Last year, DJ Khaled did it again. His latest single "I'm On One," which features Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and Drizzy Drake, is a certified banger that is going to keep clubs rocking all summer. Although Khaled dropped a video showing the making of the song, it didn't tell the whole story. That's why we got on the horn with the song's main producer, T-Minus.
The Toronto-based beatsmith is looking to have a big year after producing Nicki Minaj's "Moment For Life" and contributing to Drake's Take Care as well as Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV. T-Minus tells us about producing the song alongside his buddies Noah "40" Shebib and Kromatik and how "I'm On One" started off as a song for Drake's upcoming album, but ended up in Khaled's hands.
As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin)
On producing "I'm On One"
“The song was recorded about a month and a half ago. It’s complex because so many people worked on the record. I made the beat with a co-producer that I work really closely named Kromatik. He helped me do some of the music on there. After I got the beat, I gave it to Drake, and submitted it for Take Care.
“Drake was doing a record on it and 40 came in and did a little bit of writing on it. He played some chords over top of the melodies and the bass that were already in place. I had gotten a phone call from Drake and 40 like, ‘Oh man, we got this big record that we’re doing right now. Drake is recording as we speak.’
“40 was the co-writer and the co-producer, he did the mixing and the filtering. The melody on the beat was mostly him and pretty much the [rest of the] record was me. 40 does the filtering really well and he recorded Drake—because they go really well as far as working and producing. That’s one thing about 40, he knows how to put the record together, especially with Drake. He really arranged the record and put it together real nice.
“I was in the studio with Drake and he played it for me. I thought what Drake did was outstanding. He put a different spin on it. Even the beat is something different than what Khaled has done in the past.
“From there, Drake recorded it and he gave it to Khaled. That’s really how we do records a lot of times. Producers might submit a track or a beat to an artist and it might not work out for the album, but it could still work out to be a record for anybody else. In this music industry, everything is so viral that it goes from person to person.
“It’s not even a thing that [Drake] gave to [DJ Khaled], it’s more of a thing that we were all working on it. I don’t want you to get it confused that he just gave him a record out of nowhere, it was more of a thing we were all working on records. It started from Drake doing a hook.
“I spoke to Khaled and he said he was getting Ross and Wayne on it. Khaled was really excited about the record. I knew it was going to be something big because I know when Khaled says it’s big, it’s big.
“I’ve never met Khaled, but I spoke to him on the phone a few times about the record and getting records done in the future. There are some possibilities [that I may have other songs on We the Best Forever], we’re still in creation right now.
"And [I’ve submitted] tons of stuff for Take Care. So far, it's been pretty much me, 40, and Boi-1da. That’s the Toronto connection right there. I can’t give you too much information about what’s going on with the album, all I can tell you is it’s still in the making.”
