Mike WiLL Made-It
Mike WiLL Made-It’s unmistakable producer tag has graced some of pop and southern rap’s most ubiquitous hits. The Atlanta-born Michael Williams’ journey began when his father gifted him a Korg ES-1 sampler. Then came his first break: producing for hometown hero Gucci Mane. Since then, he’s founded production company EarDrummers Entertainment and helped Atlanta maintain its status as the epicenter of contemporary rap. While he’s capable of impeccable rap-pop work, as demonstrated on Beyoncé’s “Formation,” he saves his weirdest, most adventurous work for crossover wunderkinds like Miley Cyrus and Rae Sremmurd.
In his 2016 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, the incomparable producer discusses working with Atlanta’s greatest rappers, moving between pop and rap, and much more.
Hosted by Rollie Pemberton So, hi everyone. My name is Rollie Pemberton, AKA Cadence Weapon. We’re here with the multi-platinum producer, who needs no introduction, but I’ll do it anyway, his name is Mike WiLL Made-It. (applause) Mike Will Made-It What up, what up, what up, what up. Rollie Pemberton I really just want to start at the very beginning, and give people an idea of where you’re coming from. You’re originally from Marietta, Georgia. Mike Will Made-It Yes, sir. Rollie Pemberton Tell me about Marietta. It’s a suburb, 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, right? Mike Will Made-It Yup. It’s like, middle class, you know what I’m saying. Like you said, 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, suburb. We never really had anybody successful out of the music side come out of there, you know what I’m saying? Couple people in the NBA, you know what I’m saying? That’s really about it. Rollie Pemberton Who’s that? Mike Will Made-It My boy JJ Hickson, Shareef Abdur-Rahim. Rollie Pemberton Who played for Vancouver. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Rollie Pemberton Yeah. Mike Will Made-It Who else comes from Marietta that went to the NBA? I don’t really... that’s all I really know, for real. You know what I’m saying? Rollie Pemberton Not a lot of music came out of there. Mike Will Made-It No. Rollie Pemberton How did you hear rap in the first place? Mike Will Made-It Man, I think my first time hearing rap... My older sisters were really like my musical sources. One of my sisters would listen to a lot of rap music, but she was like, in band class in high school, she was a drum major. When the Olympics came to Atlanta in 1996, she was drum major in the Olympics. Then that’s that my older sister, but she listened to like all the rap music. She had all the Goodie Mob, all the, everything. Mystikal, you know what I’m saying? Everything back in the day. Then my other sister, she was like the opposite. She would just listen to like, all pop. She would listen to Alanis Morissette, or R&B, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, and she was more melody driven, and this sister was more like, rhythm driven, you know what I’m saying? I was just listening to it. When I started getting into music, I started getting into Tupac first, then Biggie, and then like West Coast rap. West Side Connection. Ice Cube. Different stuff like that, real hard core stuff. Of course, I liked everything from the south. Then I started really getting into rap. Three 6 Mafia, Cash Money, UGK. Everybody from the south. I was just listening to Trick Daddy, Pastor Troy. Everybody. Rollie Pemberton What about from Atlanta? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. That was Pastor Troy, and T.I. started killing shit. Outkast. I already mentioned that my sister was listening to Goodie Mob, Dungeon Family, Outkast. Outkast was a given. From Atlanta, it was just like, man, T.I.. T.I. was like my favorite rapper. Everything T.I. was saying was law. That’s just everything I would listen to. Then there was Jeezy, then after that Gucci. Then I met Gucci, then me and Gucci started going in, and it was just like... Rollie Pemberton Well, we’re going to get to that. Really deep. But I want to take it back a little bit still. Mike Will Made-It Alright, for sure. Rollie Pemberton You grew up in a pretty musical household, right? Your parents were musical, right? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. No, definitely. My mom, she sang in the choir with Dottie Peoples. We would be on the road a lot and they would be doing shows. Dottie Peoples is like a big gospel singer, for those who don’t know. I would see that when I was super young. Then my dad, he used to DJ at little parties and stuff, you know what I’m saying? He had all the records in the house. He had this record player, and he would buy a new needle. I would just see him, like scratching and playing records. Every time he would dip, I would just grab a record, put it on there and try to scratch and break the needle every time, and then try to go, “Hi!” You know what I’m saying? He’d be like, “How’d my needle get broken?” I’d be like, “Yo, I don’t know! I was just about to play it, you know what I’m saying?” Word. Yeah. I would always just break his needles. I thought it was easy. I thought you could just put a record on here, and it was just real easy. But I found out that it wasn’t. Rollie Pemberton What kind of records was he playing? Mike Will Made-It His favorite band was Earth, Wind and Fire, so I grew up on Earth, Wind and Fire, all the oldies. Of course Michael Jackson, the O’Jays. Man, my pops put me on everything. Sly and the Rolling Stones. He used to put me on everything. All the old music. Rick James. You name it. Rollie Pemberton You had this foundation for music in your home, but you wanted to be an athlete? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Because, off the rip, my sister she played softball, so I started off, first I saw her playing T-ball. Then I saw her playing basketball, then I saw her playing football, towards like fifth grade. Then I was just playing all three sports. Then, I remember I was really into football. They had me at linebacker, because I just liked to hit. There was this kid, he was bigger than everybody. He was really like two, three years older than us. He was running, and I was like, “Yo, I’m about to make this hit! I’m about to make this hit!” He just trucked me. I made the tackle. I was happy I made the tackle, but I couldn’t move. I had a stinger in my back, you know what I’m saying? They were like, “If you move, you’re going to get paralyzed or whatever, whatever, just stay still.” So I was like, “OK, fuck football.” You know what I’m saying? Baseball, man, I was good at baseball. I was playing baseball my whole life. My sister played baseball and everything, but then, it was always like T-ball, and then there was always like the machine, that would pitch first. Then when the kids started pitching, I was like, "OK, it’s going to be the same thing." Then I got hit with a pitch. Like real hard, in my back, you know what I’m saying? It hurt. It hurt for like weeks, so I was like, “Fuck baseball.” You know what I’m saying? (laughter) Then, basketball. I played basketball my whole life, from like kindergarten on. So I felt like I was good at basketball, I had a shot and everything. Then I went to this new high school. This is around... ninth grade is when I started doing [music]. We had a group, like a local group. We kind of had our little clique. We were like clique tight. I had just pulled my groin in AAU, you know what I’m saying? Then I started trying out for the high school team, and I’m going through all this conditioning, and everything, and he tells us during conditioning, “I’m not picking off the skill of the player, I’m picking off the person. So if you’re bad in school, you’re not going to make the team, da, da, da, da.” The guys I was hanging with, they weren’t the best, they weren’t the best of guys. We were doing music and what not. I got cut from the ninth grade team. That was my first time ever getting cut. So I said, “Fuck basketball.” I just focused on music. Rollie Pemberton You, at that point, you ran out of sports to play? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Rollie Pemberton Pretty much. Mike Will Made-It It was like sports weren’t really the thing anymore. Rollie Pemberton There was no hockey over there? Mike Will Made-It Nah, nah, nah. Rollie Pemberton Then you focused more on music at this time? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Definitely, man. Focused on music. Rollie Pemberton What made you first start making beats to begin with? Mike Will Made-It Man, really, it was my homeboy Fortune [5]. He used to always just freestyle and rap and all kind of stuff. He would battle different people at the school, and I would just love to hear him rap, so I would just be making beats on the table. Like, boom, with like the little pencil or whatever. He’ll just be going crazy in the lunch room. He’ll battle anybody and we’ll just be having the school going crazy. Then me and him were like yin and yang. We just stuck together. Then my sister, she was a drum major, and she played the clarinet too. She had this little small Casio keyboard in the house. The batteries were falling out the back, or whatever. It was like, that big. It fit on my lap and whatnot, you know what I’m saying? I would hear certain things on the radio, and I would just go find the key, and then I would just play that. Play it on the keyboard. That Big Tymers song (singing). Rollie Pemberton (singing) Mike Will Made-It Yeah. I was just playing that. I was playing, just different things on the keyboard. Then Fortune would just be freestyling. He’d tell me, like, “Man, you need to make beats man. You ain’t never thought about making beats? You need to start making beats. I’m going to rap, you need to make beats.” I was like, “No, bro. I’m going to the NBA. I’m awesome. I’m def, for real. I’m fitting to go to the league.” Then he was like, “No, I’m telling you, you should make beats.” Another friend of the family, he was a DJ, so he took me to the music store around the way. It would have been like Guitar Center now, but... Rollie Pemberton Mike Will Made-It Yeah, it’s called Mars Music. It would have been like Guitar Center now. We went there, and I’m asking the guy who works there, he showed me the MP, and I’m like, “Yo, how do I work this?” Then he just showed me how to record, and then he made it loop, and I’m like, “Bet.” I was like, “OK, if I don’t like something, how do I delete it?” He was like, “Man just hit “undo.” I’m, “Alright, bet.” I’m in there messing around, and then I took the melody from Fabolous, that (singing). Rollie Pemberton “Holla Back Young’n?” Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Took that melody, and then I just made a "No Limit" beat around it, you know what I’m saying? With the snare rolls, just whatever drums they had programmed in the MP, and then they were like, “How long you been making beats?” I was like, “Yo, this my first real beat,” and they were like, “Man, you should start making beats,” and that was my second time hearing it. So I told my pops, “Yo, I’m going to start making beats, man,” and he was like, “Man, naw. You keep quitting everything. You quit baseball, you quit football, you talking about quitting basketball, now you trying to make beats? Naw.” I was like, “Man, I’m telling you. I’m telling you I need to start making beats,” and then he just surprised me with a beat machine that Christmas, and then from there I just taught myself how to make beats. Rollie Pemberton How excited were you when you... What machine was it? Mike Will Made-It It was like a Korg ES1. It was a small little beat machine, and it had four lights on there. I never knew what the four lights meant, because it never was like, “1-2-3-4.” So it was like one, and then two claps would go, and then it would be like two, and two claps would go, and that’s when I started teaching myself about bars. I said, “Nobody taught me how to count bars.” I was just watching hip-hop DVDs, and everybody’s saying, “Yeah, I just spit a hot 16, a hot 12, a 24,” and everything was like, the common denominator was four. At the end of the day, my dad made sure I paid attention in school, so I was good at math. I was like, “The common denominator is four, this thing has four lights,” so I was like, “Yeah, OK.” This is 16, this is 12, this is eight, so I started teaching myself like that, and I was like, “Boom, this is bars.” I’m thinking, I’m teaching my homeboys, like, “Man, look brah, you got to put at least four bars in the whatever, like if it’s the hook, the hook got to be eight bars or 12 bars or however you do it, but whatever... it got to be with fours, you know what I’m saying?” I just taught myself how to do that, and then I just started putting my whole drum patterns together, and one of the people that I looked up to, he had this big Tahoe truck sitting on 26s with 415s in the back and shit, so I used to just make beats to go play in his car. I was like, “Hey bro, let’s ride to Kroger right quick.” That was the grocery store around the corner. I was like, “Let’s ride to Kroger right quick,” and I put my new beat in, and she just whamming. It was just whamming, so I never forget those days, so when I’m making beats, from then on, or when I’m mixing something or anything, I’m thinking about that Tahoe truck, like how would it sound with me and Beezo just riding down the street throwing this in with them 415s, on them 26s and shit. I never want to forget that, and I don’t know. It all played an important role. Rollie Pemberton You’re starting to make some beats here. They’re playing in the Tahoe, but when was the first time you made a beat and someone actually rapped on it? Mike Will Made-It We had a group. It was called FAY. It was like a local group, and we were in Cobb, we were in Marietta, and we were going to all the local high school parties, and we were just like, we had the buzz. And rest in peace to Shawty Lo, but Shawty Lo and the Franchise Boyz, they was from Bankhead, so that’s like, right next to Marietta, so they used to come to Marietta and perform in Marietta too, so they would come to Marietta and then... We would pay to perform, even though we had a crazy buzz in Marietta and Cobb, the DJs were kind of hating on us for whatever personal reasons. So we would go to them, just give them $100, $200, “Man, can we just perform? We’ll put all our money together,” and then we’d just have a crazy buzz. We just started getting a crazy buzz, so my homeboys were rapping on the records first, and then one of my homeboys was always in and out of jail, so when he would go in and out of jail, I would fuck around and rap. We were just messing around, but the group ended up not working out how we wanted it to work out, because it was like, we had a buzz on our side of town, but we couldn’t get that buzz to seep to the city and go where we wanted it to go, so this guy quit rapping, this guy... These two guys were over here and then boom, I was just like, “Man, I’m going to keep making beats,” and then... Rollie Pemberton Then something amazing happened. Mike Will Made-It Oh yeah. Rollie Pemberton I have a song to play to represent this. You’ve made some beats... Mike Will Made-It Before that, before you play that song, I made some beats, and then one of the guys that was in my group linked me with his homeboy that worked at a studio called Patchwerk, then I went down there and I was just playing beats for him. I just bought my whole multi-track recorder; I had bought this multi-track recorder. That was my ProTools at the time. I didn’t even know what ProTools was, so I was just recording everything on a multi-track recorder, which was incorrect. I used to put guitar amps and stuff over my whole beats, so all my beats would sound fucked up. I ain’t even know. I was just trying to figure out how to drive the bass the most. So anyway, I was recording everything in there, so I brought my whole multi-track recorder to Patchwerk, was playing beats for Blaze; playing beats, playing beats, playing beats, and then he told me, “Yo man, Gucci Mane is upstairs.” I was like, “For real?” I was already listening to his mixtapes. I was like, “Alright man, you keep listening to these beats right quick, I’m going to come and take this beat CD upstairs.” He was like, “Man, yeah, go up there.” I was like, “Alright, bet.” I made a beats CD, went upstairs, and I was just standing outside the studio, and Gucci was just walking out. He walked out and went to the lounge and I gave him a beats CD like, “Hey bro, I make beats.” He was like, “Alright, I’m going to check them out,” then he went straight to the lounge and put them in the CD player, and started playing them. Then, I remember Fabo had left his charger at the studio, so he... Rollie Pemberton From D4L. Mike Will Made-It Yeah, so he had went in the same lounge Gucci was in because he had just left his charger, and he went in there and then him and Gucci was just freestyling on all my beats, and I was just like, “Damn!” They was in the lounge, I was just like, ”I want to go in there but I don’t know if these dudes like that, so I’m just going to stay out here.” Then, I was just standing outside. I’m just hearing them, and you know Fabo loud, so Fabo’s just like, just screaming, and they all in there freestyling. I’m like, “Damn!” I’m just standing outside, and next thing you know, Gucci came out. Fabo left, and I’m still standing out there, then Gucci was like, “Yo, ain’t you the little homie that had the beats?” I was like, “Yeah,” and he was like, “Come here right quick.” He let me hear the song. He had written, like, a quick song to one of the beats. He had wrote a song, but we never ended up using that song, but he was trying to buy the beat on the spot and everything, and from there we just clicked up. We exchanged numbers, and then we clicked up, and then we fell out of contact, and then me and Waka met on a whole other note, and then he linked us back up. I didn’t even know Waka was related to him. Rollie Pemberton They’re cousins, right? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Basically, we’re like... everybody is like fam. They’re not real blood cousins, but it’s like, pretty much, you know what I’m saying. Pretty much like cousins. I didn’t even know they were related, but me and Waka met on a whole 'nother note, and then he let me know, “Gucci my cousin. I know Gucci.” I was like, “Man, I know Gucci,” and then I showed him my phone. I showed him the numbers I had on Gucci. He was like, “Oh, you really do know Gucci. Where you met him at?” I said, “Patchwerk.” He was like, “OK.” We stayed in contact, and then he linked me and Gucci back up, and at that time me and Waka were like... we became real close friends, and I was sleeping on his mama couch. He was sleeping on my mama couch, and we’re just with each other every day. Before he was Waka Flocka the rapper, he was just Waka, this dude with the dreads who just believed in me as a producer. He didn’t even hear one beat, but he was telling his mom, which was Aunt Deb who was managing Gucci, he was telling his mom, “Yo, man, this man Mike WiLL is the hardest producer ever!” But he never heard a snare, know what I’m saying? I was just like, “Man, yo, I appreciate that, and we just became real tight, and then he linked me back with Gucci and then... Rollie Pemberton Why did he do that? Mike Will Made-It I have no clue! I have no clue, but that’s... Rollie Pemberton He totally changed your life! Mike Will Made-It Basically. For real, but it was like... I guess, because he saw that I really knew Gucci, and the way that we met after we overcame that, it was, the respect was mutual, so he had another level of respect for me. I had a respect level for him, and then from there he was just like... we were just chopping it up on the phone. It was organic, because the way we met, it could have gone a whole 'nother way, but it didn’t, so at the end of the day, it was just like... I feel like God writes everything, man, so I’m just walking in His footsteps. I’m just walking in His shadow, I’m just going. Rollie Pemberton Waka Flocka Flame links you back up with Gucci, and he proceeds to record a bunch of tracks to the beats CD that you gave him. Mike Will Made-It No. Not that beats CD. Rollie Pemberton A different one? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. This was like a year later because he got locked up. Waka had a link to his backup. He called me. He was like, “Yo, I got somebody I want to talk to you real quick." Boom. Put Gucci on the phone. Gucci was like, “Awww, man. Hey, man. I’m happy you linked over to my cousin, man. Hey, I need some of them beats, man. Let’s get it.” You know what I’m saying? Then he called me from Waka’s phone. He called me from Waka’s phone like a couple days later. I thought it was Waka. He had called me earlier in the morning. He was like, “Yo, meet me at Patchwerk at three o’clock.” I was like, “Alright, bet.” Waka jumped out of bed. Boom. Just making beats. You know what I’m saying? I’m with my homeboy like, “I know he’ll go crazy with this.” I was just making the hardest beats. You know what I’m saying? From there, I just went downtown, went to Patchwerk. I was there on time. Then he was like, “You got some beats?” I’m like, “Hell yeah.” I played them in the lounge, and the beat was beating way too hard. I remember at Patchwerk, there’s a speaker that has... you know the speakers that have a cover on it? If someone’s beating too hard, the cover will just fall off the thing. I remember that shit just fell off. I’m like, “Hell yeah.” I used to love fucking equipment up, you know what I’m saying? At the studio, I was like, “Hell yeah.” Gucci was like, “Man you hard, bro.” He was like, “Man let’s go to the studio.” So we went to the studio, and I was just playing beats. From there he was just rapping on all my beats. In three days we did 20 songs. That’s how we came up with No Pad, No Pencil, you know what I’m saying, and all that kind of stuff. Rollie Pemberton I would like to play a song from No Pad, No Pencil. I think it is very notable for another reason. You’ll see in a second. This song is “Star Status Freestyle” by Gucci Mane. (music: Gucci Mane – “Star Status Freestyle“ / applause) Rollie Pemberton So you made No Pad, No Pencil. Mike will Made-It That song right there was actually on the mixtape. That dropped like this when Gucci started going mixtape crazy. Rollie Pemberton Oh yeah! That was on Guapaholics. Mike Will Made-It Yeah this was on Guapaholics. Yup, ya know what I’m saying? We did that song at the same time as we did all the songs on No Pad, No Pencil. It was the same time, you know what I’m saying? We just didn’t put it on. We ended up not putting it on No Pad, No Pencil, but that song right there, that’s where Mike WiLL Made-It came from. Rollie Pemberton Yes, exactly. If you listen, “Mike Will Made-It / Gucci Mane slayed it.” Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Rollie Pemberton What was it like when you first heard that? Mike Will Made-It Man, I was sitting right there in the studio with him. I’m telling you how that whole day went. I came to the studio, and I played some beats. He got on the first beat. He said, “Hey man, let’s go to the lounge and let’s listen to it right quick, man.” And then boom. Ya know what I’m saying? He’ll go in there and smoke like five blunts. He’ll listen to what he just did, he just freestyled on one beat. Boom. We’ll listen to what he just did. And he’s like, “Pull up the next, Mike Will.” Boom. By the time he finished the last blunt, boom, he’s back in there. He doesn’t even want to hear the beat. He goes straight in and freestyles on the next one. “Hey, let’s go listen to it right quick.” Then boom, same thing. We were doing that shit all day, then all through the intro. If you hear underneath... On that song, if you’re underneath what the DJ is saying. Like he shout me out all through the intro, ya know I’m saying? I’m in a room, I’m only like 16, 17. No, I’m only like 17, 18, at the time. I’m just like, “Damn, this man Gucci in here just shout me out bro.” Like, “Mike Will on this beat right there buddy. Straight celebrity baby. I shout him out every time.” You know what I’m saying? That’s how he comes in his verse. Then in his verse he says, “Mike Will Made It / Gucci Mane slayed it / Star Status nigga everybody upgrade it.” I’m like, damn bro, this man just shout me out, that’s hard. I never knew what we were going to do with any of these songs. I was just riding around with me and my homeboys. This was just our theme music that we were riding around to. I never knew it was going to come out. Then when it came out on Guapaholics mixtape after that, everybody in the streets was just running up to me like, “Yo, Mike Will Made-It.” Before then, it was just Mike Will. Then after that, it was like, Mike Will Made-It, Mike Will Made-It, Mike Will Made-It, Mike Will Made-It, Mike Will Made-It, Mike Will Made-It. I was just like, “Alright, well shit, I’m going to run with Mike WiLL Made-It,” you know what I’m saying? Word. Rollie Pemberton Then you had the drop, you know? Mike Will Made-It Oh, yeah yeah. Then I was working with my home girl, my sister Heysha, and she’s a song writer. You know what I’m saying? Artist and what not. We were just in the studio one night, and she just had a dope voice. I was just like, “Heysha, man, can you please? I need like a tag or something.” I got all these songs out with Gucci, with OJ da Juiceman, with Shawty Lo, with Soulja Boy, you know what I’m saying? With 2 Chainz, all these people, but nobody knows how to point it back to me, like they don’t know who’s doing it. At this time I was just a young kid in the game, just trying to get in the game. But at the time like Shawty Redd, Fatboi, KO... all those producers were running the game, you know what I’m saying? They were running Atlanta, so Zaytoven, all them were running the game, so it was like nobody really knew, OK, “Mike Will’s making those beats.” Nobody knew how to, so I was like, “OK man, I need to find a way for people to go back and [be like] this song is coming from him and this song is coming from him.” Just like I knew every song that was coming from Shawty Redd, or Fatboi, you know what I’m saying, Zaytoven. I was like, “Alright cool.” I was the youngest of them all, so I was like, “Yo Heysha, man, can you just say Mike Will Made-It?” I was like, “No, more whisper. No, no, like this. Oh, that might be it.” Then we put hella effects on it, and then I just held it because I never liked it. At first, it was like, “Mike Will Made-It,” and it just sounded like a McDonald’s commercial. It was too... I was just like, “Man.” I just held it for so long. Then I pulled it back up one day. I was in the basement with one of my homeboys. I pulled it back up one day, and I was like, “Man, I need a tag. Heysha did this.” We listened back to it, and I just kept throwing effects on it. Then I put the verify on the “Made-It” part, so it was like, “Mike Will Made-It.” I was like, “Yo, this shit sounds hard.” Then I found my pocket, and that was it ever since. Rollie Pemberton What was the first beat that you put that drop on, if you can remember that? Mike Will Made-It Probably some real hood shit. (laughs) Probably a beat that I made a thousand bucks for that never left the neighborhood. As far as some shit that’s been heard, it was probably 2 Chainz or Future, would be a song that I put it on that people have heard. Rollie Pemberton “Dirty Sprite?” Mike Will Made-It It was around that time. No, 2 Chainz was first. Was it on “Kill the Parking Lot?” It might have been... no, that was still another tag. Rollie Pemberton It was a different tag, yeah. Mike Will Made-It No, it was 2 Chainz for sure. I think it was “24/7 365,” or it was “Goin' Thru It” by 2 Chainz. That was the first time. It was on “Goin' Thru It” by 2 Chainz. That’s when I met Esco at Magic City. I told Esco, “Yo, I’m about to go hard on this production. I’m about to go on the run. I’m about to just link up with everybody. I’ve got a new sound burn. I’ve got a production