Stargate x Complex Interview (Stargate Speaks On Producing "Black & Yellow", "Roll Up", Working w/Wiz Khalifa + More)
February 4, 2011 
On Producing “Black And Yellow”
Tor Erik Hermansen: “We first heard about him from [our manager] Tim. I don’t know where Tim heard about him, but one day Tim came in and played us some mixtape stuff. We were just blown away by his flow, and also his musicality. I think we heard instantly that he had a melodic sense in his approach to writing music, but also in the tracks he chose, and that they had some movement in them. He came through last spring, listened to some tracks, and he was like ‘Yup. I’ll get on that.’ And he was honest with us. He said, ‘I need that radio shit that you guys do.’”
Mikkel S. Eriksen: “Tim was talking about Wiz way back, at least a year before we actually worked together. ‘Black And Yellow’ was the second song we wrote. Even back then, just listening to the hook and the beat, we could tell that this was something great from the beginning.”
Tor Erik Hermansen: “He came with his crew, and they all had a blast. The whole Taylor Gang. There were people in and out of the room, but he had a good sense of himself. When he needs to work, he’s on. He stayed here all night and finished up his verses. We stayed, and made sure that the hook was 100 percent. We worked three or four days I think. We did probably about three or four songs the first session, and then two or three others the second session. ‘Black And Yellow’ took probably about a day. 12 hours. He wasn’t in the booth for 12 hours. He wrote everything here, but who knows. He may have had that idea, and just waited for the right track. I think he did the hook on that one first actually. And we kind of went back and forth a little bit, on the structure, but it was all him pretty much in one go. And he did his verses. I don’t think he even went back and re-recorded anything. What you hear is what he did. We didn’t necessarily understand the scope of how big ‘Black And Yellow’ was, and all it meant. We knew he was from Pittsburgh, and we knew he had a black and yellow ride, but it took us a moment to really get that this would become an anthem for Pittsburgh. Obviously, the fact that the Steelers are in the Super Bowl doesn’t hurt the record either.”
On Producing Wiz’s Second Single, “Roll Up”
Mikkel S. Eriksen: “That was the second session.”.......
Reader Comments