S. Samuel
G-Unit's Lloyd Banks has opened up about the real motivation behind naming his upcoming Hunger For More 2 album after his 2004 debut.
Despite being the follow-up to 2006’s Rotten Apple, the “Punch Line King” feels this new project shares various similarities to how he put together his multi-platinum debut.
“Me personally, I just want to be respected, I want to be on the wall,” Banks said in an interview. “On the wall, before I’m dead. The Hunger For More Part 2, HFM Part 2 man, it’s been about three years since my last album. My first album came out June 29th, ’04, I remember it like yesterday. Part of the reason I decided to go with the title, HFM Part 2 was because everything happened to me, the [‘Beamer, Benz or Bentley’] record came and it was like, I felt the energy I hadn’t felt since the beginning and at the same time, I had the bulk of the album done because I was in a mixtape vein and I just wanted to get the ‘feel good’ records out, the club joints, the car joints, and then just push from there. And I just had so many similarities from there, from writing, recording on the road, like, I wrote ‘Warrior’ and ‘Fire’ in London and then I wrote a few songs in Amsterdam, some in my neighborhood, so just with me moving around like that, I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna go back to that because it feels like a new beginning.’ Crazy.” (Power 106 KMEL)
Last spring, Banks talked about putting the new project together while overseas.
“Yeah, I’m still recording,” Banks explained in an interview. “A lot of people don’t know I recorded the Hunger For More, the first album, on the tour bus. Just being on tour, hitting different countries and that kinda helped the process along. Funny thing is I just came back from the European tour again, so I wrote a lot of records on the road — of course [guest featuring] 50 Cent, Tony Yayo, I got a couple people I’m working with that would be considered to be controversial, so I can’t really let it out the bag. A lot of people I work with are going to be controversial because I haven’t worked with a lot of artists. Not because I didn’t want to…” (BET)
In March, he discussed how much of a role 50 had on his third solo LP.
“He’s actually heard a bulk of my records,” Banks said about 50. “A lot of people don’t realize that he’s still the boss. I look to him for that guidance and when there’s not many people to turn, I can turn left and see [Tony] Yayo and I can turn right and see 50. Both of their opinions matter when it comes to picking the records and vice versa. This just happens to be the first record that people have heard with me by myself. So that would probably be the only difference from the first two albums and me going into this album, that my first single is not featuring 50 Cent…As far off as people see Lady Gaga — her records are poppin’ so I don’t think that would be a problem. It would just have to be the right music. I like all different kinds of music to be honest with you.” (VIBE)
The rapper’s 2004 debut topped the charts and nearly went gold in its first seven days.
In 2004, Banks’ debut disc, The Hunger for More, opened at No. 1 on Billboard’s albums sales chart, with week-one sales around 433,000 scanned discs and it ended up spending a second-straight week atop its competition, selling close to 164,000 units. In 2006, his sophomore album Rotten Apple, with first-week sales totaling close to 143,000, fell more than 40,000 albums short of a chart-topping repeat and settled instead for the chart’s No. 3 position. (MTV)
The Hunger For More 2 is scheduled to drop Tuesday, November 23rd.
Check out Lloyd Banks’ interview below:
