French Montana Credits Taylor Swift’s ‘Hustle’ as the Inspiration Behind His 126-Song Mixtape

Game recognizes game. After seeing Taylor Swift drop “eight versions of her album,” French Montana took a page out of her book.

Montana, 39, explained why he released five versions of his latest mixtape, Mac & Cheese 5, when speaking to TMZ on Friday, February 23. There are explicit, clean, sped-up, slowed-down, a capella, and instrumental versions of the release, resulting in 126 different songs. Some fans have objected to this overwhelming drop, but Montana says Swift, 34, was the inspiration behind it all.

“Taylor Swift dropped eight versions of her album. I'm just learning the hustle from them,” he said. He also explained the method behind this madness. “My fans always love my beats, so I dropped the instrumental. I dropped a capella for all the DJs that like blending and I dropped clean. I dropped the sped-up one because of TikTok, and I dropped the chopped and screwed. So people can stop asking me for all different types of versions, and I guess all those songs equaled out to 126 songs.”

Montana also said he was “watching everybody doing it,” adding that “a bunch” of big stars often release different versions of their records. “I see them just put out instrumentals and all that,” he continued. “I'm like, ‘How come it's so easy to find this?’ and when I went on their page and I saw they had six different versions, I was like, ‘They're geniuses.’”

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As Montana said, Swift often drops multiple editions of her albums. For example, Midnights, her last non-rerecorded album, had four different colored vinyl releases: jade green, blood moon, mahogany and the Target-special lavender edition. Each edition came with unique cover art, and if a fan bought all four, they’d discover that the back artwork formed the face of a clock (tying in with the album’s “time” theme).

Similarly, Swift’s upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department, will have multiple editions when it arrives on April 19. So far, Swift has announced four different versions. There’s the standard, with 16 songs, while the other three come with a different bonus song (“The Manuscript,” “The Bolter” and “The Albatross”).

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Swift’s fans have been speculating about the album based on the track list and the title. There is a popular theory that The Tortured Poets Department is a nod to Swift’s ex Joe Alwyn, who revealed in a December 2022 interview with Paul Mescal that they have a group chat with Andrew Scott called “The Tortured Man Club.” The rest of the Tortured Poets Department rollout has led fans to think that the album will detail Swift and Alwyn’s breakup.