Hey y’all—on this one I’m doing a full little jam session: making a HOT R&B beat on the Maschine MK3 and then writing a smooth R&B/Pop song right on top of it. I start by setting the tempo around 105 BPM and building the drums the way I like—layering my snare/slap/clap situation, getting that clap sitting right, and then dropping my “big old kick” at the beginning for that super heavy boom. I’m also tweaking as I go (like if I’m not feeling the kick yet, I’ll come back to it), because that’s really how it goes when you’re chasing a vibe. Once the groove is close, I dump everything into Logic—because for me, a lot of times the beat don’t even be done yet and the melody/lyrics are already coming. In this video I run through the song idea I wrote (“all I wanted was to be your baby…”) and then I break it down to record it cleaner—verse and hook separately—so it can sound really pretty. The big takeaway is songwriting is happening in real time with the production, and I also wanted to add a second perspective in the lyrics so it’s not just the same “he ain’t…” story you hear everywhere. Then I play the final song so you can hear how the beat and vocals lock together.