Denzel: When Sheck heard it, he was like, “I need this."
"I have an idea for it."
So, we just had a eight bar loop.
I thought he was just going to do a melody run and kind of just put down a few ideas
but he just went for it first take.
David: Me and him were like, "Nothing's going on, should we just
go home?"
And we have like nothing happening right now and then 16 just hit us and we were like
"You know what, we haven't really cooked up with 16yrold yet so let's just do it tonight."
And 16’s a dude who like, before we even started working with him, we would just go
to his page and see who is this guy working with.
Personally we feel like he’s one of the best A&Rs in music, period.
He was like, "Yo I know Sheck West, new artist from Harlem, you guys should fuck with him."
"He's dope," and then Sheck came through.
16yrold: Like I already knew I was gonna invite Sheck to the studio, but only if the beat
came out hard.
We ran through a couple sounds, and I just started playing the keys on it.
I was really influenced by “Live SheckWes” to make a real ignorant melody.
I remember I just made that loop.
I was like, “Damn."
"This is hard.”
Denzel: The first sound in “Mo Bamba” came out of another beat we were working on
but the sound didn’t fit in it.
David: Towards the end of the beat, 16 started playing on the Prophet 12.
Denzel: And we were like yo that’s hot.
Let’s just record it so we have it down and we can master it later.
David: I was sitting in the back of the room at the time, and I was like, “Yo there’s
a part in it that we should replay, perfect it, and turn it into another beat.”
So this ended up being the “Mo Bamba” lead line.
Denzel: So on this sound, we used iZotope Vinyl and Waves King.
So initially, it’ll be like this.
But then with the plugins on it…
Just take some of the bass out and kind of make it sound a little bit more nostalgic.
David: Just wanted to give it this like old feeling to it, and I really feel like that’s
a lot of the character of the song right there.
Denzel: Once we heard the loop we knew exactly what kind of drums we were gonna use.
David: With any beat, we usually start with hi-hats.
Denzel: The next thing we added after the hi-hat was a snare and then 16 emailed us a clap he liked using
too so put both of them in and layered them together.
David: We haven’t used this sound in a while actually but we had this little percussion
sound that we had just on the upbeats.
Yeah so then the next thing we put down is the kick.
Yeah so after we put down all the drums, we wanted to add another synth sound that acted
more like a percussion sound.
We went into Omnisphere and we picked this little pluck sound.
That’s also playing on the upbeats.
So this is the drum and rhythm section of the beat.
So after that the next instrument that we put down was the 808.
Pretty much layering this with the kick, and then dropping out the kick to give these little
rises and falls.
Denzel: We put this plugin Sausage Fattener on it.
David: In this instance, we just used the EQ to bring out some of the frequencies that
we wanted to highlight.
Denzel: But it was a little bit too overbearing.
With this we took out a little bit of the low end and just added in the frequencies
that we wanted.
And this, around 2k, Sheck’s vocals were really present so we just took that out to
give Sheck more room.
Usually when we’re working, David will be on the keys on the wall.
And I’ll be messing around with the Sub Phatty ‘cause we’ll have a lead element
and then a low frequency element.
So the bassline in “Mo Bamba,” this is the scale.
There’s a minor second above it.
And as soon as Sheck heard that, he was like, “Yeah that’s it.”
But he wanted it more aggressive.
This knob right here is the filter cutoff so…
The more it’s up, the more of the high frequencies come through so its high frequencies are really
aggressive.
And usually, we’ll stop it right here because after that it’s just too crazy.
But Sheck was like, “Nah. Keep going, keep going."
"Make it more aggressive, crazier.”
That’s the bassline of “Mo Bamba.”
Denzel; This entire process was just trying to get our ideas as fast as possible before
the inspiration left our heads.
The first take he did is the actual complete song.
I didn’t know he was gonna do that, so I only had these eight bars at first.
As he kept going I was like, “Oh shit."
This has to be longer.”
So I started doing this, repeating the sections and then taking out – like alright, maybe
let’s drop the bass here.
Maybe let’s take the lead out here, maybe let’s put this in and out.
And then as I’m looping it, everything just freezes.
The song is still playing in the headphones, but I can’t move the mouse.
And I’m just like damn.
Like this is gonna kill it.
He is already pretty much all the way through this entire song and I know if it cuts out
we’ll probably just end up going home right now.
David: In that section too, like Ali was in the background.
I’ll solo this part.
You can actually hear him in the background like, “Woah.”
Denzel: So we were all just like “Oh, no.”
But then as soon as he was like, “Oh! Fuck! Shit!”
Then everything just came right back.
It unfroze then eight bars after that just magically appeared.
David: That’s the magic moment of the song.
That’s the part where people go the craziest to every single time.
So after we finished it, we just put our tags in and this is how the beat sounds.
Like if It wasn’t for the beat dropping out, if it wasn’t for these clicks, if it
wasn’t for these little imperfections, if it wasn’t for putting down a little sound
at the end of our first beat and coming back to it later, none of this would have happened.
Denzel: Like that’s every DJ’s dream.
If you’re DJing in the club in New York, you always have that one sound that no matter
what, you’re gonna play ‘em this song and it’s just gonna make the party.
This is that song now.
It’s pretty crazy.
Denzel: The instruments are really loud, everything’s kind’ve getting distorted into the L2.
We actually used the wrong loop for the whole song.
Things are clipping.
David: That’s the magic of the record.
Denzel: If it’s hot, it’s hot.