Quincy Jones Blasts ‘Haters’ Over ‘P.Y.T.’ Remake Criticism

T-Pain received a lambasting from Michael Jackson’s fans for remaking the King of Pop’s classic “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing).” The Auto-Tune King issued a fiery response to his critics and now the song’s original producer, Quincy Jones, is taking aim at those who have a problem with the reworked record.

“Today with Facebook and Twitter and everything, I have never seen so many haters in my life,” the 77-year-old legend exclusively tells staging-rapup.kinsta.cloud. “But it’s people sitting in their basements with their pants on the ground, just being haters. I don’t get it, man. That means they don’t have a life.”

The update of the 1983 smash from Thriller was produced by T-Pain and Mervyn Warren and appears on Quincy’s tribute album Q: Soul Bossa Nostra, in stores Tuesday. The music maestro doesn’t take issue with the way the song was redone. “The freedom in music is do what you want to do,” he shares. “I don’t think anybody should sit there and say you shouldn’t do that or you shouldn’t do this. That’s not up to me to say.”

While T-Pain said that he recorded the song at Mr. Jones’ request, Quincy offers a different take. “They volunteered. I didn’t choose them. I didn’t produce this,” he says. “Six years ago, Timbaland came to me with one of his assistants in South Beach and said, ‘We’d like to do a hip-hop tribute to all your old songs.’ I said, ‘Great, man. That’s a very big honor ’cause I’ve worked with a lot of the hip-hoppers anyway and have always been behind them.'”

Jones took a back seat when it came to putting together the project. “I just sat down with guys that were my friends and they called and asked me questions and so forth. I’m there for them, but I said use your own voice, but make it better than the one we did.”