The first we heard about French on it was when it leaked in November.
We were like, “Yo! French is on it!”
It was like, “French Montana releases "Unforgivable" or something like that.
On the artwork it said, "Unforgivable.”
And I was like, “Man, they couldn’t even get that part right? Geez.”
1Mind is a group of three producers.
Me, Sebastian, Michael Lohmeier.
We’re all from Indianapolis.
We all make music together.
We also work independently when we’re not together.
But we bounce ideas off each other.
We’ve been working with Ramriddlz a lot.
That’s his vibe - a lot of dancehall.
That was kind of the aesthetic that we’d been working on the past few months. In terms of like...
Almost ahead of the wave.
As far as the actual beat – the day of – I was actually down at Indiana University at their
spring weekend, which is their huge party.
Their big party weekend of the year.
So I’m out with my friends, going to this party all day, having a great time getting super lit.
And I see this message on my Twitter from Oliver, OVO Oliver, and he’s like, “Yo,
this is our last session for 'Views.'
Send some more shit.
If you guys have any last ideas, send through.”
So I see that and I’m like, “Ahh shit.
I probably do have to make something right now.”
So I kind of ducked off back to my friends house.
Kind of did a little session for four hours.
And that turned out to be the “Unforgettable” beat.
And I sent it back to Oliver and he was like, “Yo, this is fire.
Hold on to it,” or whatever.
Obviously, they didn’t end up using it but I think it worked out for the best.
The first thing I started out with was some reverse guitar chords.
It was a guitar chord that was in a pack that I could transpose and rearrange.
I actually put a little delay on it and I automated the delay so you can hear it changing
pitch a little bit.
I think the next thing was, I probably put the bass in just to see what kind of vibe
that would give it.
So this was the next thing that happened.
And this bass I put a bitcrusher on.
Just to give it a different feel.
Kind of like a scream kind of feel.
And then I had these kicks.
So once I had that going, I knew it was about to be a good little song, forsure.
I mean, the kick is where the pulse is at.
The kick is what sets that foundation for the whole vibe of the song.
I kind of wanted to have that four-on-the-floor knock just 'cause I knew that was the dance wave.
That was what everyone was going crazy for.
And after that I put in the steel pan.
I put another bitcrusher on that too just to give it more texture - little more atmosphere
to make it sound different.
I knew a lot of people had been using that sound and I didn’t want it to sound like
exactly like what everyone else was doing so I tried to mess up the sound a little bit.
When I played it, I just played it right off my laptop keys.
And it just worked really well.
I didn’t necessarily think that would be the crazy sound of the beat, but that’s
the part that everyone has been saying is really cool.
I have a lot of little ambient vocal chops that I keep around in my database.
This little voice right here.
And then I put in this synth right here.
And this one, I didn’t put too many effects on this.
It was basically as is.
I just took out some of the frequencies to give the voice more room.
That was definitely a really cool sound that brought the beat to another level.
That's basically it.
On the original beat there was this crazy slow down at the end.
And Swae actually recorded a whole 16-bar thing to the part.
It was really cool.
But that didn’t make it onto the final record.
They really picked the most concise version of the bars and pieced it together in a way that I thought was
pretty smart and pretty cool.
One of our homies, he’s boys with Swae, so he actually played the track for Swae.
And then Swae jumped on it.
I know they had a bunch of ideas on whether to keep it or shop it around.
And then eventually it got leaked with other artists who weren’t on the final version.
There was a bunch of versions going around but then ultimately French decided he wanted it
and kept Swae on it.
And then, bam.
It was a masterpiece.
What’s funny 'cause this is where it starts to get – to the point – where I had my
original version and then I passed it off to Jaegen.
And he kind of opened up the beat a little bit.
Like took out some of the extra sounds I had put in and gave it more space.
Added some different drum sounds.
There’s a section where the drums actually switch up.
Jaegen, I just really respect as a producer.
He’s super dope.
I wanted to see if he had any other ideas for it.
Some switch ups that could bring it to another level.
And that was exactly what happened.
I just sent it his way and right away he was like, "This is fire."
When he sent the new version I was like, “This is a smash.”
The song would go 100 percent.
As someone who worked on the record at the early stages and to see how much further they
took it.
Later, in terms of Uganda to shoot the video.
Putting it out the way they did was all super cool.
And this whole “Unforgettable” dance challenge.
The campaign to raise money for the health care in the community.
That’s super cool.
You always want to see that.
Who doesn’t want to see that?
I mean, I feel super blessed to be a part of that and to see how somehow I made this
beat in Indiana and the kids are dancing to it in Uganda.
That’s crazy.