star Mavado—though Hov mistakenly called him Vybz Kartel in an interview on Hot 97—for Blueprint 3. (Photos from left: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage for Turner Networks, Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
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Rakim's Big Daddy Kane–Dissing "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em" - Rakim revealed in recent interviews that "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em," his 1990 classic with Eric B, originally contained lines that dissed Big Daddy Kane. Kane heard about the bars in question and called Rakim to smooth out the situation. Rakim removed the incendiary lines—we'd love to hear that phone conversation even more than the original version of the song. (Photos from left: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, David Corio/Redferns)
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Child Rebel Soldier's Unreleased Stash - Rap-nerd supergroup Child Rebel Soldier—Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell—released two songs, the mixtape banger "Us Placers" and Web leak "Don't Stop." According to Lupe, they got four songs into their album, tentatively titled God Unwilling, before things got off track. Where's a good hacker when you need one? (Photos from left: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images, Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images, Taylor Hill/Getty Images)
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Nas and Swizz Beatz' Life Is Good Outtakes - Swizz Beatz's one contribution to Nas' acclaimed Life Is Good, the party-sparking "Summer on Smash," stuck out like a sore thumb on the introspective album. But it wasn't supposed to be that way—the pair worked on other tracks for the LP as well. "We collaborated on a couple of other joints also—I had a fun time working my Virgo brother," Swizz told MTV in a July interview. "As a producer you're a fan of the artist, so you have stuff like, 'Yo I need him to do this.' [But] he missed out on a couple on this album." (photo: John Ricard / BET)
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2Pac and Boot Camp Click's Lost Bangers - Tupac and unlikely bedfellows the Boot Camp Clik—the Brooklyn collective that included Black Moon, Smif N Wessun, Heltah Skeltah and others—recorded an entire album, One Nation, intended to promote unity between the coasts. Aside from "Military Minds," which showed up on Pac's 2002 posthumous album Better Dayz, their bicoastal collaborations never left the vault. (Photos from left: Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Courtesy of WikiCommons)
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Dr. Dre and Ice Cube's Death Row Duets - Shortly after old N.W.A. homies Dr. Dre and Ice Cube reunited in 1994 to record “Natural Born Killaz” for the Murder Was the Case soundtrack, they announced they were making a whole album together. Needless to say, the project was never released, and The D.O.C., who had written many of Dre's verses for the work-in-progress, released his own takes on the songs on an album of the same name—supposedly to spite Dre and Death Row, whom he accused of stiffing him on royalties. (Photos from left: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival, Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Coachella)
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Center Edge Territory's Hidden Collabos - Currensy, Mos Def and Jay Electronica, who were all associated with Damon Dash and his Manhattan studio at the time, reportedly recorded six songs together under the random name Center Edge Territory. Considering Mos and Jay Elec can barely get it together to put out their own material, we're pretty sure this trio's random collabos will never see the light of the day. (Photos from left: Jason Merritt/Getty Images For BET, Johnny Nunez/WireImage, Warner Bros. Records, Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
