After cracking the Hot100 with his Disney song, DwayneJohnson delivers some surprising bars in TechN9ne's new single 'Face Off'.
"Our goal was to create a song that got people's heart rate up just a little," Johnson tells Billboard of"Face Off," his team-up with Tech N9ne and his Strange Music crew.
What have the past few days been like for you, in terms of and hearing from your fans and people experiencing this type of music from you for the first time? I’ve watched a lot of YouTube reaction videos, so you're watching these people watch the video and listen to the song — and they know that I'm coming in as the anchor! [So there was a lot of [people] like, “Ohhh, s--t. This is either going to be f--king horrible, or hopefully, pretty good.”Tell me about the process of creating your verse -- batting cleanup on this song with such gifted technical rappers.
For example, we knew that we were going to end on [the phrase] “extreme mana.” I’m half-Black and Samoan, and in my Polynesian culture, “mana” means spirit, a power and a force that we all have within. So we knew we were going to end there, and we worked backwards. It was a great learning experience for me, from the master.
Because this music speaks to me, and I think his music speaks to a mass, yet specific, audience in hip-hop — who love and embrace the rush, who want that fire, who want that aggression. This was Tech’s idea. He came to me last year and said,"I've been working on this.I don't know, I think it could be something big and I think we could align on this.” When he pitched me that idea, I said, “I'm in. Let’s figure it out.