Mike WiLL: Can you play it from the top right quick?
Sound hard.
You like it like that?
Kelley Janae: Yeah, I like it like that.
I don't know, though.
You could go two ways.
Mike WiLL: It can go a hundred ways.
You can go a hundred different ways.
Kelley Janae: Well, good morning, Mike WiLL.
How you doing?
Mike WiLL: What it do, what it do?
Kelley Janae: Hello, my name is Kelly Janae.
I'm born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.
I wanted my lifestyle to be music, so I attended an arts high school and studied jazz guitar
all throughout.
That's what molded me into wanting to be as versatile as I can possibly be.
After I got in the Genius home studio pack, I went through some of the loops and this
particular Medallion really stood out to me.
I had cut probably about eight beats of it, two measures of it, half-timed it.
Then I took the original melody of it, just laid that over the top.
I had also pitched it two whole steps up.
It's very important to me to know that I literally have internet or the technology right at my
fingertips to be able to call up somebody, especially during the pandemic right now.
Knowing that I have access to this and I can just call up a couple of people and we can
all sit in a Zoom call and cook up a little bit.
Moving on to the drums, I wanted my drums to definitely bounce.
That's number one thing for me.
First started off with some hats.
I wanted to add claps to it.
I knew if I added the drum fill that I had gotten from the loop pack, I knew that was
going to add a little bit more of that bounce to it, so I threw the pan crash in and the
drum fill as well.
I just want to be nosy.
Do you have any particular secret that you use in every single one of your records?
Mike WiLL: The kick in a bass got to be knocking and the snare just has to slap.
Everything else is going to fall in place.
Then I look at it like mixing the hard with the pretty, pretty hard.
My experience with artists, if an artist hears it and likes it, they're going to go in the
booth and record.
Kelley Janae: Then once I threw the drums in there, I knew that was going to make sure
it was going to knock.
At this point, I knew that I wanted to throw in my guitars, since I'm a guitar player.
I just played a phrase and reversed it.
Got that, kept that haunting feel to it.
Mike WiLL: What would it sound like if the intro came in as a verse?
And how the hook comes in, is just come straight on like that?
Kelley Janae: Just go straight in?
Mike WiLL: Yeah, but come straight in, and then how you got the intro right now?
If that started off verse one.
Need to kick in the 808 to 35.
Pause the clap, too.
And the crash.
Try to put the drum fill back.
Put the drum fill back.
My bad.
Keep that guitar loop that you had.
Kelley Janae: I want to know if there's anything, or any lessons that you've learned over the
years, that you could share with somebody like me, that's up and coming.
Mike WiLL: Don't let nobody tell you what you can or what you can't do.
You know what I'm saying?
Sometimes you have a vision in your head, you have a goal in your head that you want
to get accomplished.
A person might not be able to understand it until you make it a proof of concept, until
you bring it to life.
With this music, a song is all about the best collaboration.
People might hear a song that you're playing the guitar on, that somebody's singing on
top of.
They might be like, "Yo, this is the most beautiful song I've heard in my life."
It's part of your genius to know when to stop or when to keep going.
Keep the hook how it was, and then the verse, just take the drums was out.
Let's just see how it sound.
Kelley Janae: You just want to take them out completely?
Mike WiLL: I just want to see how it sound like, girl.
I'm just trying different things.
The beats sound good, though.
Kelley Janae: Thank you.
Mike WiLL: I'm just giving you other options.
You can drop the drums back in at 33, so basically how you had the intro, but just starting the
verse.
With the kick is there a way that you can shorten it?
You know what I'm saying?
To make it more punchier?
Yeah, right there.
You can stack the kicks on top of each other.
Kelley Janae: Yeah.
Mike WiLL: Do the same thing with the claps.
Can you turn the claps up?
Kelley Janae: Do you think we should put the pan crash back in there?
Just to offset it just a little bit?
Mike WiLL: Yeah.
My bad if I'm fucking up your beat.
Kelley Janae: You're not.
What do you think?
Mike WiLL: Sound hard.
Sometimes, I just like the beat to just breathe right there so they can set the tone on their
verse.
I like how you had the last four bars of the verse, because you could tell the difference
between the hook and that bridge part.
You know what I'm saying?
Kelley Janae: Right.
Mike WiLL: I like how to the beat sound, though.
Kelley Janae: Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Mike WiLL: It was weird.
I had a conversation with Oprah.
Oprah was like, "Man, you got to live to your highest form of expression.
That's the only way you could say thank you to God."
You got to be as creative as possible.
If you're a creative, you got to be as creative as possible and pour that out every day.