Mannie Fresh Confirms New Lil Wayne Joint Album 'The Fresh Files'

Last year, Mannie Fresh had revealed that he’s got a bunch of unreleased songs with Lil Wayne that he’s planning to drop as an EP sometime in the future.

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In a new interview with XXL (spotted at LWHQ), the veteran producer has confirmed that the “world is definitely going to get those records.”

“Hell yeah! People are asking when are we’re going to do this, but it can’t interfere with Tha Carter,” said Mannie when asked if the project will really hit stores. “We have to let it get to the point where they feel like now go ahead you can do this. I get it, because it’s not just him. It’s Universal and all of that. The label is like, because Mannie is your dude, we’re allowing Mannie to do this. It ain’t got nothing to do with Universal. It would be purely just me. The world is definitely going to get those records. If I could’ve put it out with Universal it would’ve been out.”

Speaking on the upcoming 20th anniversary of Lil Wayne’s debut album The Block is Hot, Mannie revealed the songs will have a pure feeling to them, without engineers touching it too much. “I feel like it’s the Wayne that people want to hear. The format of those songs are even different from the two that are on this album. The format on “Start This Shit Off Right”—that wasn’t the way the song was put together. There were some people that felt it was too musical and they dumbed the song down.”

“On the project that I’m putting out, you’re going to get the version of how the song was before it was touched. When you do something with people, you have to compromise. By no means am I arguing with it. At the end of the day, that’s Wayne’s baby. Tha Carter is his thing. I get it. Tha Carter was important to him. Wayne was gone for so long, so I knew why he was so protective of how he did this one. The cool thing is that there are some diehard Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne fans that want to hear Wayne over Mannie Fresh beats without engineers tampering with it or without a room full of people going, ‘It would be cool if we moved this here.’ So the ones you’re getting from me are the way Mannie Fresh would have did it. They are unreleased songs. Shit, I got about two albums worth of songs on Wayne.”

The New Orleans producer, famously known for shaping Cash Money’s sound, produced two records on Lil Wayne’s last album Tha Carter V — ‘Start This Shit Off Right’ which also featured Ashanti, and ‘Perfect Strangers’.