Hayley Williams turned down a collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert. Uzi has been a Williams stan for years, so the whispering voices of social media constantly added fuel to the fire that the two would be collaborating sometime in the near future. But alas, that doesn’t look to be in the cards. Williams revealed to Zane Lowe of Apple Music’s Beats 1 that her reasoning is that, simply, she doesn’t “want to be that famous.”
As the frontwoman of Paramore, Williams has long been in-demand for feature work. More so in her new solo era. “I get asked to do like features on country songs sometimes,” she said to Lowe. She then talked about a brief Instagram discussion with Lil Uzi about a possible collaboration after the rapper reached out. “I know that fans are going to be pissed at me for saying this, but I literally wrote him back on Instagram and I was like, ‘Buddy, I love you so much, but I don’t want to be that famous.'”
She then continued on, explaining her rationale for not wanting to get work with someone as big as Uzi right around the time that Paramore was going on a break. “I obviously had a lot of issues going on that no one really knew about and I was like, ‘Bro, I just need to disappear. I don’t want to be that kind of a famous person,'” she said. Her stepbrother, who’s a big Uzi fan, was “pissed” when she told him the story.
This isn’t surprising news, following the announcement of her international trek earlier this month (which she recently revealed may be rescheduled due to the global coronavirus pandemic) to take place at smaller venues than the arena-sized places that Paramore used to play at. “INTIMACY. these are small shows – I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” she wrote on Instagram.
So although Uzi won’t appear on Williams’s forthcoming solo debut Petals for Armor, that’s okay. Boygenius make an appearance on the recently released album cut “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” and further guest appearances, if any, have yet to be revealed.
The LP, that drops May 8, features the previously released tunes “Simmer,” “Leave It Alone,” and “Cinnamon.”