team. I’ve got my business together, so hey, I’m about to go hard, bro. I just need you to break these records.” He was like, “Man, I’m with it as long as you work with my artist.” I was like, “Who’s your artist?” He was like, “Man, Future.” I was like, “Man, who is Future? What song does he have right now?” Then he was like, “Man, he’s got that "Lil Mexico Lingo" and he’s got that "Watch This".” I was like, “Oh man, easy call. "Watch This," that’s my favorite song. I was trying to figure out who sang the song anyway.” At that time, “Watch This” and “Mexico Lingo” were going dumb in the strip club, and I was in the strip club every night, so I was like, “Man...” Rollie Pemberton For people who don’t know, the strip club culture in Atlanta is really big. Mike Will Made-It Oh yeah. Rollie Pemberton The strip club culture in Atlanta is really big to the music culture, like Magic City. Mike Will Made-It Yeah, definitely. If your song go in the strip club and go in the teen club... I know it’s like night and day. If it’s the strip club and the teen club, if it goes in those two places, the song is gone. That’s just always how Atlanta went. I was 20, 21 at the time, 22, so I was right there at the cusp, so I could still go to the teen club and be the big homie and then I’d go to the strip club and be the young kid that might not have an ID that can get in, or just a young kid that was just in there. I was going to both and just rocking with the DJs. I went to the strip club, talked to Esco, and then Esco wanted me to work with Future and I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s an easy call. That’s my favorite song right now, period. There’s nothing fucking with that. That dude is going to be the shit.” We got in the studio, I put my tag on “Dirty Sprite,” but Esco already knew who I was because Esco was like, “You made that “Goin' Thru It” with 2 Chainz.” He had heard the tag. That’s when everything started making sense. Rollie Pemberton Around this time, post Gucci Mane, you’re making a lot of beats for Atlanta producers and stuff, you’re doing a lot of numbers. You also are going to school at the same time. Mike Will Made-It Yeah, I was going to Georgia State. Rollie Pemberton You’re going to college, but you’ve got some of the hottest tracks coming out of the city at the same time. Were people not believing you when a car would go by and it’s your beat, and you’re like, “Listen to the tag.” Mike Will Made-It I was just trying to stay out of the way. I wasn’t even wanting them to believe me. I was going to Georgia State. I wasn’t talking to not one kid at Georgia State. I wasn’t trying to be the man on campus, I was going to school because my sister graduated. Both my sisters graduated college. One of my sisters made nothing less than a B all the way through school. My other sister, she graduated from Georgia State, so I didn’t want to be the only fuck up, so I was just like, man. My dad wasn’t playing about school at all. He wasn’t playing. He was like, “Man, you got to go to school so you can get a good job.” I was like, “Man, working isn’t really for me though.” When I had a job, I might be on the schedule to be there at 9 AM, I might not show up until 12 PM because I was at the studio all night before. I was like, man, it really isn’t for me. I went to school because I felt like school is for anyone who wants to learn. I wanted to learn. I didn’t have it figured out, I didn’t have nothing going on, so I might as well be learning than running around doing some bullshit. At the end of the day, I was like, "Man, OK, I’m going to go to Georgia State." I was going there specifically to learn, turn my papers in, do my test, do whatever it was. I wasn’t trying to be the man on campus. “You know that song with Gucci?” I wasn’t really at where I wanted to be anyway, so I didn’t really want that kind of attention. Like, “Oh, that’s the dude who does stuff for Gucci.” Then it’s like, what kind of shoes, what kind of car... Rollie Pemberton Right. Mike Will Made-It It’s like all that kind of stuff. They don’t even need to know that. I’m in there chilling. Rollie Pemberton That’s very mature of you, for a college kid. I personally would be like, “Yeah, I made that beat.” Mike Will Made-It I was different. I was out of the way. I wasn’t trying to be cool with everybody at school, I knew I was leaving school. I was actually leaving school pulling up on Future on 11th Street. Gucci was at Patchwerk. I’m pulling up on Gucci at Patchwerk, then those studios are right next to each other, they’re literally two minutes away from each other, and then I go to another studio where a lot of underground street rappers would be at, and I’ll have the A room, B room, and C room all working on my beats, and then I’ll leave those three studios and then 2 Chainz don’t like going to studio until 11 PM, 12 AM. I’ll drive all the way to Old National and go in with 2 Chainz... Old National, that’s the south side of town. I’ll drive all the way down there, be in the studio with 2 Chainz until three or four in the morning, and then drive all the way back to Marietta where I live and go back to school. Really, I didn’t get no sleep, so I’m not really in a talking mood anyway, I’m just chilling just trying to do what I got to do to make sure I get the good grades. One day I just noticed, I was in late registration and I was just looking around and I was like, damn there’s a thousand, two thousand people in here, and I know I’m coming from Georgia, so I’m getting a discounted rate to go to school, but I’m hearing the other numbers that these other kids have to pay and I’m like, shit, they’re making a lot of money here, bro. I knew my student loans were... I was going deeper and deeper and deeper in student loans. At that point, I felt like Future was so good, I felt like 2 Chainz was so good, I felt like my production team was solid at this time, and I felt like we were coming with a new sound. I knew Gucci was about to come home and I had just linked with an A&R for Rick Ross and I had sent him some beats and he was saying Ross was fucking with it, so I’m like, fuck school because at the end of the day I can’t make... I’m really going more and more in debt and I’m not trying to keep going in debt. I called my pops one day and I’m like, “Why do you want me to go to school so bad? My production team is going to be the illest, I promise you.” I was like, “I’m working with these rappers, 2 Chainz and Future, people don’t know them right now, but they’re going to be the hottest shit next year.” This was like 2010. I was like, “They’re going to be the hottest shit next year. I mess with Gucci, I think Rick Ross is about to get on the beat. I’m about to just not go to school.” Rollie Pemberton Let me talk about that, because I think that is the big moment for you, where I think your dad had to be like, "OK." Mike Will Made-It No. Rollie Pemberton Not even? Mike Will Made-It My dad is from the military, so it’s what he says is period. He like, “Nah. You’re going to school because music is going to be there, so just finish school and music will be there.” I was like, “No, I’m going to go for music and school is going to be there. If the music doesn’t work, I’m going to go back to school.” We had two different views, but I lived in the house with my mom, so my mom with whatever I’m with. I used to be making beats in the house, just beating, we’re in a small house, the whole house shaking, and she upstairs kicking it on the phone, watching TV, watching soap operas, whatever. My mom was like, “Whatever you want to do.” My dad wasn’t hearing it, so he thought I enrolled in school and I didn’t, so he hit me up and was like, “How’s school going? I’m like, I told you, I wasn’t about to enroll. I’m focusing on this music for real.” We had a disagreement right then. He wasn’t really feeling me. We got off the phone. A week later, “Dirty Sprite” dropped, boom. Then 2 Chainz’s “Codeine Cowboy” dropped and then “Tupac Back” dropped and then when those three dropped, that was within the first semester I dropped out of school. Now it’s like, “Pops I told you, I got a song that’s going on the radio now, I’m telling you. I really just stepped into a whole other realm because now I skipped a step.” Rewind a little bit, what made me start a production team is because I had all these songs in the streets for Gucci, OJ, Soulja Boy, all those people I named before, 2 Chainz, and I was like, “What’s the difference between me and a Shawty Redd or me and a Kanye or me and one of these producers I look up to, Juicy J, Dr. Dre. What’s the difference?” They all had a production team and they all were treating this music like business. At first I wasn’t treating the music like business, I was just treating it like, “Shit, I just want to make some hard shit and just listen to it,” and so that’s when I started realizing that music and the music business, that’s two different things. I’ve been focusing on the music this whole time, let me focus on the music business. Let me get a team together, let me come with a sound ... All those guys had a sound. You know Three 6 Mafia’s sound, you know Kanye’s sound, you know Dr. Dre’s sound. Everybody had a sound. It was an organized kind of thing. It was like, we got to make an ill brand. EarDrummers was a vision that I had when I was 17, I came up with the name EarDrummers. If you listen to Gucci’s old mixtapes, you’ll hear it on there, “Shout out to Mike Will on the track, shout out to the whole EarDrummer crew. This dude’s 18 years old, he’s a beast.” Way back then. EarDrummers was only one person, but I had a vision in my mind like, I want to make the illest production team with the illest songwriters and the illest producers on the team. This without anybody telling me to do this. I’m just doing my research, I’m just being a student of the game and seeing what’s going on. Rollie Pemberton How did you discover your sound specifically? You’re saying, Kanye, he has this sound, they all have their sound... Mike Will Made-It Yeah, but I started building my team. I knew with me, when EarDrummers was just me, my sound was to have it beating in that Tahoe, or whatever car has a system, my beats need to be knocking. That was my sound. Then Gucci, after we did those 20 songs in three days, I brought him some more beats and he told me, “Mike, I’m not going to lie to you, I love these beats, but we have to take the sound to the next level dog, we got to take it to the next level.” I never knew what he was talking about until he saw the drop on “Lemonade” and “Rock Star Lifestyle.” I started hearing all the singles. That’s when I started trying to elevate my sound. When I started trying to elevate my sound, Waka decided to start rapping. Waka was like, “I need the old Mike Will,” so I was torn in between the two, of taking my sound to the next level and still having it gritty. That’s what I was focusing on. What’s a perfect blend? I went to high school with my boy A+, he used to make his beats, I used to make my beats and we used to critique each other’s beats. That was my boy. Then I taught my boy Skooly how to make beats, and then my other homeboy P-Nasty, I met from a mutual friend and then he was already... Him and Marz had a relationship like me and Pluss, so he brought Marz and we just all together started putting it all in the melting pot. We all started coming with a sound and there was just, OK, boom. He might snatch this from me, he might snatch that from him, he might snatch that from him, and it was like none of the beats sounded the same, but it was a consistent sound. People could tell what it was. It was that knocking, weird-sounding beat that will always have a filter on it. Rollie Pemberton What advice would you give people who want to make beats collaboratively? What advice would you give people trying to make beats together? Mike Will Made-It A mastermind is never one mind. A mastermind is a collective of minds, so if you want to be a mastermind on a production or the beats or whatever you do – clothes, videos, whatever – a mastermind is a collective of minds, so collaborations is always good. We were some of the first people out of the city that was open to collaborate on beats. For a long time, when I was first coming in the game, everybody was like this, “No, my beat harder than your beat, my beat do this.” Everybody just like in competition, but I’m like, “Shit your beat hard as a motherfucker. I don’t know how to do the melodies like that, but I know you don’t know how to do the bounce like this, so I’m going to do the bounce like this and you put the melody on top of that and let’s see how that sounds.” That shit sound new. At that time, we were the first ones with a production team and we kicked the door down and paved the way for every producer that was going to come after us. Now, if you see how the producers move out of Atlanta now, they’re down to collaborate, they’re down to work with each other. Rollie Pemberton Why do you think that is? It seems like in Atlanta it happens way more than in other places. Mike Will Made-It I feel like I kind of just explained that. I don’t want to take all the credit for that, it’s just like I don’t know. I can’t really tell you. Maybe they went and did that research the same way I did my research and they looked at Dr. Dre and Kanye or maybe they looked at me and they were like, “Dang, Mike Will and P-Nasty and Marz and A+, the EarDrummers, they doing their thing and they’re young just like me. They’re only a couple years older than me and they’re doing their thing. We could do it too.” Maybe in their mind it was an inspiring thing, it was a competition thing, I don’t know what it was, but it’s dope to see it. At the end of the day, in Atlanta the artists always collaborated. I feel like the reason why New York started running into a bumpy road is because they started beefing with each other. Rollie Pemberton That’s what I was talking about. Mostly producers are very competitive, but not in a collaborative way. Mike Will Made-It I was talking about artists. You’re