Wayne has credited you for helping with the feature selection process. How does that process work?

It’s always between me and him. He’ll call me like, “I got this joint that such-and-such should be on,” or “Yo, I got this joint. When you hear it, let me know who you think should be on there.” On this album, we had two joints that didn’t make it that were just monsters. We had one with DaBaby, but we had some clearance issues. They should still be collabing soon, whether it’s on Wayne or DaBaby’s next album. But that was dope. DaBaby always gives Wayne his props in different interviews, saying how he influenced him coming up. And Wayne actually f***s with his flow too. So that was organic. And we had one with Thug. It’s a beast. Thug wanted to do something fresh because he did his vocals in 2017, so he felt like his vocals was a little too old. Wayne does the same thing. Sometimes somebody comes with an old song and Wayne be like, “Yo, let me re-record that, or let me do a new verse.” Actually, all the artists in three years, do mature and grow. Your voice might sound different, your flow might be different. But that joint, it’s still a monster.

Will it ever come out?

Hopefully one day we could figure it out. I’ll figure it out, holler at Thug and his people, and figure out a way that it could still be heard. It’s a monster. And that’s usually how it goes. That’s the feature selection. It’s not like we’re like, such-and-such got to be on this album. We don’t do nothing like that. Once we see what we have, we figure out how can we fine tune and who we can add. Who could actually be on the same part of the matrix that he’s in? That’s the important thing. Some people could get on a song and just mess it up. Takeoff went crazy on there. Twist went crazy on his verse. Everybody that was on a song, they held their weight.

You said you went from hundreds of songs to 60 songs and then 24. How does that process work?

On this one, he sent the songs back, put asterisks by the joints that had to go on it. But that was still more than 24. That’s still not narrowed all the way down. We’ll go back and forth. I’ll be like, “I know this demographic of your fan base is going to like that.” He has a certain demographic that’ll like “Bastard (Satan’s Kid).” He has a certain demographic that’ll like “Never Mind.” The “Mahogany,” “Funeral,” “Mama Mia,” and “I Do It,” I know some of them are going to be almost for his whole fan base. But then some of them, they like when he gets dark. Some of his fans like when he gets introspective. Then you got some joints where he goes in there and he’s spitting, and you could be like, that’s for the day one fans, they gon’ like that.

Putting the album together, I like to look at it like putting soup together, or gumbo. You look at soup, there’s different components to it. You got the base, you got the root, you got the vegetables. You might be the type that puts meat in your soup. It’s gumbo. You’ve got different components to the album that come together and make a complete album. Whereas a lot of artists that I hear today, they have the same tempo type tracks with the same flow for 12 tracks. And they have a fan base for that. But you have Wayne, and his audience is so diverse at his shows, and the reason is because he has different flavors in his albums, instead of serving just one particular demographic. That’s the way I approach albums.

I might be giving away too much game right now, but I encourage artists that I know to go and catch different vibes in different cities. If you record in the same studio every night, in the same city, that might only inspire one or two sounds. Go to L.A., come to Miami, go to an island, go somewhere where it’s cold. I remember Drake going back at one point to where he first started at, in a setting that wasn’t luxury, that wasn’t the top of the line studio. He made sure he had the right equipment, but the carpet might smell a little in there or something that makes you hungry again. You got to go in different environments to create different sounds. If not, you’ll have 16 tracks that all sound the same.

he made a kinda solid point about the album formation part