2 Chainz Details New Album with Lil Wayne, Bankroll Fresh Murder on 'Wendy Williams' [WATCH]

2 Chainz made an appearance on the Wendy Williams talk show this morning, March 7, to reveal details on the new album released with Lil Wayne, Collegrove, and also opened about the tragedy of his friend and fellow rapper, Bankroll Fresh, who was recently killed outside of an Atlanta recording studio.

On the heels of his latest album release, the Georgia rapper stopped by the Wendy Williams show to explain exactly why he decided to collaborate with "his favorite rapper" Lil Wayne, and chose to keep it under wraps until the release date. According to the 6'5" rapper, the original way of releasing an album is no longer successful since people have such short attention spans these days. He believes surprising people with a new album is the more effective approach.

"I just think that's the new way to promote and market things," the Grammy nominated artist explained. "The original way, the old way was to set a date to get the fans excited about...putting a project out. And then doing marketing and promo leading up to the album. But, today's youth - the attention span is so short that I felt like, that I could just put out an album and the impulse of it being a surprise album would drive them to buy the project."

Though the rapper didn't intend to set a date and do much marketing or promotion for the album, he actually did. According to Rap Up, back in November of 2015, the College Park rapper tweeted that a joint project with Lil Wayne was in the works. Although at time, the project's working title was ColliGrove, and later grew into the actual title of the album, Collegrove.

During the interview with Williams, 2 Chainz, who's real name is Tauheed Epps, explained how he came up with the concept for the title. "Collegrove is really like a word that I made up," he said. "It's College Park (GA) where I'm from and Holly Grove (LA) where Lil Wayne is from and we put it together and called it Collegrove." The "I'm Different" rapper has been updating his fans on how well the album is doing on his social media sites like Twitter and Instagram, and fans appear to be enthusiastic of the album's release, and have even started creating their own mock album covers, similar to that of the Collegrove album.

Though Epps is elated by the success of the album, the recent death of his close friend, Bankroll Fresh, has him reevaluating the purpose of his platform as an artist.

"He was an authentic rapper, trap rapper from Atlanta," 2 Chainz said of his deceased friend. "[He] touched many of lives, lit up every room he went to. [His death] was super unfortunate, super unnecessary, super senseless and it just made me want to just step up - use my platform for some more positivity."

Bankroll Fresh was shot and killed outside of the Studio Exec recording studio in Atlanta of Friday night, March 4, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Police are still in search of a suspect in the murder.

Tags

2 Chainz, Wendy Williams, Lil Wayne