I can’t find hard evidence for much right now, but I think it’s pretty evident that tinkering had to have taken place over its three year development period. Look at the timeline: It was originally going to follow up White and be done with Jake, then it was going come when PD eventually came in 2017, after that midnight was set to kick off the black era but then Africa got big in 2018, all until it finally dropped in 2019. Then there was some entanglement with the Sitek album in the later stages too but I don’t really understand that part of the story.

In interviews from 2017 Rivers mentions Runner-Up, a song which appeared on early versions of Black but not on the one we have. Feels Like Summer was intended for Black too but something happened and the album was delayed, so the song was instead put on PD. The MV is very dark, the song itself is modern sounding, and it’s the only track on PD produced by Jonny Coffer. I think junk I remember Rivers also mentioning that CKTH was written and recorded quickly in 2018 because they needed a single for the new Black. There’s a lot on the album that just isn’t anything like how Rivers described too, which I understand is common, but rarely to this degree. About half of our current Black album doesn’t sound “urban” at all and there’s like one sample used on the album. California Snow being thrown on the end points toward some meddling too.

Anyway, my point here is that the album was worked on for too long to have stayed the same the whole time. Black took three years to finish and producer changed numerous times. Jake Sinclair to Jonny Coffer to Butch Walker(?) to Dave Sitek to I don’t even know who else. Most of this info is from the Weezerpedia pages for Black, PD, and the songs on them. Hopefully this helps.