The Making Of J. Cole's "No Role Modelz" With Phonix Beats | Deconstructed

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments

Im glad they made a video on this one, it’s just such an infectious and triumphant beat, it’s defitnely one of my favorite rap beats in memory

*edit:spelling

👍︎︎ 143 👤︎︎ u/Chihawks2015 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

that sample combined with the bass progression just gets me every time.

👍︎︎ 162 👤︎︎ u/Tazmily228 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

The bird sample is fly as fuckk.

👍︎︎ 57 👤︎︎ u/THE_BURNER_ACCOUNT_ 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

My ex used to give me some bomb ass head to this song and now I can’t listen to it

Pls come back

👍︎︎ 131 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

The on beat birds is a good touch, very Mac-esque

👍︎︎ 61 👤︎︎ u/bluebirdlake 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

I like the way he works but he must have much patience

👍︎︎ 25 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

I always thought the melody was just a short length horn, not a string to a horn w reverb connecting it. Never even thought of that

👍︎︎ 24 👤︎︎ u/MVPizzle 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

Phonix beats is a legend for this beat

👍︎︎ 14 👤︎︎ u/sierkhu 📅︎︎ Dec 20 2018 🗫︎ replies

Such an iconic beat and the beat construction is so unique. I can't imagine trying to recreate a sound you have in your head to real beat. And I never realized the on beat bird samples.

👍︎︎ 14 👤︎︎ u/jediknight00719 📅︎︎ Dec 21 2018 🗫︎ replies
Captions
I had just had a kid so my girl was getting off of work at the time and she's like "Yo, you gotta come pick me up." I'm just like, "All right." I get in the car, and I literally hear... I was like, "Yo, so I'm gonna get you an Uber." "I know you're really going to be upset, but I have to go back to the studio." "I just have this idea, I have to make it." I was working with Jeremih at the time and Jeremih had just moved to Los Angeles, so he was like, "Man, I'm trying to meet a lot of these new Los Angeles producers." So I called up the first person I knew to mind.I was like, “Dj Dahi.” Took him over to Dahi's and Dahi just turns on me and goes, "You got beats?" Then he played something. Then I played something. I'm like, this is turning into a lowkey beat battle. Why is this happening right now? Then he plays this plays and just goes for me. So I'm like, oh no. I gotta pull out something out the mystery bag. And he was like, "You have to send me that now." I went home and I get that call around 3:00 in the morning. Dahi's like, "You might want to come over." Cole's yelling in the background and I didn't know it was him, so he just took the phone and he was like, "Look, you need to come over now." I'm like, "Who is this yelling at me?" He's like, "This is J. Cole!” The creativity process for me, it just hits me. But I know chord structure, so if I hear something that catches my ear or my eye, I'ma go in there and spend days, if I have to, to get it to sound identical to that. I started off with a simple synth bass and then I added a doubler. We started playing around with some of these percussion sounds. I'm from Los Angeles, so I'm drum heavy, very much so, and I wanted to kind of blend a lot of different cultures, so I started with this really huge kick. Then I added the snare to complement it. So then I moved the snare off the grid just a little bit. Then I added the hi hats to it. And I put a flanger on that and a few other things on there. The kick is just so bold, the snare is so bold that you want the hat to drive that pocket. I'm a big EDM fan and stuff like that, so I just kind of wanted to mix some concepts together, some stutters from the EDM world, but then have a hip-hop beat with melodic capability. For me, without the bounce I don't know the next part I needed to add. So once I had this groove… I already knew what I needed to do, which is pull up this piano and start playing with some melodies to take it away from being such an open, dark feeling. The first melody I added was the piano 'cause I enjoy playing the piano anyway, so I just started playing some different melodies. So as you see it's like a vintage style piano. It sounds like you're kind of listening to the radio from about 30, 40 feet away. I added a lot more stuff to it to make it even sound further more which I'll show you the actual plugin I used. And then set it more to radio and now you have the actual piano. I go to J. Cole's house, I play him this part and he was like, "Yo, we gotta have an 808." I'm like, "Eh, I'm not sure but we just kept arguing for hours about it, hours about it." So this is the bass that I originally intended to keep. I played this in a lower register and I did bass slides. I then put effects on it on the low end to boost the low end frequencies to make it hit harder, to bump, 'cause you don't want clashing with your basses and your kicks. Now you can understand why I felt uncomfortable with an 808 also clashing with these other powerhouse sounds. I'm like, "Where's this going to fit?" When I came over next time, J. Cole plays me this. It was a really actually good idea. I didn't see it coming 'cause he was like, "You gotta add the 808." I'm like, "No, I don't want the 808." "You gotta add the 808." "No, I don't want the 808." "Fine, come over tomorrow." I come over tomorrow, it's just in there. So I'm like, "Okay.” So this is what it pretty much sounded like when I heard my bass with J. Cole's 808. With this, I did it in the post production stage of making this record. I just literally sat in J. Cole's studio and just added all the parts and was like "J. Cole, do you like this? Do you like that?" He was like, "Yeah, yeah, no, no." So that was one of the sounds that made the cut. So he says, "I need birds in it." "I just hear birds." I pull up a bunch of bird sounds and I'm really finding this funny 'cause I'm like yo I just went and listened to a thousand different birds. This is crazy. So finally find this one where I got a stretch of birds fluttering it sounded like, and I was like, "What if I used them like a hi-hat?" It's in pocket. So to do that was its own weird process in itself, which all producers, y'all gotta go through that yourselves, figure that one out. But that was probably the most taskful part of the entire song, like wow, I flipped birds like a drum machine. This is so funny to me. This is another one of my favorite sounds. It's an air choir. Just having fun with it at this point, you know. Last but not least, the sound that everybody remembers. Surprisingly, it started off with this sound. I sat in my studio about 15 to 16 hours just making one sound. I'm glad that everybody really liked this melody, the way it sounded because this was actually the initial melody that I heard in my head and when I turned around, it was like oh I have to make this right now. The first stage of it was it's going from sounding the staccato-y way, then I layered it with reverb and delay. I'm never content until it sounded how I heard it in my head. I was going for an old almost bugle style trumpet style horn. So that's what it ended up being was a string to a brass. 18 hours later. So you ended up getting… This was one of my most enjoyable experiences making music and I just walked you guys through the process of making “No Role Models.” When the album came out, I went straight to Best Buy. I bought as many copies as I could afford at the time. I was just like, "Yo, you like J. Cole?" "Here, you can just have it." "Just take it." You know what I mean? Just giving them out. It was a joyous experience man. When it got to Cole, to be able to communicate with him and share my views and to be able to say you argued with J. Cole over a damn bass. Come on. He doesn't have to argue with nobody. I appreciate his artistry a lot and I felt that he appreciated mine and I felt that was really the key behind this record, more so than just the music. It's the process we put into it.
Info
Channel: Genius
Views: 2,802,516
Rating: 4.9819584 out of 5
Keywords: genius, rap genius, verified, official lyrics, lyrics, lyric video, Lyric videos, pop music, hip hop, rap, new pop music, no role modelz piano, no role modelz beat remake, no role modelz beat breakdown, j. cole type beat, how to use reason, making a beat in reason, reason beat tutorial, no role models j cole, no role modelz j cole video, beat making tutorial, dj dahi, dj dahi beat, gbwc12
Id: Xd1wEy1j9No
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)
Published: Thu Dec 20 2018
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.