What makes it better working with Cole, side
by side, you can understand what he’s looking for in that moment. The whole issue with sending music out… It works, but you just don’t know what the
person is looking for. You know, I went to North Carolina back in
December and we found this sample and… you know, the rest is history. After producing “Kevin’s Heart” and
it being one of the only songs on the album that was produced by somebody else, I think
he trusted me as a producer more as far as the sound goes. Cole… He really produces. He really gets down with the whole production. He understands sonics and he understands drum
choosing. All that stuff. He just has a great understanding for production. To give you a little history on how this record
came about too, we didn’t make this in the Dreamville session. This was actually a month prior so pretty
much the last day before I had to fly back to Toronto. Interestingly enough, I never heard of Tracklib
before that. He really put me onto it. With Tracklib, you can pull up all the stems
to a song. The name of the record is called “Wake Up
To Me” and it’s by a group called First Choice. What you can do with Tracklib is you can isolate
certain things so I was able to pull up these horns and pretty much play them by themselves. I remember cole’s reaction was like, “Oh
shoot." "This is crazy.” The sample’s really fast. There’s so much happening and I felt like
we could slow it down a little bit so this is how the sample sounds in the session. I put some reverb on it to give it that effect
of it being a little bit more airy, a little bit bigger. From there, we started building the drums
out. Cole’s idea was to keep it really simple
in the beginning so he wanted the drums to be really spaced out and not happening too
much. So this is the idea that we both came up with. It’s actually very reminiscent of ‘KOD’
cause a lot of it’s very like you know… like stuttery kind of hats, very short but
rhythmic. And playing along with the hi-hats is a clap
sound, rim shot like perc sound, and a bell sound. The next move was to essentially build a kick
pattern and the 808. Cole actually already had the 808 in mind. He already figured out exactly how he wanted
the pattern to go. He had the rhythm in mind, you know what I
mean? He had the idea of it going from low to high. Because I have a great understanding of how
the music should kind of play out, I just kind of figure it out. This is pretty much the 808 and the kick coming
together in the song and this is how the bounce was pretty much. When the beat comes in and the 808 hits, it
hits you. It hits you really hard. The 808 is slapping. To add a little bit more energy to the song
when it drops, we added some hi-hats as well. There’s actually another perc sound that
we added. It sounds a little like this. We just heard it and it sounded like a vocal
effect. You know sometimes you hear like a, “Hey!” We also added a little snare that comes in
as well every once in awhile. Also, the snare is layered with the clap as
well so you hear an extra little hit that happens. The next move was to add some instruments,
some melodies. This is something that you hear in the music. It’s more predominant in the second verse
but it’s actually playing in the first as well. This sound is a sound that Cole loves in his
music. I think he used the same sound in “Window
Pain.” We added an extra sound as well that sits
in the background. You don’t really hear it until the end of
the record essentially but it’s playing throughout the music. We messed with this sound and made it kind
of like this background, sitting tucked, kind of vibe. Also, we added another sound. It comes in the hook. It’s like a really low bass-y sound. You can’t really hear it but you can feel
it. It’s a little bit more aggression in the
bottom so you can feel like a little bit more energy. It’s a big part of my sound as a producer,
my signature, you know if you listen to records like, “Swimming Pools” or “She Will.” It has that kind of low bass-y, kind of moving
paddish kind of bass. At the end of the record, we kind of added
this effect to make everything kind of sound dark. The brass is essentially warping. I threw this effect called CamelSpace over top of
the brass and that’s what gave it that whole effect. We added all these elements, added the brass,
all these melodies, all these drums, and we kinda felt like the beat was full. The beat was complete. So this is what the whole song sounds like
together. A lot of the record is like a statement record. It’s not meant to be this crazy song with
so much happening. We really approached the song with the aspect
of it being like, “Yo I’m about to run shit in 2019.” So this is it. It was very much a lot of his vibe as a producer
and my vibe as a producer. There were elements in this beat that gave
me feelings of some of the stuff from ‘KOD’ and then there’s a lot of elements that
I would add. We weren’t even thinking about it being
this whole middle child experience as far as even the production goes. It just naturally came that way. No overthinking. Just making quality music. He does this shit naturally you know what
I mean? Producer, artist, writer, everything. And I’m always creating so… we click up,
every once in a while. Adding all these extra textures, it pretty
much gives it a whole new bounce sometimes when you just add these little sounds here
and there. It kind of just makes you want to move. It’s very subtle ideas, subtle sounds that
can make a bigger impact on the music. Even though you might not hear and notice
it as much, it’s in there and you can feel it in the music.
