Feds Watching

Album: B.O.A.T.S II: Me Time (2013)
Charted: 66
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from 2 Chainz's sophomore solo album features a guest appearance by Pharrell Williams. The producer-rapper said on MTV's RapFix Live that he and Chainz had been intending to collaborate for a while and finally got the chance right after the Grammys, when Williams went straight to the studio in his tuxedo. "He had a room full of all his folks and they were all in the zone," Pharrell recalled. "I [was] absorbing the air and the vibe, the tone, the pacing because everybody there was pretty much on a similar page. Immediately I started working on what that [vibe] felt like to me and that there's where the loop of the beat [came from].
    "It's that '80s ska, reggae, glass-of-wine type of feel," he added. "I just put the drums up under it and it just happened that way."
  • Pharrell kicks of the song with chants of "Tomorrow, tomorrow," before 2 Chainz delivers his two verses centered on his love of expensive products. "Dreads hang on designer everything," he commences, "Mr. Comme des Garçons, Mr. Alexander Wang." "You feel him in his zone," Pharrell told RapFix Live. "He laid his first verse and at the very end he said 'Feds Watching' - I was like, you have to go with that! So he went in and put down the chorus and it was amazing."
  • 2 Chainz told MTV News regarding the Pharrell Williams Caribbean-driven beat: "It just felt like it was something different, it felt like it was something that needed to happen. For me it was about of course staying comfortable but trying new stuff, and that's what I did rocking with Pharrell."
  • The song's music video finds 2 Chainz and Pharrell partying at the opulent Sheats Goldstein Residence in the Hollywood Hills. The palatial mansion has also featured in several movies including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Bandits, and The Big Lebowski. Pharrell also shot the clip for Snoop Dogg's 2004 single "Let's Get Blown" at the same location.
  • 2 Chainz told MTV News' Sway Calloway that one of his rhymes for this song created some anxiety. The lyric "put that rocket on that mother----in' prosecutor" was enough to cause concerns for Pharrell Williams. "It actually was brought up. Pharrell brought it up, and then the label brought it up," 2 Chainz told Sway. "Anything dealing with harming someone like that — an official — they not goin' for it. It's almost a cuss word; you almost can't say it, because this is a government official."

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