right, though. That’s exactly how it was. When I first came in, producers were competitive and I’m not going to lie to you, Gucci will tell you what made him start rocking with me real tough, because he was like, “Man, bro, you were just competitive and you were aggressive. You were sitting over there, you’d be the youngest nigga in the room, you’ll just be listening to everybody’s beats and as soon as it’s time to play your beats, you’ll just walk over there, grab the aux cord, put the phone in and then turn the shit up as loud as you can and just boom, the shit just knocking.” Gucci like, “Man, I ain’t had no choice but to get on your beats. Seeing how aggressive and competitive you were and how you’ll stay in the studio all day." You can rap on everybody beats, that’s cool. I’ll stand right here because I know this first beat that I’m going to play, it’s going to goddamn go crazy. If I don’t have a beat like that, I’m not going to show it to the studio. But if I got a beat like that, I’m going to show up to the studio and I’m going to stand there all day. Record on everything, it’s all good, because when I play this beat, I already know what it’s about to be. That’s just what it was. Going back to the production team, I built that production team and at that point I’m like, OK, I got to start getting my business together. I got to start running a team. I just wanted to run the game like I was Dr. Dre. That’s just what I wanted to do. I was like, alright, bet, this is what we’re going to do. When those three songs came out that semester that I dropped out of school, then it was like a whole... that’s when I started seeing a whole other thing, because that’s when songs started getting on the radio, you got a team? Now it’s time to boss up. Rollie Pemberton I want to play you a song that represents that period and was definitely blasting in the Tahoes all across America. Mike Will Made-It Tahoes, Caprices. Rollie Pemberton This is “Tupac Back.” Meek Mill and Rick Ross. (music: Meek Mill feat. Rick Ross – “Tupac Back” / applause) Mike Will Made-It That was me and Meek Mill’s introduction to the game. Rollie Pemberton You weren’t aware of Meek Mill at the time, right? Mike Will Made-It No. It was crazy because we were so hungry to get on. It was so crazy. We were so hungry to get on, man. I just know that Rick Ross recorded that song, “King of Diamonds,” and “Marble Floors” all in the same night, even though they all came out at different times. He recorded all those songs in the same night. I thought it was going to be Rick Ross songs, so when the song dropped and I saw everyone on the Internet and I heard the verse, I was like, man. Because this one, Rick Ross was still lit, but this one was like... Rollie Pemberton It was like “B.M.F.”, all those tracks had come out. Mike Will Made-It Yeah, it was like Rick Ross is law. When I heard somebody else on the raps, I didn’t even want to hear what the raps were saying, I was just like, "Why the fuck ain’t Rick Ross all the way through?” You know what I’m saying? Then, I started listening to the verse and I’m like, “Oh, dang. Buddy snapped.” That’s when I started doing my research on Meek Mill. I was like, “OK, he’s going to be hard.” That was like a defining moment for him and a defining moment for me. It was just a dope song. That song just sounded like a horse on the radio. You know what I’m saying? For real. Rollie Pemberton A horse? Mike Will Made-It Yeah, a horse. It sounded like it just wasn’t going to stop. Horses don’t stop. It sounded like ... Rollie Pemberton Like Young Thug says, right? Mike Will Made-It Exactly, a horse. Rollie Pemberton This song was huge when it came out. When did you realize that you just had like a monster on your hands? Mike Will Made-It Man, when that shit was sounding like a horse on the radio. I was hearing everything else on the radio, it was sounding dope. When that came on, it was a different kind of energy. It was just like, “What the ...” You know what I’m saying? It didn’t matter where you went in the country, when that song came on it cut through. If DJs were to still drop that in the mix, it stands out. It sounds so strong, just has that energy. It sounds like ... It makes anybody do this, if your face just squinches up. Rollie Pemberton That nasty look. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. That’s that... Rollie Pemberton I find a lot of your beats have that affect on people. They make you do the screw face. It’s like, how do you generate this kind of energy with your beats? I feel like you’re very dynamic, but I feel like you’re very known for the upbeat sound, in that way. Mike Will Made-It I feel like, man, with me, with my whole team with everything, I just feel like we don’t even feel like the track is done or the song is done or anything, unless it has that kind of energy. I’m sitting on so many songs that if my boy Aubz who’s my A&R, or my boy BWright, who is creative direction, if they were to pick, these songs would have been out. But, the songs, I feel like, I don’t know, it’s not time for it. Maybe at one point it’s just going be time for it because it sounds all the way different. I have songs with so many different people. We might feel like it’s not time for that song to go out. If that energy is not up there... I’m telling you, I really stick to those Tahoe days. I really stick to those days because when I was like 15, 14 riding in the Tahoe, making those dirty beats, my face was like... In the Tahoe, I was just young, turned like, “You hear this?” If the song doesn’t make me do that like in the studio or, it doesn’t sound new or, it doesn’t cut through or, it’s not fresh, it doesn’t need to be out. I never wanted anything to fit in. I wanted shit to stick out. I don’t know. That’s how I look at it. Rollie Pemberton I feel like often, producers, they can lose touch with the Tahoe days. They can kind of forget where they came from. It seems like throughout your career, you’ve managed to maintain a certain level of quality with everything. Mike Will Made-It I feel like the difference between me and those producers is like when they were going to Georgia State, they would have been like, “I made that beat for Gucci!” They do it for that. I don’t do it for that. When I was putting out music, I was dropping mixtapes with baby pictures. I don’t even give a damn if anybody knows what I look like or knows... It was really all about the music. It was really all about making the illest shit. That’s what we wanted to do. Whether it was pop, whether it was trap, whether it was whatever. When everybody started getting on the trap wave, everybody started being inspired by our sound and what we were doing on the trap wave and the hip-hop wave, that’s when we redirect our focus and started working with Miley [Cyrus]. That just shows you how we think. We’re like, “OK, everybody’s doing that. Everybody’s redoing the sound and doing it their own way, alright cool. We’re about to do this.” Boom. “We Can’t Stop.” “23.” No filter on “23.” Just focus on this pop lane. No matter what anybody has to say about Miley Cyrus. Rollie Pemberton A lot of people ... Up to that point, 2012, you went to the moon. You had so many big tracks. Mike Will Made-It Thirteen. Rollie Pemberton I think even 2012 because it was like, “No Lie”... Mike Will Made-It “No Lie.” Rollie Pemberton “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” “Pour It Up”... Mike Will Made-It “Pour It Up” was 2013... Rollie Pemberton Yeah? I don’t think so. Mike Will Made-It I don’t know. Rollie Pemberton “773 Love,” which was huge. “Turn on the Lights.” Your profile was growing steadily with each track. When everyone expected you to zig, you zagged with the Miley thing. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Rollie Pemberton Actually, I’d like to play the song first, before I get into this. I have a theory about this. Mike Will Made-It Oh, OK. Rollie Pemberton It’s all good. This is, “We Can’t Stop.” Mike Will Made-It My man right here has a theory, that’s hard. (laughter) Rollie Pemberton I’m always thinking. Mike Will Made-It That’s fire. Rollie Pemberton This is Miley Cyrus, “We Can’t Stop.” (music: Miley Cyrus – “We Can’t Stop” / applause) Rollie Pemberton Just even here in the studio, the track banged so hard. Mike Will Made-It That shit slapped. Rollie Pemberton It’s crazy. It’s like... Mike Will MAde-It I love that song. Rollie Pemberton We take it for granted now, because now it’s like we’re living in trap world, right? Where it’s like there’s this expectation of, “Oh yeah, there’s going to be pop songs with a heavy bass drum,” but it wasn’t like that before that track. Mike Will Made-It Hell no. Man look, let’s be very clear. Boom, 2012 I had, “No Lie,” “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” “Turn on the Lights.” I was broke as fuck with those songs out. I wasn’t putting any of my songs with ASCAP. I didn’t do that. I told you, I wasn’t even looking at it like that. I thought music was just like, boom, you make a hot song, you put it out, you get rich. You’ve got music, then you’ve got the music business. 2012 I was like, “OK, I’ve got to start handling my business because I’m broke as hell. Everybody around me is broke, but we’ve got these hard songs out. Only way we’re surviving is just from independent, just hype off the hype and buying beats.” That’s the only money that we were getting. Whatever checks we were getting for album placements, but that’s not going to last you. That’s not like... Rollie Pemberton At that time, it wasn’t any publishing happening. Mike Will Made-IT Not yet. I didn’t really even know about publishing. At that point, I met my manager DJ, which is Jimmy Iovine’s nephew, he just could not believe that I didn’t have a manager. I was managing myself and he was like, “Man, you’ve got three songs on the charts, you don’t have a manager?” I was like, “No.” Then, I was like, “Man look, this is my vision though. This is why I don’t have a manager. Every manager is trying to step in and just be the cool guy standing next to me and be like, this is my little homie. He’s got these songs on the radio. No. I don’t need that. I don’t need anybody to give me cool points. I don’t need that. I need somebody that’s going to handle this business so we can get some money.” He was like, “Oh, yeah. You’ve got to register your songs with ASCAP. You’ve got to do this ...” Then I was like, “Everybody is trying to sign me. I’m not even trying to hear what they’re talking about because I’m not trying to sign anything without signing all my homies and... We’re not moving. At the end of the day, we need to get everything together.” He started helping me get all my business together. First person he brings me around is Jimmy Iovine. Boom. I meet with Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy Iovine hears, “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” “Turn on the Lights,” “No Lie,” at that time. Then, I play him a bunch of other songs. I played him, “Bitches Love Me,” just the hook. I just had “Bitches Love Me,” the hook on my phone, with Future and Drake. This was before Wayne had hopped on it. I was just playing them a bunch of shit and I was just letting them know my vision and everything. We would meet. Every time I come to LA, we would meet. He told me. He was like, “Yo, Mike, man you know what you have to do? You know what your job is? You know what you really have to do?” I was like, “What?” He was like, “Man, you have to make hip-hop music pop.” I’m like, “What?” He was like, “Man, you have to make hip-hop music pop.” I’m like, “Dog, you sound crazy. What do you mean?” He was like, “Man, I’m telling you.” I’m like, “Man, I don’t know. I like pop music, I got a lot of pop beats, but people don’t really listen for that from me. They want to hear the hip-hop.” He was like, “Listen man, listen.” He was like, “Man, Dr. Dre was pop. Tupac was pop. Kanye’s pop. Pharell was pop.” He was like, “Man, and they still kept their sound.” He was like, “Man, you are the only one who can do that of this new generation.” He was like, “Man, salute to all the four on the floor, shit,” he was like, “But, everything on pop radio sounds the same right now.” He was like, “And, you have a sound that’s defining enough that can do it.” I’m just like, “Man, yo whatever man. Whatever.” I’m just thinking that, he just talking it over [in] my head, but then when I saw “No Lie” go number one in crossover, then “Turn On The Lights” crossed over, then “Bandz A Make Her Dance” crossed over. All songs went up urban charts, first, and then crossed over and went pop, or went rhythmic. “No Lie” went pop. When I saw that, that’s when I was like, “Yo, dang that’s what Jimmy was talking about.” He told me all those guys that I looked up to were pop and then he was like, “Man, man you’re letting people from overseas come over here and just run the clubs, but really your songs are the songs that run the clubs. Man, you have to keep going. You have to get with the right artist and duh, duh, duh,” and it’s crazy because Kanye had just told me the same thing in 2012, early 2012, before I met Jimmy. Kanye was just telling me the same thing, so I’m listening to it and I wasn’t really putting two and two together. When we did “We Can’t Stop,” we had originally did it for Rihanna. Then we had that song, we had “Pour It Up,” and we had this other song, and I was in there getting frustrated because they were telling me that Rihanna wasn’t picking my songs at first and I was like, “Man, I know I got three hits. Just put me in the room with Rihanna, man. Put me in the room with her. I know I got three hits. She got to pick one of these. I know I got it. I know it got it.” Then, Chris Brown ended up coming to the studio and he came in the room with me and I let him hear “We Can’t Stop” and then I let him hear “Pour It Up” and he told me “We Can’t Stop,” he was like, “I like this song, but it’s kind of moving slow right now,” because it was sounding a different way than that, at first. He was like, “It’s kind of sounding a