I was in college.
I hated school.
And I think there was this one specific day.
I was just pissed off.
At the time I just wanted to pick up this MIDI keyboard.
I had it laying around for a couple months.
After class I just made this beat.
I didn’t realize the potential of how special it was.
I uploaded it.
Kodak found it on YouTube.
At that time, no one knew who Kodak Black was.
It took about like 2 years for it to really get bigger and bigger.
It kept going, and I definitely didn’t expect that.
Next thing you know, this track becomes certified platinum.
I was pretty much purely like a bedroom producer, ‘cause I didn’t really have reach or following
to work with any of the artists in my city.
Growing up in Toronto, for a long time it was only Drake holding onto the torch.
But all of a sudden, when The Weeknd came out.
The city exploded.
PARTYNEXTDOOR came.
Majid Jordan.
That’s what really got me into more mainstream type music.
I think that somehow really got me inspired to do this.
I start with usually like one melody, and then I make the rest of the
percussion, and then I layer the rest of the melodies on top.
I just picked one of the basic stock pianos on Logic.
Especially with main melodies, I always like to play out everything and practice it.
I don’t really edit the notes.
Sound selection, to me is more important that just being able to edit the sound after.
I have the kick.
With all my kicks I usually like to add a little bit of Overdrive distortion and Exciter
for some punch.
I added the snare.
The hi-hat afterwards.
I personally like busy sounding hi-hats.
That’s basically what I feel like drives the percussion a lot.
So after I lay down all the percussion, I focus back on melody.
So over here I had like a pad more in the back.
Kind of just gives it the environment for the beat.
I try to fill up the space by layering it.
And I actually created something that kinda resembles a bass note almost that
I mixed together with the pads.
It drives the chord progression ‘cause I know with the lead melody, the piano just kinda
stayed the same without too many change in the progressions.
Right now it’s sounding like...
So later on in the beat, I just started added more different details and I had this harp
first.
Also I had this synth lead.
That’s when I needed to add my bass.
I was messing around with a lot of 808 basses.
It didn’t give that right feel so then I randomly went to this like...this was like
the first time I did it too.
I just added some really hard deep, it’s called a reggae bass.
I added a choir afterwards.
I like to keep my music very 3D.
Especially if I’m already adding so many sounds, I want to make sure they all have
room.
And I feel like this is one of the important parts of the song because what brought it
to a different climax.
Usually I would go with a drum break, but this time I was messing around with a horn.
This is like one of those...the Lex Luger trap horn.
I just feel like it completed everything.
You couldn’t really put a name to what type of beat it is.
That flow from Kodak, that was like a very distinctive flow.
And I felt like it really embraced what I was feeling when I was making the instrumental.
You know with Kodak doing “No Flockin” I think with Cardi B and “Bodak Yellow”
like it really told me, “Yeah I can make something influential.”
It’s really hard making a name for yourself.
And as a producer you still understand the difficulty of having people to understand
your capabilities.