I had just had a kid so my girl was getting
off of work at the time and she's like
"Yo, you gotta come pick me up."
I'm just like, "All right."
I get in the car, and I literally hear...
I was like, "Yo, so I'm gonna get you an Uber."
"I know you're really going to be upset, but
I have to go back to the studio."
"I just have this idea, I have to make it."
I was working with Jeremih at the time and
Jeremih had just moved to Los Angeles, so
he was like, "Man, I'm trying to meet a lot
of these new Los Angeles producers."
So I called up the first person I knew to
mind.I was like, “Dj Dahi.”
Took him over to Dahi's and Dahi just turns
on me and goes, "You got beats?"
Then he played something.
Then I played something.
I'm like, this is turning into a lowkey beat
battle.
Why is this happening right now?
Then he plays this plays and just goes for
me.
So I'm like, oh no.
I gotta pull out something out the mystery
bag.
And he was like, "You have to send me that
now."
I went home and I get that call around 3:00
in the morning.
Dahi's like, "You might want to come over."
Cole's yelling in the background and I didn't
know it was him, so he just took the phone
and he was like, "Look, you need to come over
now."
I'm like, "Who is this yelling at me?"
He's like, "This is J. Cole!”
The creativity process for me, it just hits
me.
But I know chord structure, so if I hear something
that catches my ear or my eye, I'ma go in
there and spend days, if I have to, to get
it to sound identical to that.
I started off with a simple synth bass and
then I added a doubler.
We started playing around with some of these
percussion sounds.
I'm from Los Angeles, so I'm drum heavy, very
much so, and I wanted to kind of blend a lot
of different cultures, so I started with this
really huge kick.
Then I added the snare to complement it.
So then I moved the snare off the grid just
a little bit.
Then I added the hi hats to it.
And I put a flanger on that and a few other
things on there.
The kick is just so bold, the snare is so
bold that you want the hat to drive that pocket.
I'm a big EDM fan and stuff like that, so
I just kind of wanted to mix some concepts
together, some stutters from the EDM world,
but then have a hip-hop beat with melodic
capability.
For me, without the bounce I don't know the
next part I needed to add.
So once I had this groove…
I already knew what I needed to do, which
is pull up this piano and start playing with
some melodies to take it away from being such
an open, dark feeling.
The first melody I added was the piano 'cause
I enjoy playing the piano anyway, so I just
started playing some different melodies.
So as you see it's like a vintage style piano.
It sounds like you're kind of listening to
the radio from about 30, 40 feet away.
I added a lot more stuff to it to make it
even sound further more which I'll show you
the actual plugin I used.
And then set it more to radio and now you
have the actual piano.
I go to J. Cole's house, I play him this part
and he was like, "Yo, we gotta have an 808."
I'm like, "Eh, I'm not sure but we just kept
arguing for hours about it, hours about it."
So this is the bass that I originally intended
to keep.
I played this in a lower register and I did
bass slides.
I then put effects on it on the low end to
boost the low end frequencies to make it hit
harder, to bump, 'cause you don't want clashing
with your basses and your kicks.
Now you can understand why I felt uncomfortable
with an 808 also clashing with these other
powerhouse sounds.
I'm like, "Where's this going to fit?"
When I came over next time, J. Cole plays
me this.
It was a really actually good idea.
I didn't see it coming 'cause he was like,
"You gotta add the 808."
I'm like, "No, I don't want the 808."
"You gotta add the 808."
"No, I don't want the 808."
"Fine, come over tomorrow."
I come over tomorrow, it's just in there.
So I'm like, "Okay.”
So this is what it pretty much sounded like
when I heard my bass with J. Cole's 808.
With this, I did it in the post production
stage of making this record.
I just literally sat in J. Cole's studio and
just added all the parts and was like
"J. Cole, do you like this? Do you like that?"
He was like, "Yeah, yeah, no, no."
So that was one of the sounds that made the
cut.
So he says, "I need birds in it."
"I just hear birds."
I pull up a bunch of bird sounds and I'm really
finding this funny 'cause I'm like yo I just
went and listened to a thousand different
birds.
This is crazy.
So finally find this one where I got a stretch
of birds fluttering it sounded like, and I
was like, "What if I used them like a hi-hat?"
It's in pocket.
So to do that was its own weird process in
itself, which all producers, y'all gotta go
through that yourselves, figure that one out.
But that was probably the most taskful part
of the entire song, like wow, I flipped birds
like a drum machine.
This is so funny to me.
This is another one of my favorite sounds.
It's an air choir.
Just having fun with it at this point, you
know.
Last but not least, the sound that everybody
remembers.
Surprisingly, it started off with this sound.
I sat in my studio about 15 to 16 hours just
making one sound.
I'm glad that everybody really liked this
melody, the way it sounded because this was
actually the initial melody that I heard in
my head and when I turned around, it was like
oh I have to make this right now.
The first stage of it was it's going from
sounding the staccato-y way, then I layered
it with reverb and delay.
I'm never content until it sounded how I heard
it in my head.
I was going for an old almost bugle style
trumpet style horn.
So that's what it ended up being was a string
to a brass.
18 hours later.
So you ended up getting…
This was one of my most enjoyable experiences
making music and I just walked you guys through
the process of making “No Role Models.”
When the album came out, I went straight to
Best Buy.
I bought as many copies as I could afford
at the time.
I was just like, "Yo, you like J. Cole?"
"Here, you can just have it."
"Just take it."
You know what I mean?
Just giving them out.
It was a joyous experience man.
When it got to Cole, to be able to communicate
with him and share my views and to be able
to say you argued with J. Cole over a damn
bass.
Come on.
He doesn't have to argue with nobody.
I appreciate his artistry a lot and I felt
that he appreciated mine and I felt that was
really the key behind this record, more so
than just the music.
It's the process we put into it.