little slow for Rihanna,” and he was like, “Man, let me hear something else,” and I played “Pour It Up” and he got up, starting dancing, and he was like, “Yo, man I got to give this to Rihanna. I got to get this to baby girl, man. If she don’t fuck with it, this my next single, period. This my next single. I know this is a hit. I know what this is. I understand that ratchet shit.” I’m like, “Alright, bet,” so he went out, hollered at Rihanna and then Rihanna called and was like, “Yo, there’s some song Chris just talking about that Mike Will got. Can y’all get it to me?” I sent them “Pour It Up” and then she got on “Pour It Up.” Every time I would play “We Can’t Stop,” I always would say, “Man, this the new “Party In The USA.” This the new “Party In The USA,” not even really knowing that “Party In The USA” was Miley’s song. I didn’t really listen to... I knew “Party In The USA,” but I didn’t know the artist or whatever. I was like, “Man, this the new Party In The USA. This the new Party ...” One of my home girls was like, “Why don’t you get it to Miley Cyrus? You always say that. Why don’t you get it to Miley Cyrus?” I was like, “Man, you right.” I called my man. For real, I called my manager and I was like, “Yo, I need to get in the studio with Miley Cyrus.” He said to me, “Miley Cyrus?” Then he was like, “Is she working?” I was like, “I don’t care.” I was like, “Man, I know this song that I got for her, bro, she going to be back working. She going to be out of here, bro. Trust me. I need to get in the studio with her. I need to get next to her, bro.” Then he was like, “Man, alright I’ll work on it. I’ll figure out how to get you in the studio with her.” I remember a couple days later, I went to New York and I had a meeting with all the labels. New York, it was like 12 degrees outside, so I had this last meeting and it was with RCA and at this time, it was at night time, so it was eight degrees outside. I had just signed my publishing deal to Warner Chapel and my boy Ryan Press was just moving me around, out of labels. I called Ryan and I was like, “Yo, I’m not going to the last meeting, bro.” Then he was like, “Man, you got to man, it’s with RCA.” I said, “Bro, it’s eight degrees outside, dog. I’m not going.” He was like, “Man, I’m telling you. It’s with the top guy from RCA. It’s going to be worth it, duh, duh, duh.” I ain’t know it’s going to be that call, so I ain’t have no jacket or anything. I was like, “Fine, fuck it.” I just went to the meeting and then I’m playing them a whole bunch of music and then I was like, “Man, this song right here, it’s like the new “Party In The USA,” man,” but I ain’t know Miley was signed to the label. I was like, “Man, this like the new “Party In The USA.“ It’s going to be big. If y’all have any pop artist, then y’all should just give this on to them.” I played it for them and then Peter Edge was like, “Yo, this would be good for Miley Cyrus.” I’m like, “Hell yeah.” Then he was like, “Man, yo she’s signed to this label.” I’m like, “For real?” I’m like, “Yo, we need to get this to her. I’m telling you, man. This going to be the one.” Then, he was like, “Man,” he called her A&R upstairs. He gave it to her and then when she met up with Miley Cyrus, Miley Cyrus heard it and she said she liked it off the rip, just because she connected with it, because it reminded her of a specific party that she went to. That’s why she said she just connected with it. Then, she liked this other beat. Then at that point, I was like, “Man, y’all we need to get in the studio. I need to make sure she does this right.” This is like my first real stab at a pop song and I knew that Miley was like... She’s a pop star, period. Then, all she needed was the right song and then that’s going to be a pop song, so I was like, “Man, this almost what Jimmy Iovine was talking about, like hip-hop, pop, whatever.” She loved the song, so at first, she was singing it like the reference. I’m like, “Yo, Miley man, these guys who wrote this song are from the West Indies. They’re from the islands. You’re from Nashville, Tennessee. I don’t want you to sound like them. I need to hear that country twang. I need you to sound like you.” Rollie Pemberton Who’s that that wrote that? Mike Will Made-It Rock City. Boom, she starts singing it her way and then she start feeling comfortable with singing it her way, because at first, she thought she had to do it like that, because she was saying all the pop producers that she worked with before had real strict guidelines on how they wanted their records recorded, and I wasn’t like that. I know art is all about layers, no matter what. No matter what art we’re talking about, if we’re talking about painting, if we’re talking about cars. The reason Benz is so fire is because all the layers that it has. Everything that it comes with, a beat. If it has all the right layers on it... My man looking right there like he don’t understand what I’m saying. If you ever drove a Benz, like my Benz has massage seats, and it has a refrigerator in the back, and it has heated seats, and it has air-conditioning seats, and the engine goes fast as fuck. Then when you turn each corner, the seat grabs you. All that’s art, because when I was riding in my Bonneville, that car didn’t do none of that. At the end of the day, that’s a whole next level of art. When you look at paintings, you can pay attention to the one blue shoe right there, or you can step away and be like, “OK, damn this is a whole crazy picture. Damn, how did he get that to look like that?” Because he mix orange with brown, with something else, and he made it look like that. All that’s visual art. On audio art, with music, sometimes you got to know the simplicity of stopping or keep going. You got to know, “OK, this beat right here is simple, but it sounds great. Boom, all we need is vocals on here.” That’s the last instrument. Then those vocals might bring you to put one more melody on top of it and then I might combine three 808s to make it, to make a certain beat sound, a certain kind of way. It’s all about layers. Matter fact, we got the aux right here. I’m about to play a song right quick. There’s talking at the beginning. It was really a fuck up, because the computer had said something when Future was recording and I was just like, “Yo, keep that shit in there man” like layers man, layers in art. (music: Future – unreleased / applause) Mike Will Made-It Can I turn it up? The dog’s growling. Rollie Pemberton Is that from Ape Shit? Mike Will Made-It No, that’s just me and Future, we’re working, just doing this. That was, the dog’s growling in there, the girl coming in, you know what I’m saying. Then there’s four 808s on top of each other. I made the beat. One of my homies had brought me a beat machine they made, they’re from London. I started a beat like that, but then I put more 808s from Fruity Loops. You know what I’m saying? It’s just different layers. Same thing with Gucci Mane, same thing with this song right here. This started off, it was just a drum loop, and then Gucci, the first day he got out of jail he called me and was like, “Yo, send me some beats, bro. I need some beats right now. I’m about to head to the house and just record.” It was just a drum loop, and then I took his vocals, and then I added everything else around it. (music: Gucci Mane – “First Day Out Tha Feds” / applause) Rollie Pemberton I got to talk about that song, though. The text comes, Gucci’s coming home early. What are you saying? Mike Will Made-It I was talking to him the whole time he was locked down, so I knew when he was coming home, but I couldn’t say anything. Rollie Pemberton Oh yeah, wow. Mike Will Made-It For real. Hold on, I got one last example. Rollie Pemberton Hey man, you can play as much as you want. Mike Will Made-It It’s just one last example and if people heard Gucci’s album, they probably didn’t even peep this, but this is back talking about layers. I had gave Gucci another, it was just an open drum loop. The more open the beat is, the better Gucci does, you know what I’m saying, because he animates his voice, and different stuff like that. I had gave him this one drum loop and he didn’t even realize that he did two songs on it, you know what I’m saying? He used the drum loop twice. I ended up trying to make a whole nother beat around it. He was like, “Nah, nah, it’s not rocking the same.” I ended up using the same drums and then me and Zaytoven just added some different sounds on the other one, but these two beats that was just on his last album were pretty much the same. Listen in this song right here. Listen, this is crazy. (music: Gucci Mane – “Waybach”)
(music: Gucci Mane – Richest N**** In the Room / applause) Mike Will Made-It For real. Basically, those two songs got the same drums, you know what I’m saying, but it’s all about the layers and you wouldn’t even realize it because they sound like two different songs. Rollie Pemberton Those were both on Everybody Looking. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Rollie Pemberton That was “Richest N** In The Room” and... Mike Will Made-It “Waybach.” Rollie Pemberton “Waybach.” That album, there was some collaborative production going on, right, with Zaytoven? Mike Will Made-It Yeah, definitely, me and Zaytoven went crazy. It was real quick. Rollie Pemberton That was at his mansion? Was it? Mike Will Made-It We did “At Least a M” at his house and really that’s about it. Other than that, we were just in the studio. We collab'ed in the studio with each other before he came home. We pretty much already knew... we’ve been working with Gucci for so long, so we pretty much already knew that he’ll go crazy on certain tracks, or he’ll connect with certain tracks and shit. Back to what I was saying about... Rollie Pemberton Layers. Mike Will Made-It ...layers. It was all about layers so with Miley Cyrus we worked on “We Can’t Stop” for so long, and it was just like, “Man, yo, adlibs right here," or "Add harmonies right here," or either, you know what I’m saying, "Stack the part on the bridge" where she was like ... Dang, how does that bridge go? Hey, my bad. Hold on one second. Rollie Pemberton From “We Can’t Stop?” Mike Will Made-It Yeah, hold on one second I got the... (music: Miley Cyrus – “We Can’t Stop”) The whole “One, two, it’s our party we can say what we want to,” a lot of my inspiration before I went to the studio, going to the studio with her on that album was from the Fun album, and my boy Jeff Bhasker executive produced that album. I really like Jeff Bhasker, that’s my boy, so I always respected what he did. I was listening to it and I was like, “Damn.” I just respected that Fun _album. That was one of my favorite albums. I was like, “Damn this is my first shot at a pop record. What am I respecting in a pop world right now?” I was respecting “We Are Young” from _Fun. Rollie Pemberton A lot of people wouldn’t expect you to be listening to that music. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Assuming makes an ass out of you and me. Rollie Pemberton I heard that before. Mike Will Made-It Definitely. I listen to Fun. I listen to everything, Queen. I listen to everything. As a producer, I feel like you have to listen to everything. Rollie Pemberton What are some inspirational artists to you, like that we wouldn’t think? Mike Will Made-It Fun, Queen, Jeff Bhasker, Trent Reznor. Rollie Pemberton I heard you, up in the studio you were talking about the Pet Shop Boys. Mike Will Made-It Oh yeah, Pet Shop Boys. I like the production on Pet Shop Boys. I like The Smiths. If you look at my iTunes, it’s like pretty much... Bobby Womack for sure, but he an old school player so I think they might, everybody would think that one. Beth Hart, I like Beth Hart. Bon Iver. I listen to Cyndi Lauper a lot. The Flaming Lips. I pretty much got everybody in here, know what I’m saying? I want to get in the car, because when you get into those artsy bands, and it’s just grabbing you and all that kind of shit, you know what I’m saying? You got to play some different kind of music. Rollie Pemberton You get that Cyndi Lauper blasting. Mike Will Made-It Cyndi Lauper and then Young Scooter and then you know what I’m saying. Then the Pet Shop Boys and Gucci Mane, and then 21 Savage. The mix is crazy. It’s just inspiration from everything because one thing about music, what I look at is, music is all about rhythm and melody. A lot of times it’s real important how artist are saying sometimes, those lyrics can get people through life. I think the thing that transcends throughout the whole world, not only in the States, not only in the States and Canada, or not even only just North America. Even overseas, it’s really about rhythm and melody. I could put on a beat right now and just try to see if my boy right there be bouncing. If I play a beat, and he’s not bouncing, I might not even look at him. I might be playing a beat and be looking at him like this and just see if he going to bounce. If he’s going to bounce, then OK, “Shit. This is the right beat.” It might just be an amazing melody with no drums. I play a couple more things to just explain what I’m saying. Rollie Pemberton Usually when I hang out with someone and you pass them the aux cord, they play something and it’s just like, “Oh you got to keep working on that.” With you, you can play as much as you want. Obviously. Mike Will Made-It I appreciate that. Rollie Pemberton Yeah. Mike Will Made-It It’s like an unfinished beat. I’ll play this one. I just made this the other night. I did the first half of it and when the beat speeds up, my boy Wheezy, he sped the beat up. He works a lot with Young Thug. (music: unreleased / applause) Mike Will Made-It Turn it up. It’s just like, I feel like that beat is like missing an artist. We made it on the spot. We made it real quick for Young Thug and I feel like Young Thug was going to take it somewhere else and if it needed anything else we could add something. A lot of people don’t know this, but I found Makonnen, he was part of our squad first. Rollie Pemberton Really? Mike Will Made-It He’s