Bob Dylan Thinks Twice About Giving Post Malone Song Lyrics Due To Recording Delays

A collaboration between Bob Dylan and Post Malone would pique the interest of music fans spanning generations. According to a Rolling Stone exclusive, Dylan gifted a set of lyrics to Posty for the latter to turn into a song. But when the composition failed to cross the finish line, Bob thought twice about letting the pop star use his words.

The Dylan/Malone project was the brainchild of Michael Cash, a producer who worked mostly in the hip-hop sphere. In 2014, Cash moved to New York’s Hudson River Valley — a locale steeped in Dylan history, namely for his collaborations with The Band in Woodstock with the most famous being the legendary Basement Tapes.

As the pandemic set in, Cash began thinking about a project inspired by 2014’s Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. Helmed by famed producer and Dylan collaborator T Bone Burnett, The New Basement Tapes saw artists like Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford and Rhiannon Giddens recording songs with newly unearthed Dylan lyrics. A friend of Burnett, Cash asked if he could do a similar project and the former said go with it.

With his background in hip-hop, Cash’s vision was to have artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Post Malone record songs with unreleased Dylan lyrics. Cash focused in on Malone, who is apparently a huge fan of the legendary singer-songwriter. The renowned inked artist has a tattoo of Dylan on his left bicep and also covered the Dylan classic “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” before he was famous.

!function ($) {

$(function(){ // document ready

$(‘.video-sticky’).stickybits(
{
stickyBitStickyOffset: getNavbarsHeight()
}
);

});

}(window.jQuery);

.video-content .panel-body {
padding-top:40px;
padding-bottom:40px;
}
.video-sticky {
z-index: 999;
background-color: #fcfcfc;
}
.honorable-mentions {
padding-left: 0;
margin-left: 1.375em;
}
.honorable-mentions li {
margin-bottom:5px;
}
.honorable-mentions .fa-li {
margin-top:-2px;
}

.video-summary-wrap table.glance-table.jambase-videos-songs-table{
background-color: #e2e8ef;
}

Cash reached out to Bob’s representative Jeff Rosen and received some encouraging news: Dylan would send some lyrics for Post Malone to craft a song to. Cash told Rolling Stone that upon reading the work titled “Be Not Deceived” over the phone, “Post was literally in tears.”

In Spring 2021, Post Malone decamped to Cash’s studio in the Hudson River Valley to record the song. While things got off to a promising start, Malone had to leave and the project was shelved. But as time went by, Cash’s hopes that the song would come to fruition diminished.

“…it just seems like nobody really managed expectations, and it just seems like nobody communicated,” Cash told RS. “A really cool piece of music got made, and then it just got weird. It got really weird.”

The recording delays also apparently dismayed Rosen and Dylan with the former communicating to Cash that they were going to “retract the lyrics.” Cash, however, is still holding out hope that the project will rise from the ashes.

“My hopes are that Mr. Dylan and Mr. Rosen give back the right to use the lyrics,” he said. “I would like it if the record gets finished. That’s basically my Jerry Springer final thought. So maybe it got weird, but this is two really important musicians that I feel put the work in and it needs to be shared.”

Source: JamBase.com