Pusha T ‘Dug Into Every Aspect’ Of A Heartbreaking Phone Call For ‘S.N.I.T.C.H.’

There are few celebratory moments on Pusha T‘s My Name is My Name. Even when he’s celebrating the good life on the album’s first single “Sweet Serenade,” he does so over a melancholic, dark sound bed. Songs like “40 Acres” and “Pain” find the G.O.O.D. Music dope dealer reaching into the dark recesses of his being. On the album closer “S.N.I.T.C.H.,” things get even more bleak.

It all starts with a phone call from an imprisoned friend.

“I had someone dear to me call me and basically tell me, ‘Yo, just don’t ever talk to me again… I love you, but don’t ever talk to me again. We ain’t never gonna talk again, don’t worry about it,'” Push told MTV News.

“S.N.I.T.C.H.” is an acronym for “Sorry N—a I’m Tryna Come Home” and the track reenacts a series of phone conversations from a friend, who elects to break the street’s no-snitching credo. It wasn’t until Pusha sat with his friend Pharrell Williams to talk about his stresses that the real-life situation became an actual song.

“I was just telling him about it, telling him about the conversation and he was like, ‘That’s the song right there.’ He was like, ‘as a matter of fact, that’s how you’re ending your album, right there,’ ” Pusha said about Pharrell’s production behind “S.N.I.T.C.H.”

Inspired by the Notorious B.I.G., Pusha gave Pharrell records like “Long Kiss Goodnight,” “Somebody’s Gotta Die” and “My Downfall” to give context on where he wanted to go musically. With his verses, Pusha reenacts the dreaded phone call and explores the effects that snitching has on the community at large. On the hook, Williams delivers a soulful jailhouse wail: “Sorry n—a, I’m tryna come home/ Well the walls are talking to me, and I know you think I’m wrong/ But sorry n—a, I’m tryna come home.”

For many artists, the recording process is a form of therapy, but for Pusha T there was little to no healing. “I dug into every aspect of these phone calls. I had to pull from certain instances and everything,” he said. “There was no resolve, there’s not much of a resolve. It’s just what it is.”