Juelz Santana Clears Up His Lil Co-Sign: "I Don't Need To Just Say Wayne Executive Produced [My Album]" [Video]

Dipset's Juelz Santana has clarified his reasoning for linking up with Young Money's Lil Wayne to executive produce his upcoming Born to Lose, Built to Win solo album and killed the idea of needing a co-sign to generate interest.

Despite the speculation, Juelz denied leaning on Weezy F. Baby to spark the LP's buzz or give it value.

"I reached out to him, I thought it would be a good idea to reach out to Wayne and see if it was something he wanted to do," Santana said when asked about Weezy executive producing his LP. "He told me he was cool with it, but see, a lot of people think, 'What does executive producing an album mean?' To me, I know what it means. A lot of people may think I'm just using it to Wayne executive produced it. I don't need to just say Wayne executive produced [it]." (Real Talk NY)

He also vowed to drop the LP sometime this year but promised new music would drop if it misses the 2013 deadline.

"It's a certain result you want to get from putting out an album, you dig what I'm saying?," Santana added. "I feel like getting with Wayne, us together, we can get the results that I need to capture and I want to capture from putting out this Born to Lose, Built to Win album. I'm not just gonna send him records and ask him what he thinks and he's not just gonna send me records and I just do the records that he likes. It's not going to be that. It's going to be a collective, us figuring out what's the best way to be successful, have a great product that the people appreciate and like more than anything -- and get the results. Definitely this year, 2013. If not, then you'll just hear a lot of music from Juelz. It's just going to be non-stop ! from Juelz. This is like the platform to keep this ball rolling." (Real Talk NY)

In early December, Santana broke the news of Wayne's involvement on his long-awaited album.

"I went out to Miami to chop it up with Wayne. I actually asked him to executive produce my album, Born to Lose," Santana revealed Wednesday (December 5) when he sat on the red couch with MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway. It's been seven years since the Dipset lyricist released his last solo album, What the Game's Been Missing!, in 2005, and while Juelz makes no excuse for the long gap, he is ready to return to rap in a big way. First, Santana will drop two volumes of his upcoming mixtape series, God Willin', the first of which he plans to release in January. After that, it's album time, and working in tandem with Weezy has Juelz super excited. (MTV)

The New York-based Diplomat previously told SOHH he would not rush out the project.

"Born to Lose, Built to Win, that's the name of my new album and I'm used to getting nothing and turning it into something," Santana explained. "It ain't no Def Jam delay, it ain't no delay, I'm just waiting day-to-day, watching the game and paying attention. I ain't wanna rush an album, I wanna keep it relevant, keep all the pieces right there. I'm just strategically doing things and I don't want to just 'drop' an album. In this day and age, it feels like you gotta give people more so I want them to want for Juelz Santana to over succeed and oversee everything else, I really need to be there." (SOHH)

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