Mike WiLL Made It stopped by FADER offices yesterday, after wrapping a South Brooklyn video shoot for "23," his single featuring Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa and a rap verse from Miley Cyrus, whose upcoming album Bangerz he executive produced. Before sharing some new music, Will spoke to FADER about Cyrus' contentious (and popular) performance, and opened up about his friendship with the singer. For more context on Cyrus' VMAs show and the response to it, read our take.
What other 20 year old is on Miley's magnitude? If she would have walked out on the stage and just been singing the song and been swaying to it, people would still say something. Like: Why didn't she twerk? I thought she said she was bout that life! She's saying she's the new Madonna, but she's too scared to take those risks? Oh she thinks she's too cool? A lot of times, people are watching stuff to critique it. So the best thing for her to do is go out and perform it how she wants to perform it, her vision.I heard people say the problem was her sticking her tongue out. I heard other people say the problem was her twerking, or her slapping the dancer's butt. I don't see what's wrong with butt smacking. Baseball players slap other mens' ass on the baseball field. Basketball players do it. But because it's Miley Cyrus and she's on the VMAs and she slapped a girls butt while dancing—who cares? The people who are talking about it probably play around and do shit like that with their homegirls.
Black and white, that's the country that we live in. When you see black fucking with white, you don't look at it like why are they trying to get the white culture? When white fucks with black, and it's from that high up, it's like what the fuck is she doing? Why is she acting like that? Miley got black girls on stage dancing with her. Black and white America—they don't like that. If she'd been up there with all white people, black people may have been like, Why is she working with all these rappers now and she don't have any black dancers up there?
I'm around Miley a lot, and I think she clings to what's real. A lot of people around her are white, and when I'm around her she doesn't walk around like, "Ayo wassup my nigga? What's good homie? What that check looking like?" She ain't talking crazy. She's still like, [impersonates Miley] "Oh this is so crazy! Oh it sounds so good!" She talks like a white girl. She's just not one of those white girls that looks at it like, I gotta stay away from those black guys. The thing is, she's all the way up here [raises hand]. She's Miley Cyrus, she's a big superstar in America. And she fucks with anybody. People don't understand that. Most people who are way up here, they secure themselves, they stay out of people's way, they're only letting certain people in the room, and they don't look at you the whole time. Those aren't real people, those are people that dove into the light, they're lost in this world. Miley's a real person that real people can cling to. Just because she fucks with black people doesn't mean she's trying to not fuck with white people and only take from black culture.
You can never keep up. It's a zillion people in the world. While these billion people are talking about this, these other billion people are talking about something totally opposite. You can't please everybody. As long as you make dope music, you're gonna have your fans. Next year, watch somebody else do something crazy on the VMAs, so they can get that much attention.
