Pusha T Says Damon Albarn Imagined The Gorillaz Album As A Response To Trump’s Presidency A Year Ago

On Thursday, Gorillaz released “Let Me Out,” the latest single from their upcoming Humanz album. Mavis Staples and Pusha T are featured on the new track, and the Virginia rapper called into Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show to discuss how the collaboration came about. During the interview, Push revealed a surprising fact about Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn's return project.

Pusha T said that, when Albarn first contacted him about the collaboration in spring 2016, he told him “to conceptualize the album, you know, like the album’s a party for the end of the world, like if Trump were to win.” At the time, Trump had not yet earned the Republican nomination for president.

“I mean, I didn’t even want to think about it, but that did give me a very colorful backdrop into just being like, say anything and attack all issues that I wanted to attack and attack in the song,” Pusha said. “So when it really happened, I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ And then I started wondering like, what type of crystal ball did this guy have? Like why are you even asking me to even think along these lines? And he really did, man. He was first. I don’t think that he thought he was going to win, I’m not gonna go that far, but he definitely conceptualized this whole thing.”