Cordae is proud to say that he had the pleasure of collaborating with Stevie Wonder on “Can’t Put It In the Hands of Fate.” But before the song officially came to be, Cordae accidentally hung up on Wonder ahead of spending time in the studio together.
In a clip Apple Music shared first with Billboard, the rapper recalled the incident in a new interview with Ebro airing Friday (Jan. 28), and said the mishap occurred because Wonder’s number was saved as his birth name Stevland Morris.
“I got a phone call and my boy was like, ‘Yo, Stevie Wonder wants you to, like, pull up on him in the studio and work on a record.’ So I was like, ‘Done.’ And we connected and Stevie, he had me save his number as Stevland Morris. That’s his actual name. And I got a FaceTime one time, it was saying, like, Stevland Morris. I was like, ‘Who’s this?’ I’m like, ‘Who is Stevland Morris?'” the “Momma’s Hood” artist explained.
The 24-year-old continued, “It sounds like a great uncle, you know what I’m saying? … I haven’t met too many other Stevlands. So I’m hanging up on it and I’m like, ‘Stevland Morris,’ I’m trying to think, Stevland Morris, I’m like, ‘[gasps] I just hung up on Stevie Wonder.’ So I had to call him back.”
When the pair made it into the studio to record “Can’t Put It In the Hands of Fate,” Cordae said the veteran R&B-soul musician was incredibly hands on throughout the process. “If you hopping on Stevie’s song, he’s there every part of the way…it’ll be two days after I did the verse, he’s like, ‘Yeah, can we say this versus this? I think you can articulate your way better if you kind of redid this part versus how you did it,'” the rapper detailed.
Cordae added that the 25-time Grammy winner is an “icon’s icon,” and called him one of greats of the music industry. “That’s Michael Jackson, big homie. You know what I’m saying? You can actually put up a great argument that he’s the best artist of all time,” he said. “He’s top five, top 10.”
Watch Cordae talk about working with Stevie Wonder below.