Jay-Z Pulls MGMT Into the Hip-Hop Game

Jay-Z's upcoming album, 'The Blueprint 3,' is stocked with R&B and hip-hop superstars like Rihanna and Kanye West, along with up-and-comers Kid Cudi and Drake. But the cameo list includes at least one unlikely name: MGMT. Jay confirmed Wednesday that the Brooklyn-based psych-pop duo will be heard on the album, Jay's first for Atlantic Records since he bought out his contract with longtime label Def Jam earlier this year.

"We were pretty shocked," says MGMT's Ben Goldwasser about being contacted by Jay's label to add flourishes to the album, due out September 11 (eight years to the day since the original 'Blueprint' was released). Goldwasser still isn't sure how producers will incorporate his band's sounds and he's still a little surprised they made the cut. "We kind of went overboard with it," he recalls. Goldwasser and his bandmate Andrew VanWyngarden received a Kanye-produced beat to riff on, but they decided to take the song in a new direction. "Originally, I think he just wanted us to write a hook for it, but we ended up making this weird vampire music," Goldwasser recalls. "We thought it was cool, but we were worried that nobody else would think so."

Fears now at rest, the pair recently contributed vocals to fellow Brooklyn transplant Kid Cudi's debut full-length, 'Man on the Moon: The End of Day,' also due in September. "We didn't do a ton of creative collaboration with him, other than just singing on the hook," says Goldwasser, who has high hopes that MGMT will work more closely with Cudi in the future. "We've hung out with him a couple of times and we really hit it off," he says.

With cameos on two of late summer's biggest hip-hop releases, MGMT are now officially a part of the rap collabo game, an unlikely stance for a hipster-beloved rock band from Brooklyn. "It's weird to be approached by all these rappers," says Goldwasser. "Cross-promotion is not something we think about on a regular basis, but in the rap world, that's how it works." Still, he and VanWyngarden are excited about the new friends they're making through the process. "Kid Cudi is such a cool guy," says Goldwasser, "and his album is really great."