Premier came into the picture when were starting to make our own beats and all that.
I naturally, when I make beats, aim for a darker tone just because I've always preferred those types of feelings.
'Who Do You Love' was kinda cool to make. I just made the beat; I was self-determined to make beats at the time.
I love Dilla, and who knows where this beat thing would be without him.
My job is to make beats and make something hot.
I was like, 'Okay, cool, I'ma learn how to produce my own beats,' and I stuck to it. Now, it's hard to even take a beat from anyone else.
I don't have a hand in a lot of my own beats. I like all types of music and all types of beats though.
When I was a youngster, I might have been about 17 or 18 when I first started making beats.
I wanted to rap, but I needed beats. I couldn't buy any, so I just made my own.
'Despacito' started with a melody hook that I had with my guitar only. The beat for this track came after I wrote the lyrics, which I wrote as if I was writing a ballad.
So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.
As soon as we wrote the beat for 'Romeo,' I knew it was a running song. I was thinking about it in terms of the body. What do you want to do? It's not a song you want to dance to.
Sometimes I'll have a whole song done without having a beat - I'll just rap on an instrumental tempo and recreate a whole new song just around the lyrics.