88-Keys Details Mumford & Sons’ “Dope As Fuck” Hip-Hop Project, Won’t Rule Out Marcus Mumford Rapping

Vivien Killilea/Getty

88-Keys Details Mumford & Sons’ “Dope As Fuck” Hip-Hop Project, Won’t Rule Out Marcus Mumford Rapping

Vivien Killilea/Getty

Earlier today we heard Mumford & Sons’ latest attempt to go electric, and now we’ve also received news on Marcus Mumford’s forthcoming plunge into hip-hop. NME spoke with 88-Keys, the rap producer teaching Mumford how to “chop up beats,” who is certain that the project will be “dope as fuck.”

Here’s how Keys and Mumford crossed paths (and yes, Keys really used the phrase “one fateful night”):

One fateful night, around 11.30PM, when I was heading to bed I got an email from a really good friend of mine called Izzy [Izvor Zivkovic], who also manages my best friend Kanye West. He sent an email saying that he had a really good friend himself who wanted to know a little bit more about hip-hop production and sampling and just the whole gambit of what producers do. He said he couldn’t think of a better person than myself, so he emailed the both of us and asked if I was up to meeting with his friend the following day. Any friend of Izzy’s is a friend of mine so I agreed to it. He told me Marcus is part of the band Mumford & Sons. I’ve always seen their name around but I’ve never actually listened to any of their music, only because I’m really completely tuned out of pretty much anything current, music wise.

Keys then described meeting the whole band in the studio and teaching them how to build sampled loops. He also mentioned working with them on a project he can’t disclose, hinting that their collaboration might end up on their electrified new LP Wilder Mind. That’s separate from what he’s working on with just Marcus, which Keys describes thusly:

I can tell you what it’s going to sound like, it’s going to sound dope as fuck [laughs]. It’s going to be he and I involved in it. Not to toot my own horn but pretty much everything that I’ve put my hands on production wise is pretty top notch material, with the exception of maybe my first beat that I placed in life, which was back in 1997 or so. He obviously brings a lot to the table as well. The masses obviously love what he does. Not to sound cliché but I would say that the possibilities are endless.

Keys even teases (warns?) that Mumford might even rap on this thing, which, woo! Who knows, maybe he’s a secret Samuel T. Herring.

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