still part of our squad. He was working in the basement just grinding hard. Then we always just was inviting him to the studio when nobody even knew about him. We were working on a project and a lot of these songs don’t have drums. I was working with Miley’s guitarist and I let him hear “Riding Dirty on 85” by the Young Bloods and I said this is my favorite beat of all time. Is there anyway we can take this and make it pop? He just played some shit and it just sounded dope. I just added a clap. I never knew where to go with the drums and then Makonnen had put this song on there. (music: Makonnen – unknown) That’s just like, just really just going back to what I was saying as far as rhythm and melody. That first beat was more rhythm that made everybody bounce and then that right there was like... You might hear that melody all day in your head. (singing) “I’m smoking up. Since you ain’t around.” Rollie Pemberton How do you know what kind of beat for what kind of artist? Is it intuitive? Mike Will Made-It I don’t even know, bro. When I’m pretty much dead set on it, I’m pretty much dead set on it. I play “Ain’t No Way Around It” for Future ten times before he even hopped on it. I don’t know, when I’m dead set on it, I’m dead set on it but just as far as music and production, music period. I’m about to drop a project. I was supposed to drop it in 2013, I just never did but it’s called Fuck Verses and it’s just my take on jazz. It’s like a hood jazz. It’s like just beats and there might be a hook. The rest of it is just beats, but it’s called Fuck Verses and it’s just ... That’s how I see music. It’s all about layers and it’s all about melody and rhythm. Those are the universal languages. Even if you don’t even, some people in here might not even understand everything that I say, because I’m from Atlanta and the way I talk might be so heavy from Atlanta, but if they hear a beat. They might not necessarily understand what Young Thug says, but it’s just like, the melody is crazy. For a long time, and Future was one of the first ones coming through like that, where people might not understand what he’s saying, they just love the song so much. Rollie Pemberton They feel it, you know? Mike Will Made-It You feel it. You’re hearing the melody. You feel the feeling, because you feel the pain in his voice. You hear the melody and the melody’s so good, then the melody and the beat are so good. His cadence is, he has his own cadence. That’s like a take on rhythm. Rhythm and melody, that’s a universal language, no matter if you speak French, if you speak English, if you speak Spanish, whatever. Rollie Pemberton That’s very relevant here at the Academy. We’ve got so many people from around the world. Mike Will Made-It Yeah. Everybody in here got heat. For real. Rollie Pemberton I want to change gears here. I’m going to play a new single that you’ve been working on, that just dropped with a video. Mike Will Made-It Which one is that? Rollie Pemberton It’s Rae Sremmurd. Mike Will Made-It Oh yeah, “Black Beatles.” Yeah. Rollie Pemberton I need to play this, and we need to talk about it. I’m going to play it for the uninitiated first. This is “Black Beatles” featuring Gucci Mane, Rae Sremmurd. (music: Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane – “Black Beatles” / applause) Rollie Pemberton Mike Will, there are a lot of great songs in the history of music. Mike Will Made-It Thank you. Rollie Pemberton There’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” there’s ”Beethoven’s 5th,” there’s “Stairway To Heaven,” now we have “Black Beatles.” I’m not joking. I’m actually totally serious. I think it’s, by far, best song of the year, and I’m just wondering, with Rae Sremmurd, did you ever imagine them getting to that level? Mike Will Made-It Hell yeah. Swae Lee is amazing. Slim Jxmmi is amazing. They got the most energy, and they’re both forward-pushing, and they’re both humble as fuck, and they listen, and I was like... I’m like a person that started to learn how to get it and like... OK, there’s three things. There’s the music. There’s the music business, like I’ve been talking about, and then the last, third thing is the music industry, and there’s everything that makes up the music business, like the producers, the songwriters, the managers, everything, but I started to understand the “it” factor, and everybody started saying, “Man, you got the “it” factor,” so with Rae Sremmurd, they had the “it” factor, but they just needed to know certain knowledge. They already had it on the music thing, so when you find an artist that has the “it” factor, that’s already dope, that’s already talented as fuck and can make dope songs or whatever, and they listen, and all you’re doing is giving them more and more knowledge to put in their head to do more, it just... I already knew, OK, it’s no limit with these guys, because they’re humble enough to listen. Most people know; most people be like, “Oh no, I’m the shit, I’m the shit, I ain’t got to hear nothing,” but like I said before, a mastermind is a collective of minds, and that’s just what it is. With Rae Sremmurd, I knew, “Boy, this got to be the first artist off of Eardrummers Entertainment, period.” Because one, they got the swag, two, they got the energy, three, the music is amazing, and four, they’re humble enough to listen, and then we already got the movement, so it’s like a full package. Rollie Pemberton How did you discover them in the first place? Mike Will Made-It Man, they’re from Tupelo, Mississippi, and one of the other producers for EarDrummers was from Tupelo, Mississippi as well, and his cousin was actually the DJ and grew up with them, and they were already at his crib working. I was moving around at the time. They were at his crib working, and they were just telling me about them. I came in town, first time I saw them, I’m like, “Man, dog, these dudes is hard as fuck,” but a lot of times, when you run into people that’s hard like that, like I said, they’re hardheaded, so it’s like you can’t really have a conversation with them, so after you see how talented somebody is, you got to see mentally, am I going to be able to work with this person, or is this person going to go get locked up, or go do some crazy shit next week? They were humble kids, just really ready to win; really ready to work. They’re already forward thinkers, so when we first signed them to Interscope, I used to tell Interscope, “Yo, man, do you understand what we got here? This is the hood NSYNC. This is the hood Backstreet Boys. This is the most ratchet that pop is going to get, period.” There’s nobody in pop that can get this ratchet, and there’s nobody in hip-hop that can get this pop, so these guys are groundbreakers. All these interviews that’s not on a HD camera, take it off, because these guys are so 20/30, every interview got to be HD. Everything got to be next-level. They need pop looks. They got a sense of humor, they got swag; they got everything. They need to be on ESPN doing interviews; they need to be here, here, here, because they’re fun. That was the whole thing, when we were... The whole team, the whole thing about Rae Sremmurd was just like, “We’re going to make everything fun.” Just fun, fun, fun. Everybody want to be the hardest, or everybody want to look the meanest, or everybody want to be the realest, let’s just do some fun shit, where everyone can just forget about that shit real quick, and just have fun in this motherfucker and just feel good. That was the plan from the jump, so if they got a beat from A+, that’s the approach they doing. If they get a beat from me, they get a beat from P-Nasty, Marz; whoever from the camp, that’s just what it was, and what it was is like, we just use the resources at hand. This is like, right when I signed my label deal, it’s like you said, when things go zig, I go zag. After Miley Cyrus, it was like, “OK, boom, I done produced all these songs with all these different artists or whatnot, Rihanna, 2 Chainz, Gucci, boom. Alright. I’m going to go to Miley Cyrus. I’ll just executive produce Miley Cyrus’s album, boom.” I got my own label. Now I got my own label, “OK, boom, I’m going to sign my own artists.” We got multiple different artists, but we’re like, “OK, which artists are we going to roll out first?” Boom. It’s Rae Sremmurd. Now the whole team; our whole team is just focused on... from the artwork to everything. When I first met Rae Sremmurd, their name was Swae. It was Swae Lee, it was Jimmy Swae, and it was Bobo Swae. Salute to Sway in the Morning, but it’s already a Sway, so that name just didn’t hit hard enough, so Rae Sremmurd was a name that I came up with for a rock band. I wanted to sign a rock band one time, and I just wanted it to be “Eardrummers” backwards, and it was “Rae Sremmurd,” and I asked them what they felt about it, and they were like, “Man, that shit hard!” I was like, “Man, I just feel like that name matches y’all way more cause y’all are like rock stars, and y’all need a name that sticks out, because y’all are going to stick out like a motherfucker.” They were like, “Man, bro, we need to do that. Rae Sremmurd is hard.” I was like, “Man, people are not going to know how to say it, people not going to know how to read it,” so me an B-Right were on the phone, and we were just talking. I was like, “Hey, bro, first artwork, we don’t even need to put they faces on there.” It goes back to that mystique. That’s just the way I think. Goes back to that mystique, so I’m like, “Don’t put they faces on there, just put “Rae Sremmurd.” Yellow background, red writing. It’s loud as fuck. You going to pick it up and just be like, “What does this say?” And that’s just what it was. That was the original plan, and more and more, people wanted to know if it was one person, if it was two people, if it was kids; what was going on, then when they saw the “No Flex Zone” video it was just like, “Yo, what the fuck is this?” It was groundbreaking, and then from there it was just like, “No Type,” and they were hitmakers, so it was all about the rollout plan. Rollie Pemberton Right, but there was a lot of people who... You know, like Ebro [Darden], and people who didn’t want... Mike Will Made-It Who is that? Rollie Pemberton He’s some guy in New York who didn’t take them that seriously even though they’re number three on the Complex albums of the year... Mike Will Made-It Look, Ebro didn’t take them seriously from the jump. I brought Ebro “No Flex Zone” the same day I brought him “Buy the World.” The song “Buy the World” that I put out with Kendrick, Wayne and Future, and I let him hear “No Flex Zone,” and he was like, “Yeah, it’s cool, it’s cool.” I’m like, “Man this is a hit, bro!” He was like, “Nah. I mean, it’s cool. It is a hit. It’s like that “Yayo” song. Know what I’m saying? It’s the same kind of song as that.” I’m like, "I’m not trying to compare it to any song," or... you know what I’m saying? Not any song, I’m just saying that this song right here is a hit, and he was like, “I mean, it’s cool, it’s cool.” Whatever. I’m not going to go back and forth with this guy, but then later on he’s trying to say that they didn’t write their own raps, and all that different kind of stuff, but they do. You know what I’m saying. Swae Lee and Jxmmi, that’s all they do is work. That’s one thing you can’t instill in somebody. You can’t expect a 1TB drive to do what a 4TB drive does, you know what I’m saying? At the end of the day, a 4TB drive is going to be bigger than a 1TB drive. You can’t make a 1TB drive do that. At the end of the day, they already were 4TB drives. They already had the drives to goddamn go hard; all they needed was the equipment and a little bit of money and a little bit of time, and all they going to do is record, and the proof is in the pudding. Even when they were with me, I was telling them, “Man, same thing that gets you your first check is going to get you every other check.” Now, Rae Sremmurd is massive right now, but when they get home, any free time they get at the hotel or whatever, they’re recording. I don’t have to tell them to do that, because there are already 4TB. (applause) Rollie Pemberton I get that feeling already from... Give it up for the 4TB drives. I already got that feeling. I was recently watching the Tim Westwood freestyle they do, where they’re just going in off the top of the dome, 20 minutes straight, and it’s like, what they’re freestyling could be, like, five songs. Mike Will Made-It They’ll do it right now on FaceTime. 