Somewhere in a producer's hard drive sits an unfinished Post Malone song with iconic Bob Dylan's lyrics, Rolling Stone reported. In an interview with the magazine, producer Michael Cash revealed Malone was featured in a project with all of Dylan's songs where rappers would cover songs written by Dylan. This collection of songs was inspired by the 2014 collaborative album, "Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes" which featured Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford singing all of Dylan's unreleased lyrics.
Dylan's representative, Jeff Rosen allegedly said there were lyrics for the potential song called "Be Not Deceived" in November 2020. Malone, a major Dylan fan, heard the song when he stopped by Cash's studio in March 2021, thinking that Dylan also be present for the recording session. Half of the song was recorded in the session. Dylan's team liked what they heard but suddenly the producer could not get Malone back into the studio to finish the song.
"All I can tell you is it went from being something to be excited about to just turning into a circular, figure-eight pattern," Cash said. "Nobody had an answer."
No longer wanting to wait for Malone, Dylan's team pulled his lyrics out of the song.
"Rosen said to me at a certain point, 'Well, we're just going to retract the lyrics.' Bob and Mr. Rosen do things a specific way. They get things done in a New York minute, and then it started to become . . . Honestly, they just were like, 'This should be finished.'"
