Chords for The Making Of J. Cole's "MIDDLE CHILD" With T-Minus | Deconstructed

_ _ _ _ _ What makes it better working with Cole side by side is you can, you know, understand what
he's looking for in that moment.
_ When you're in the studio with somebody, it's all about knowing what the person wants.
Like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm looking for something that's like up-tempo.
I'm in that mood today.
You know, I went to North Carolina back in December and we found this sample and, you
know, the rest is [G] history.
I'm all in [Cm] my bag, this hard as it get.
[A] I do not throw powder.
I might take a sip.
I might hit the plug, [Ab] but I'm liable to trip.
I ain't [F] popping no pill, but you do as you wish.
I roll with some [Cm] fiends, I love them to [G] death.
I got a few mil, but not all of them hits.
What good is the [Ab] bread if my niggas is broke?
What good is first class if my niggas can't sit?
[Cm] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ After producing Kevin's Heart and it being one of the only songs on the album that was
produced by somebody else, I think he trusted me as a producer more, as far as the [C] sound goes. _
Cole, he really produces.
He really [Eb] gets down with the whole production.
He understands, like, you know, sonics and he understands, like, drum choicing and, like,
all that stuff.
Like, he just has a great understanding for production.
_ _ _ _ _ [Ab] To give you a little history [G] on how this writer came about, too, we didn't make this in the Dreamville session.
This was actually, you know, a month prior, so pretty much the last day, you know, before
I had to fly back to Toronto.
Interestingly enough, I've never heard of Tracklib before that, so he really put me onto it.
With Tracklib, you can pull up all the stems to a song.
_ [D] _
_ _ _ _ The name of the record is called Wake Up To Me, and it's by a group called [G] First Choice. _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ [Em] _ [Bm] What you can do [Fm] with Tracklib is you can isolate certain things.
So I was able to, you know, pull up these horns _ [Ebm] _ and pretty much [Bm] play them by themselves. _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ [Db] _ _ [G] _ [Bm] _
I remember Cole's reaction.
I was like, oh, shoot, like, this is crazy.
The sample was really fast.
It was already, there's so much happening, and I felt like, you know, we could slow it
down a little bit.
So this is how the sample sounds [Cm] in the session. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ [Ab] _ _
I [C] put some reverb on it to, you know, give it that effect of it being a little bit more
airy, a little bit bigger.
From there, we just started building the drums out.
Cole's idea was to keep it really simple at the beginning, so he wanted the drums to be
kind of spaced out and, you know, not happening too much.
So this is the idea, you know, that we both came up with. _ _ _ _
It's actually very reminiscent of KOD, because a lot of it's very, like, stuttery kind of
hats, [E] you know what I mean?
Very [G] short, but, you know, rhythmic.
And playing along with the hi-hats is a clap sound, rim shot, like, perc-perc [Fm] sound, and
a bell sound.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ The next move was to essentially build the kick pattern [Eb] in the 808. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Cole actually already had the 808 in mind.
He already figured out exactly how he wanted the [C] pattern to go. _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] He had the rhythm in mind, you know what I mean?
He had the idea of it going from low to high.
Because I have a great understanding of how the music should kind of play out, I just
kind of figured it out.
This is pretty much, you know, the 808 and the kick coming together in the song, you
know, and this is how the bounce was, pretty [C] much.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
When the beat comes in and the 808 hits, it's like, it hits you, you know what I'm saying?
It's like, hits you really hard.
The 808 is slapping.
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _ To add a little bit more energy to the song when it drops, we added some hi-hats as well.
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ There's actually another perc-perc sound that [N] we added.
Sounds a little like this.
_ We just heard it, and it sounded like a vocal effect.
Sometimes you hear like a hey, or like a what?
We also added a little snare that comes in as [F] well, every once in a while.
[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ Also the snare is layered with the clap as well, so you hear an extra little hit that happens. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _
_ [Bb] _ _ The next move was to add some instruments, you know, some melodies.
[Gb] This is something that you hear in the music.
It's more predominant actually in the second verse, but it's [F] actually playing in the first [G] as well. _ _ _ _ _ _
This sound is a sound that Cole loves in his music.
I think he used the same sound in Windowpane.
We added an extra sound as well that sits in the background.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Abm]
You don't really hear it until the end of the record essentially, but it's [Eb] playing throughout the music.
We messed with the sound and made it [G] kind of like this background, sitting tucked kind of vibe.
Also, we added another sound.
Comes in the hook, it's like a really low bass-y [C] sound.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [F] _
You can't really hear it, but you can feel it.
It's a little bit more aggression [C] in the bottom end, so you can feel a little bit more energy. _
[Eb] [Gb] It's a big part of my sound as a producer, my signature.
If you listen to records like Swimming Pools or She Will, it has that kind of low bass-y
kind of moving, _ pad-ish kind of bass.
At the end of the record, we kind of added this effect to make everything kind of sound [Cm]
dark. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _
[Cm] _ _ _ _ Brass is essentially kind of warping.
I threw this effect called Camel Space over top of the brass, and that's what gave it
that whole effect.
We kind of added all these elements, added the brass, all these melodies, all these drums,
and we kind of felt like the beat was full, the beat was complete.
So this is what the whole song sounds like together. _ _ _ _
A lot of the record is like a statement record.
It's not meant to be this crazy song with so much happening.
We really approached the song with the aspect of it being like, yo, I'm about to run shit
in 2019, so this is it.
It _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _
[Fm] _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Cm] was very much a lot of his vibe as a producer [Gm] and my vibe as a producer.
There are elements in this beat that gave me feelings of some of the stuff from KOD,
but then there's a [Cm] lot of elements that I would add.
_ [Gm] _ _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _
[Cm] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _ [F] _ _ _
[Cm] _ _ We weren't [N] even thinking about it being this whole middle-child experience as far as even
the production goes.
It just [Cm] naturally came that way.
No overthinking, just [G] making quality music.
He does this shit naturally, you know what I mean?
Producer, artist, writer, everything.
[Cm] And I'm always creating, so you click up every once in a while. _
_ _ _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ _
Adding all these extra textures, it pretty much gives it a whole new bounce sometimes
when you just add these little sounds [F] here and there.
It kind of just makes you want to move.
It's very _ subtle ideas, subtle sounds that can kind of make a bigger impact on the music.
Even though you might not