Mike Q&A Summary 7/14/2020

[LPLStaff]

The Tuesday, July 14 recap for Mike's stream.

 

- "How did Second to None come about?" -> "Second to None was a beat, I think I came up with that beat after the Fort Minor record, I think. And I wanted to hear somebody rapping over it, I didn't want to just put it on my own. We were working on the Styles of Beyond record and I kind of pitched it to them. And we ended up just doing it. I think we didn't know what would happen with it, but we were like, "Oh yeah this is dope, this is a dope beat." My concept for it, for part of it, I was listening to like 1988, 89, and 90s rap. Before Big Daddy Kane started making songs for like, girls. Like he was making R&B songs. At first he was doing like, hardcore rap and then he was like, making songs to be an R&B star. I loved back when he was dancing too, with it, which was so crazy. If don't know anything about Big Daddy Kane, look up Big Daddy Kane at the Apollo. K-A-N-E, that was like one of my favorite eras of stuff as a little kid, like seeing this stuff. And so Second to None was created with that in my mind."

 

- "I want to know how you guys made the first sound in Battle Symphony. Is it a sample?" -> "I think that was part of the demo, like the vocal demo. And chopped up music from the demo, super effected. So treated both of those things together as if I sampled it, and then effected that. Played it on pads and stuff, as I recall."

 

- "How did it feel hearing Kidz Bop cover In The End? Did you have any input on it? -> "Uh, no. When somebody covers something like that, they just do it. You can get in the way of it, but it's like kind of, I don't remember how it works. I think the way it works is, you could like, sue them. So your option is to let it go or to threaten them to not put it out. But you can cover a song as long as you're staying true and not really changing the song. Then you just need to make the parties aware that you covered it. I think that's how it works, I'm not 100% sure. At the time, I remember being NOT happy that Kidz Bop covered In The End. But also, it was like, it's a huge song and they're going to cover any song that's huge, so you don't have a lot of say in the matter."

 

- "What tools of the trade did you add from working with Rick Rubin? Any cool stories of working with him?" -> "The stories I always tell about that, the sessions with Rick, the main change for us was we were making an instrumental and writing over it. And that's different than sitting at an instrument and writing chords and melody. And so he was trying to get us to try to move more in that direction. I had kind of been doing that, think I wrote the chorus to In The End and Breaking The Habit just chords and vocals. Castle Of Glass too. I think you can tell, like there's like the way the chords and everything interlocks with the vocal. I think you can feel that in the song. And I think that's why Rick was trying to get us to do that. So over the course of a few records he got us closer to that in progression over time."

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/679529291