20 minutes, brah. That’s why I’m trying to tell you; they’re 4TB, bro. It’s dead for real, like, any time. If I call Swae Lee right now, he’s going to be like, “Man, I ain’t doing shit, at the crib recording. I’ll put on everything.” If I call Jxmmi right now and be like, “What you doing?” “Shit man, I’m trying to get in the studio. “Hey bro, what studio we can go to? We in Atlanta; what studio?” You know what I’m saying? It’s nonstop, and then Swae Lee has a setup in his bedroom, so every morning, he wakes up that’s all he does all day. All the way til he tripping over shit and falling, and then he’s like, “Oh shit, I got to go to sleep,” Then he’ll go to sleep, then he’ll wake up and be right back to recording. “Jxmmi, man, I’m at the studio.” “Shit, we got a flight at six in the morning!” “I’m about to slide over there right quick.” “It’s 1 AM, dang. You got a flight at six in the morning.” “Yeah, I’m just going to come over there right quick. Oh, this the beat you want me to get on? Alright, bet.” Boom. Rap on that beat. “You got any more beats?” Boom. That’s just how they are, man, and I never told them, “Hey, y’all better stay in there; y’all better rap and rap and rap and rap and rap.” They just went hard; you know what I’m saying? Rollie Pemberton I find that that’s very in line with the classic hip-hop work level, you know? Being able to freestyle, and they check off all those boxes, but people assume they’re not on that level just because they’re Southern rappers. Still, in 2016, people still think that, and I wonder why that is? Mike Will Made-It That’s like cavemen. That’s like people that still racist; it’s just like, you’ve just got to let them be who they are and how they think. You know what I’m saying? Certain people just think way in the past. They look at an iPhone and be like, “Oh, shit. I don’t even know what to do with this.” Those are like the same people that use flip phones, you know what I’m saying? We don’t even pay those kind of people no attention. We do it for the people that’s more in tune, or for the people that’s forward thinkers, or for the people that’s more, like, 20/20, 20/30 that’s trying to do shit forward. People that’s like, “Oh, they from Tupelo, Mississippi, they can’t rap.” How you know? Only other person you know from Tupelo, Mississippi is Elvis, so shit. You don’t know any other rappers. Now that these guys are out, now you might need to pay attention, like, “Oh, shit. Tupelo, Mississippi got rappers!” Or are you going to look at it like, “Oh, they’re from the South; they can’t rap.” That’s retarded. You know what I’m saying? That’s just retarded. A region ain’t never really set on how someone can rap, because Outkast was from the South, and... Rollie Pemberton The South got something to say. Mike Will Made-It Exactly. Rollie Pemberton I want to play something that a lot of people would not expect, or didn’t expect at the time, that Swae Lee could do, and it’s a very big track that you guys did together. I’m just going to play it for the people. Mike Will Made-It It was Rae Sremmurd. I think I know what you’re about to play; it was both of them. Rollie Pemberton Both of them. A lot of people say it was just Swae. Mike Will Made-It Yup, because Swae came up with the hook line. (music: Beyoncé – “Formation” / applause) Rollie Pemberton That was “Formation” by Beyoncé, as if I have to tell you that, but I do. Your sister’s a drum major... Mike Will Made-It The police anthem. Rollie Pemberton Yes, they made it that. Your sister’s a drum major. What did she think of that beat, because it’s got that vibe? Mike Will Made-It She fuck with that. She fuck with it tough. Rollie Pemberton Tell me the story behind “Formation.” Mike Will Made-It We were just on our way to Coachella, and I was just playing beats in the car on the aux, and then Swae Lee and Jxmmi... It was me, Swae Lee, Jxmmi... Oz, you was in the car too, huh? You went the first year we went to Coachella? OK, he must have been sleep in the car, but it was me, him, Sremm, and it was the first year we went to Coachella and I was playing beats in the car, and then Beyoncé had already reached out to me to send some music, and then I had sent a couple ideas, and I was just playing some beats, and then we’re just... We just mess around and freestyle. I might even freestyle with them, just throwing out different ideas. That’s the same way we came up with “X Bitch” on Sremm’s first album, but we were just freestyling, and then Swae Lee had said, “OK, now let’s get in formation.” I was like, “Man, what if you said “OK, ladies?” He was like, “OK. OK, ladies now...” I’m like, “Man, that might be hard for Beyoncé, bro.” He was like, “Man,” and then I was like, “Man, record it in a voice note,” and then he was just recording... Rollie Pemberton What is voice note? Mike Will Made-It Like on your iPhone. You go to voice notes. I got a whole motherfucking catalog of these motherfuckers, but you know what I’m saying? Voice notes is where, like, you just record some shit real quick, whatever’s on your head. We had recorded that shit, and then when we got back to LA we went to the studio, and that’s when we did... we went to the studio and we did “Drinks On Us,” and I was like, “Yo, what about that idea we came up with in the car, that formation [thing]?” One thing about Swae Lee, once he records a voice note, it’s not guaranteed that he’s going to record it... He might be, “Oh, no, I was just fucking around,” and he might not do it. I was like, “Man, bro, you’ve got to record that one voice note, that ‘Formation,’ I’m telling you that shit might work for Beyoncé.” He went in, and he did a whole other freestyle to the beat, but he ended up laying that formation part. Jimmy just went in the booth, and Jimmy said, “If you fuck me good, I’ll take your ass to Margiela.” He was just rapping and shit. I just took that reference track, and sent it to Beyoncé, along with a couple other reference tracks. I had run into her one night. We were just chopping it up, and she was like, “You know what? I really like the idea of ‘Formation’ that you sent.” I was like, “That’s dope man.” You know what I was thinking? I was like, “Man, when I was with Sremm, we were just talking about it like, ‘That could be a big song for the females. Get in formation about the dudes that you’re messing with first, or get in line. Get in formation.’” It could be like a good woman empowerment song, and she was just like, “Yeah.” Then we just started chopping it up about different things. The next thing you know, she takes it and makes it a culture empowerment thing. Bigger than just females, a culture empowerment thing. Then they called us to New York, to finish the production. I was just telling her different harmonies that I was hearing that she could add. My different inputs, outputs, or whatever I felt the record could do. We were just going back and forth for a week, then she ended up... We finished that song last summer, and she was going to put it out at Made In America [festival]. Then she was trying to debate, was she going to shoot the movie, or did she just want to... Because she loved the songs so much, she was like, “I just need to put it out before something happens, before it leaks. Before it gets old to me or something, I just need to put it out. But I’m thinking about shooting this movie.” So she ended up going with the movie idea, and then she held “Formation.” I remember, I hit up Jay, and I was just like, “Man, what’s the word?” No, Jay just randomly hit me on an email. We talk on email. He just randomly hit me. He was like, “Man, I’m out here working for us on the check in. Peace to the guys.” I didn’t know what that meant. I was just like, “Man, salute. Salute big dog.” I hit up my guy Big John, who connected me and Beyoncé, and me and Jay Z. I was like, “Man, what’s the word on the ‘Formation’ song? I hope she didn’t catch cold feet on it. That song’s still hard.” He was like, “No. She didn’t catch cold feet, but everything’s top secret.” Next thing you know, Beyoncé called me to one of her rehearsals, and then I went over there. It was in LA, and she was rehearsing for the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl was next week. She was like, “We’re about to perform this at the Super Bowl next week.” I’m like, “Shit.” Then she was like, “And then we’re going to shoot the video.” No, she said, “We’re going to shoot the video next week, and then we’re going to perform it at the Super Bowl the week after that.” I was like, “Damn.” Then she was like, “We’re going to put it out between there.” I’m like, “So you’re going to shoot the video, put it out, and then perform at the Super Bowl?” She was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Then how the hell is she going to get the video edited?” Because I can’t get my guys to edit that quick. I was like, “How’s she going to get it edited?” She did it. She did exactly what she said. The exact dates and everything, it dropped, and it just broke. Everything just broke. She broke the Internet, she broke the fucking cable, she broke everything. Then it was just like, “Formation” just went up. Rollie Pemberton Can you tell me about... Mike Will Made-It But she wrote all her... Rollie Pemberton When you watched the Super Bowl? Mike Will Made-It I was at Jimmy Iovine’s crib. No, I was at DJ’s crib. Jimmy Iovine was over there. I was in the room with, I don’t even remember the guys’ names, but if I said their names, people would be like, “Oh yeah, that’s the guy who does this.” But it was all billionaires. Like, five billionaires. I don’t know, they bet millions on the game, damn near. That’s how I felt. I’m just in there. I never felt so little, or I never felt like I had so much hard work to do. No, I felt like that my whole life, but in that room, I was just like, “Damn.” I’m just watching it, and Jimmy’s like, “Hey, she’s doing your song tonight, right?” I was like, “Yeah,” and they were all like, “OK.” Then the song played, and that shit just opened my eyes. Everything played back. Tahoe, Gucci Mane studio days, building my team. Then I did that song with my boy A+ from high school, and it just felt good to do a song with him that made it to the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a milestone. When we were working on Miley’s album, the crazy thing was, it was like an inside joke. We were always doing something. We’d be like, “This shit could play at the Super Bowl, this shit could play at the Super Bowl,” every time me and Miley would do a song. Then one time, me, her, and Future were in the studio, and me and Future were like, “This song is big.” Miley was lighting a bong, and she was like, “Man, this shit is Super Bowl.” She inhaled a big ass rip of the bong, and was an inside joke from then on. Every time we would hear a hard song, she’d be like, “Super Bowl (inhale)” even if she don’t have a bong. So then all that shit’s playing in my head while I’m watching the fucking Beyoncé performance. I’m just like, “Damn, Super Bowl.” Miley actually texted me, and was like, “Super Bowl,” with hella exclamation points, with smoke and shit. Then fucking I was just like, everything just played back. It was just like, “Damn, hard work pays off.” We’ve still got a long way to go, because hard work paid off on the production side. I went from just making beats, teaching myself how to make beats, to making beats, to trying to make the hardest beat, to trying to get a beat to an artist, to trying to get that song that I did with the artist on a mixtape. Trying to get a song I did with another artist on an album. To then trying to make a hit record. Then, understanding producing, and trying to make sure my mixing and mastering and everything was forward pushing, and ass pushing. Meanwhile, me and my engineer, any big project we have, we fall out at the end, every time. It never fails. His name is Jaycen Joshua, he works in LA. He mixes for Justin Bieber. He mixes for the biggest people. But every time, I’m always like, “Nah, turn the bass up. Turn the bass up. Nah, it’s got to come up some more.” Then he’s looking at the frequencies, he’s like, “Bro, I can’t do anything else. There’s no more room. There’ll be no more room for mastering.” “I don’t give a fuck. I’m not looking at that, I’m hearing it, and I’m telling you, turn it up. It’s not right.” Me and him will go back and forth. It’ll be like, “OK, if you want it to sound like shit.” I’m like, “Yo, if you’re going to make it sound like shit, I don’t want you to mix it.” We just go back and forth. It never fails, until we get the song how we want it, and then it ends up sounding dope. All the way from auto steps, to teaching myself how to make beats, and everything in between. Producing to understanding different things about music, and then boom. Beyoncé, that was a milestone. I always wanted to work with Beyoncé, or always wanted to work with Adele. That’s the holy grail. That’s like, “How the fuck? Can I get in the studio with Beyoncé or Adele?” So when they said Beyoncé wanted to work, I’m like, “We’ve got to make a hit.” That’s what we did, and it was just dope to see it all play out. To see her go on the Super Bowl, and actually kill the performance with my favorite band, Coldplay. It was really like a dream. I’m just in here amongst all these billionaires. It was really like a dream. I’m just like, “Man, somebody punch me, or pinch me or something.” It didn’t even seem real. It just showed that hard work finally... Well it’s not finally paid off, because I’m gracious for everything. But it just shows how far we came, and still how far we’ve got to go. Because one day, I want to see Rae Sremmurd performing “Black Beatles” on the Super Bowl. That would be crazy. It’s crazy that you mention all those, “[Bohemian] Rhapsody,” and Beethoven, and things like that. Because even when I was going to Georgia State, that’s one thing that we had to learn, music theory. We had to go all the way back to 1800, and different stuff like that. Our teacher used to play stuff, and we used to have to be like, “That’s Bach,” or, “Yo, that’s Beethoven,” “That’s..." etc. I remember the first test we had. My teacher told us that was going to be the style of the test. I had to ask him when the whole class left, “How do you really expect us to know? You really expect us to know this is Beethoven?” He was like, “When you listen to the radio, do you know it’s Big Sean? Do you know it’s Jay Z? Do you know it’s Gucci Mane?