Earlier this year, the most ambitious and unexpected collaboration dropped. A Post Malone collaborative track with The Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne and rap troubadour Travis Scott, ‘Take What You Want’.
Whilst initially, news of this unlikely collaboration caused a few eyebrows to raise. It ultimately spawned one of the most memorable tracks off Post Malone’s third record, Hollywood’s Bleeding.
Now, we finally have answers as to how the collaboration came about. In a new interview with Billboard, the track’s producers Andrew Watt and Louis Bell have detailed how everything fell into place.
“Post has been a huge Ozzy fan since he was a kid,” shared Bell. “This was definitely a dream come true for him.”
Watt helped instigate the meeting of minds after he crossed paths with Ozzy’s daughter, Kelly Osbourne, at a party and intuitively pitched the idea of the collaboration. According to Watt, there was immediate interest, but the execution lagged on.
“Kelly played him the tape and he loved it, but then I didn’t hear anything for a while,” Watt shared. “I kept texting Kelly over and over again, and all of a sudden, we got the text from her that said, ‘Dad’s going to do the song. He loves it.’”
When the collaboration was given the green light, Ozzy and Watt met at Watt’s Los Angeles studio to lay down a verse for the song. Osbourne wrote his part of the melody, and Watt laid down a meaty guitar solo. Post Malone wasn’t present during the studio session due to touring commitments.
“I recorded Ozzy on the track, laid the guitar solo that night and got Chad Smith from the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers over to play the drums on it,” recalls Watt. “Then I was FaceTiming with Post while we were in the studio, and Ozzy’s like, ‘Who the fuck is this? Are you talking with the bloody Post Man?’ And everyone’s laughing their asses off.”
Whilst the monolithic collaboration certainly surprised us, Watt has mused that the meeting of the metal and rap worlds was a natural marriage.
“The culture of metal music and hip-hop are very related,” says Watt. “You see kids going fucking crazy at a Travis [Scott] show, moshing, losing their minds — the same thing they were doing at Ozzy shows. This record in a weird way connects the culture of a kid at a hip-hop show wearing a Metallica shirt.”
Revisit the track below.
Listen: ‘Take What You Want ft. Ozzy Osbourne, Travis Scott’ – Post Malone
