HS: Mr. Hudson, thanks for taking the time to speak with me, how are you?
H: I’m good, man. Recovering from a medium to large night in Manhattan – a lot of wine and cigarettes.
HS: Understandable, what kind of cigarettes do you smoke?
H: Unsure. Someone was just putting them in my mouth.
HS: Sounds like a dream come true. How did the show go? Were you happy with it?
H: Yeah, it was great, only our second show in NY but it seemed like everyone was there for us. It was packed and they seemed to enjoy it. We gave it everything we got. Recently, there’s been a lot of hype about me so I just have to go in hard.
HS: I actually stumbled upon you guys (previously Mr. Hudson & The Library) while sifting through some Jamie T. tracks on YouTube and instantly fell in love.
H: Ha, that’s funny man. People actually describe me as Jamie’s well-behaved big brother, ‘cause we sort of came out at a similar time in London with using beats and having different influences. He’s a good guy, doing really well.
HS: What was it like being a featured artist on The Blueprint 3 and how did you link-up with Jay-Z?
H: It’s nuts isn’t it. The connection was through Kanye but I think Jay had actually heard my music before Kanye. I think he heard of couple of my demos, back in ’06 - which is crazy. Kanye flew me out to Hawaii to sing on The Blueprint 3. I think he’d run it past Jay and it sort of came from both those directions. Kanye suggested it and Jay knew of me – so it was out of my hands, they decided it for me! And it was because of working on that album (The Blueprint 3) that I ended up working on 808’s and Heartbreaks.
HS: So The Blueprint 3 work was prior to 808’s?
H: Yeah well that beat was anyway. I think most of The Blueprint 3 is more recent but that was one of the first tracks.
