The Making Of Kid Cudi‘s “Pursuit Of Happiness” With E.VAX Of Ratatat | Deconstructed

My road to producing started with “Pursuit of Happiness.” 10 years later, it’s still, if not Kid Cudi’s most popular, it’s one of his most popular songs. He just can’t get on a stage unless he performs “Pursuit of Happiness,” like the crowd will riot. It’s cool to be apart of something that has longevity like that. The day I made “Pursuit of Happiness,” I had been in touch with Cudi a little bit. I’m not sure how he got turned on to Ratatat in the beginning. He worked at like a clothing store and at that time, nobody had heard of him. He was just like this dude on Myspace. I think we had just done like a long tour in Europe and came home, and they were just like, “You gotta play beats for Cudi tomorrow.” This was my first time really playing beats for a real rapper that was going to have a record out so I was like, “I gotta do something quick.” So he’s like literally in a car on his way over and I’m like feeling around the keyboard and just like, I had a sound that I had created on that keyboard and I was like "Maybe I can do something with this.” And just basically as fast as possible… Just laid that down and then like, the doorbell rings. I’m like, “Alright.” Instantly, he heard that beat and was like, “Oh yeah.” I was just messing around. I didn’t really know that I was onto something yet but he had the ear for it. The first sound that I started with was that keyboard sound. That’s a Nord Wave keyboard which is one of the worst keyboards I’ve ever bought but it did have that one sound. It’s basically an organ tone that’s being run through a format filter. The second thing I did was, I added some chords. It just totally follows the melody. So I’ll play that. It’s two pianos playing really simple chords basically using the melody as root notes and just filling it out with some high, sparkly piano. There’s like three kick drums here. There’s a filtered version of the kick that happens during the verses I guess. There’s a couple snares. 2 or 3 snares. There’s a bunch of other like white noise, sort of like little fills. That’s just like playing with the cut off knob on the filter. And then there’s all these… So I was literally just like sitting there with the Moog Voyager. Then there’s some weird stuff in here. There’s like this little… That’s from a Indian… A recording of an Indian hand drum. And then there’s like this other really weird thing. Basically sounds like white noise, but it’s a recording of a radiator steaming. If you take like the kick and snare out, the beat is actually really pretty weird. Then I took all of that and I threw it through a filter and that’s the beat for the verse. There’s guitars in the verse that are super simple. Then there’s a harmony. So you put it all together, it starts to sound like something. There’s a bass guitar. This is the solo that Mike did when we went into the studio with Cudi. He did this. At the very end, we brought in these… Some more keyboards. It’s like four layers of the similar idea. Cudi did like a lower octave of his voice on the chorus that I always thought was cool. But there’s like, six layers of him on the chorus. I always like those low octaves. So this is what it sounds like with everything. It’s one of those things where it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to overpolish it or anything. It stays true to this kind of like very simple straightforward beat and I think it suits what Kid Cudi ended up doing with it. The music is so easy to relate to that it all kind of fits together. If I had spent a week on it or something, I probably would have made it too complicated and it wouldn’t have resonated that same way. Cudi’s become this like real mythical character for like, I think people of a certain age because he was just like speaking frankly on his tracks in a way that nobody was used to hearing rappers speak. If you mention Kid Cudi to certain people, they’re just like, “Bro that’s the guy.” I’ve heard so many people say, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Kid Cudi.” It’s pretty amazing that just being frank and honest with people turned into this super solid connection that’s very lasting obviously. “Day ‘N’ Nite” was on the radio at that point and stuff and I was like, “I kind of wish we made a real hit like Day ‘N’ Nite or something.” But then it turns out, this ends up being like… It has like such a crazy life.

Channel: Genius

Views: 1,646,761

Rating: 4.9790473 out of 5

Keywords: genius, rap genius, verified, official lyrics, lyrics, lyric video, Lyric videos, pop music, hip hop, rap, new pop music, pursuit of happiness, kid cudi pursuit of happiness, ratatat kid cudi, ratatat evan mast, ratatat mike stroud, ratatat e.vax, ratatat e*vax, mgmt vevo, vevo official, pursuit of happyness, kid cudi reborn, kids see ghost, ratatat live, ratatat cudi, mgmt kid cudi, nord wave, beat making, beat making video, kid cudi type beats, kid cudi type beat, gbwc12

Id: SftSleFVYhE

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/jlopez24]

Such a dope story. Also cool that Cudi stuck with him all this time. Had no idea E.VAX worked on KSG

[u/DeerOnTheRocks]

Wow e.vax is a real musician. Wish artists would use more producers like this to create such a diverse soundscape, rather than their second cousin who knows how to use gross beat

Edit: just like to say that I listened to this song before every single exam I took in college to lower my anxiety. Thank you cudi and e.vax

[u/ElloJelloMellow]

This was awesome. It’d be great if they keep doing these for songs that deserve it instead of the same generic trap beats.

[u/20021021]

One of my favorite songs of all time, I love how you can listen to it while sad but the song still sounds hopeful. It’s for those times you feel a little down but don’t want to self loath.

[u/TheZombieHolocaust]

Ratatat had 2 solid tracks on MOTM I actually like the beat and groove from Alive (Nightmare) even more than pursuit of happiness

[u/theindianmessiah]

Huh, for some reason, all this time I assumed MGMT were the producers. I love how all the different instruments were layered on to each other. That studio is dope as hell too. If you get the chance, y'all should defintely check out some of other Ratatat's work. Loud Pipes and Cream on Chrome are my personal favourites.

[u/3021Michael]

This is the song that got me into hip-hop :')

[u/The_trash]

If only despot would get his shit together, we could have a whole album of ratatat rap

[u/mantistobbogan69]

Such a great video, i really feel like i have a better understanding of why i love this song so unconditionally. I am forever grateful that the song exists.