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He said, “OK then. Go do your homework.” When he said that, that shit just stuck with me. I think that’s when I started hearing music a bit differently. Usually a little bit different, and subconsciously that helped me on the production side. Knowledge is key. Rollie Pemberton From the Tahoe to the Super Bowl. Mike Will Made-It Dig. To Red Bull, to Canada. Rollie Pemberton I think that’s a good place to stop. We’re going to open it up to Q&A. Give it up for Mike Will. (applause) Mike Will Made-It Appreciate that. Audience Member You were about to say something about Beyoncé writing her own lyrics in “Formation” but you stopped there. Can you continue? Mike Will Made-It I didn’t really stop on purpose, my bad. We were in the middle of conversation. She wrote all her lyrics for the most part, she just... And the thing is, she’s fair. It was a real collaborative effort between me, Pluss, Sremm, and her. We just split everything collectively, but she wrote both of her verses and she got inspired by what Jxmmi said, “If she fuck me good I’ll take her ass to Margiela, if he fuck me good I’ll take his ass to Red Lobster.” Boom. From there, it was really more about her family. It was really more about her family, her heritage and where she comes from, so that’s something that Swae Lee or anybody really couldn’t write the way she wrote it, because she probably really totes hot sauce in her bag. She wrote her verses, Swae Lee came with the, “OK ladies, now let’s get in formation,” and then she added more stuff like those horns, the live effect to the beat, she wanted that. It was a whole collaborative effort and it was dope working with her because she knew exactly what she was looking for, she knew exactly what she wanted as far as the production side. Even when I felt like it was done, she wanted to add this, she wanted to add this, and when she thought it was done, I wanted to add this. We kept adding until we couldn’t add anymore and we just threw it out. Layers. Audience Member Thank you. Audience Member Hey, what’s up? Mike Will Made-It What’s up, bro? Audience Member I wanted to ask you, because I feel like when you’re growing up and you’re put into the world, you see a lot of things in the music industry that you don’t like, some that you do like, and when you start making music and producing and stuff, you try to put into the world more of the stuff that you like and try to compensate for the things that are not so good. I wanted to ask you, how do you feel... what would you like to see people, for example the people who go to the strip club and the teen club, to learn from you and what are the things that you feel that you have put into the world that you would like to see younger people get on? If I’m making myself clear. Mike Will Made-It Yeah, I totally get it. It’s hard as a producer, you don’t really have a voice. You really just create this canvas and once you collab with an artist, then that artist paints on top of the canvas. When I was coming from Atlanta and the strip club and the teen club was the only thing that could get us out of... at this time, I had never traveled or worked with anybody outside of Atlanta. Atlanta, we have a highway named 285 and it’s a circle and a lot of people have not made it out of 285. You can ride on 285 for 20 hours and you’re not going to leave Atlanta. A lot of people have not got out of that circle. At the end of the day, we’re talking about... I’m 27 now. When we’re talking about when I was like 18,19, 20, my view on things and my view on the world was much different. It was just all about what’s beating in this Tahoe and what can go in this teen club and what can go in the strip clubs. Now, I don’t go to the club. For real. I barely go to the club. I might go to the club every now and then on some social type thing, but right now, I never knew about festivals and different things like that back then. Even if I was to drop an instrument, it wouldn’t even meant anything. It would have meant something to me because it was my creativity, but I was actually coming from nothing, I was just going to school, I had student loans, my mother was laid off, my father was a working man. I was just trying to make it out of 285. I feel like what I want kids and whoever is going to the teen clubs now, or anybody who’s coming up now, what I want them to get from me is, “Man, never give up on your dream. Never let anybody tell you no or what you can’t do.” I always show people what you can do, because every time somebody told me what I couldn’t do, I did the opposite. I always try to do the opposite and in a positive direction to help me or anybody else around me move forward in their life. I have a record label right now and everybody who’s employed on my record label is the same people who were starving with me that was just creating with me. We’re trying to grow as we go. What I always wanted from anybody to get from my story and I feel like my story is very well just starting. A lot of those younger years were, I had a certain kind of vision, but I always tell people, “Man, I was unconscious, I wasn’t even really awake,” because I was just young, just making music. Now, I’m becoming more older, more conscious, more aware on what’s going on and different things. There’s more like, “OK. Yeah. You do that.” Because people look at you in a light and they respect the music, they respect the beats, they respect whatever. They respect the grind, they respect longevity, they respect consistency. I always want just like, “Man, go hard. Never get comfortable.” Don’t just put out one hot song, and just play, “I’m the shit, I’m the shit.” Then next year, “You remember I did that song ‘Formation’ last year, you remember that song ‘Formation’?” I did that last year." I don’t want to be talking about “Formation,” I do still want “Formation” to be playing and I still want “Formation” to be relevant in everything in 2020 but I don’t want to be like, “You remember? I was the boy.” I never wanted to be that, I always wanted the next year to be bigger than the last year. Right now, what I’m working on right now, I’m not landing in Canada and be like, “Hey, turn on the radio, let me see if they’re playing ‘Formation.’ Let me see if they playing Rihanna, ‘Nothing is Promised.’” I never wanted to hear that on the radio or anything like that, I just work on the production and just keep working on the production aspect like the sonics and how the sounds sound, and just keep creating different sounds. Just focus on that. I’m really focusing on that for next year. Songs that might drop next year, but they might end up dropping this year. “Black Beatles” was so last minute, that was the last song we did for SremmLife 2. I actually just bought a new laptop, that was the first beat I made on it. The beat was just an idea, and I gave it to Swae Lee and I was like, “I’m really stuck where I want to go on the beat. I don’t really know what else I want to add.” He was like, “Aw, no, this shit hard.” Then he sent me back the “Black Beatles” hook and I was over Gucci’s house when he sent it to me, and then when I was with Gucci, I played “Black Beatles” hook for Gucci. Gucci said, “Yo, this shit is hard.” He hopped on it, and then I told Jxmmi, I’m like, “Bro, you should hop on this song, I’m thinking this shit could be hard for SremmLife 2.” He was like, “Alright.” It took him a couple weeks, he hopped on it. Then we put the song together and then we put it on the album. It was the last song that we added to the album. It just happened like that. Really what I want from other people, or young people that’s coming up, to go back to your question, to look at, it’s just like, “Man, work hard, grind hard. Don’t make no excuses for anything. Use your resources at hand, because that’s what I always did.” I didn’t always have access to an MPC, I had the Korg ES1, so I used that. Then I bought me a multi-track recorder, then I bought an MPC, then I bought a Trident, just by working a job. I started off selling beats for $100 when I was working at Kroger, whoever would buy beats for $100. I was just trying to get more and more money to get more music equipment so I could just make music, and get into the industry. I didn’t even understand that it was the music industry, the music business and the music back then. I just thought you just make a hard beat and hopefully one day it just sky rockets and it just fucking takes off. Once you start moving around, you start looking at it, the music industry is like high school, so it’s like a big ass high school. The music business is just business, it’s numbers. Whatever deal you have with whoever, like if Red Bull cuts a deal with somebody with another corporation, it’s like that. The music is like the creativity part. If a song is wack to me, you can’t make me like it. I could hear it a million times, if it’s wack, it’s wack. If it’s a dope song and it connects with me, then it just connects with me. When you put different songs out there and they just connect, like “Black Beatles,” we put our Rae Sremmurd’s out and they just connected with everybody, that’s when we’re like, “OK. We need to push this song as a single.” Because to hear him put “Black Beatles” on such a high level, that’s like super dope to me. Even though I love this song so much, but I want to hear from somebody else, and hear how the next person feels about the song, how they connect with the song. Yeah, man. It was a lot of things skipped in my story. I said a lot today, but it was a lot of hardships. There was a lot of people trying to sign me as a producer or trying to keep me out because I wouldn’t sign, they tried to keep me out because I might have been too smart. I wasn’t really that smart, but I was smart on the business side where I knew what I wanted, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew exactly my goals and what not. Sometimes that’s intimidating coming out of a 20-year old’s mouths like, “Who the fuck is this kid?” Basically, I just want everybody to grind hard, don’t make excuses. The reason why I didn’t have a manager, I didn’t want somebody to be like, “This is my little guy, man. He just made a couple beats for this person, that person, this person.” It’s like, “OK. Cool, I could be that, but you’re supposed to be my manager, you’re supposed to be managing my business. We’re broke right now. How can you help us grow our business or get our business in order?” Even get me to see bigger and better things, so then I even think bigger. If you think big, you get big. If you think small, you get small. When it’s to the point where I’m just in Atlanta, and I’m just thinking a certain way, I didn’t start thinking bigger until I started seeing more and more different things and start understanding different things. I don’t know, I could go all day. Just go hard man, go hard or stay home. Rollie Pemberton Maybe one more? Audience Member Hi. How are you? Mike Will Made-It What’s up? Audience Member You mentioned ... Mike Will Made-It I could do more than one more. It’s like the aux cord right here. Audience Member You mentioned about wanting to work with Adele? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. You got a connect? (laughter) Audience Member No, no, no, no, no. Mike Will Made-It Oh. I thought you were about to plug me in. Audience Member That would be a great thing. Yeah. You mentioned wanting to work with Adele, so have you ever considered incorporating live bands into your future works or are you currently doing it now? Mike Will Made-It Yeah, definitely, like that song with Makkonen. That was just one song off of there. There’s a couple more songs like that. I got a song with Kendrick. As a matter a fact, I got a whole album. I got three albums right now on my phone, right now. The first album that I’m going to put out is Ransom 2 and RANSOM stands for Releasing-All-New-Songs-Orchestrated-by-Mike-Will-Made-It. That is like turnt up music from Atlanta, Atlanta driven. People call it trap now, that’s whatever name they put on it. The hard driven, turnt up music, that’s one album. The next album is called ... Right now it’s called, Backwoods and Apple Juice. I come from Marietta, so that’s like the backwoods, but then at the same time if people are into the cannabis community, they might roll their cannabis in the Backwoods. When we were working on a lot of these different song, that’s what we were using to roll our cannabis in LA and we always had apple juice all through the studio. One time, we went to the store and they ain’t have no more Backwoods or apple juice. Then I was like, “I’m about to make this album called Backwoods and Apple Juice.” Its like a double entendre. Backwoods is like, “OK, I’m from Marietta, I’m from the backwoods,” and in Atlanta, we call juice, juice is like the power. Basically showing like the juice of production, to be able to have all these different tight artists on one album, a collaborative album. I feel like Apple Music, if you go to Apple Music right now, anybody when they listen to music, I don’t really think people listen to albums like they used to. They don’t listen to the whole album through. They might just have this song from this person, that song from this person, and their favorite playlist. I feel like me as a producer, my album has to be the best playlist. Backwoods and Apple Juice is more like conscious rap and live instrumentation and totally different production than Ransom 2. Ransom 2 is like Beat Machine, Fruity Loops. Backwoods and Apple Juice is live instrumentation mixed with beats or mixed with live drums or whatever. Definitely I want to start doing that more, for sure. Audience Member OK. Just, one more? You mentioned that your sister is a drum major? Mike Will Made-It Yes. Audience Member Have you ever considered bringing her into your works as well, or have you done it? Mike Will Made-It Yeah. She’s in my works, but not on the music side. She’s strictly business. She was a drum major, but she was also super smart. That was really my college teacher for every class, so every time I would leave class, I am going to be like, “I don’t know what they were talking about, but I got a test next week and it’s over these chapters.” She would be the one to break down all the chapters to me. She’s like super smart, so she’s incorporated with me on the business side. She just watches over my financials and handles basically general managing over my company or whatnot. Like I was saying, the same people who were starving with me are the same people who’s working with me now. Audience Member Would you like her to be having another role in your works? Instead of the business side, have her drumming in your track? Mike Will Made-It She was a drum major in the ’96 Olympics. I don’t know if that really still sparks her interest, but maybe. She has two kids now, she’s a project manager for IBM. I don’t know if that really sparks her interests, what we’re doing. She’s still a fan of the music, she still tells me what she thinks is hot and what she thinks is not. Audience Member OK. Thank you. Rollie Pemberton Cool. Well, I’d like to thank Mike Will Made-It for coming in. (appplause) Mike Will Made-It Yeah. I appreciate that. Rollie Pemberton RBMA out.