Post Malone failed to complete his Bob Dylan collaboration
American rapper Post Malone has never shied away from declaring his love for Bob Dylan, even boasting a tattoo of the folk singer’s face on his bicep.
Several years ago, Malone was given the chance to record a song using lyrics contributed by Dylan, thanks to producer Michael Cash, who explained the story to Rolling Stone. Inspired by T Bone Burnett’s Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, which featured artists like Elvis Costello singing songs based on unpublished Dylan lyrics, Cash wanted to make a hip-hop version.
After suggesting the idea to Dylan’s representative, Jeff Rosen, Cash received a text that said, “Bob’s going to write you something. He’s got something in mind that he wants to craft specifically for this.”
Discussing the lyrics to the song, called ‘Be Not Decieved’, Cash said: “It was talking about a loss of innocence. And what people are going through — disfranchised, kind of leaderless masses of children with no parent or guardian or shepherd or anything. It talked about going out and making your own way. And when you read it, honestly, it’s poetry. It’s beautiful.”
Malone was over the moon, heading to the studio to record the track penned by his idol. Yet, Cash explained that they had trouble finishing the song, stating, “It wasn’t a complete piece of music, but it was definitely a song. [..] It just needed to be finished.”
For some unexplained reasons, Malone failed to return to the studio to finish the track quickly enough, with Cash recalling, “Rosen said to me at a certain point, ‘Well, we’re just going to retract the lyrics,'” adding, “They just were like, ‘This should be finished.'”
Subsequently, the song was never completed, and Malone never got to release his Dylan-penned track. “A really cool piece of music got made, and then it just got weird. It got really weird,” Cash explains, although he hopes that “Mr. Dylan and Mr. Rosen give back the right to use the lyrics. I would like it if the record gets finished.”
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