Kendrick Lamar AOTY Oral History
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Kendrick Lamar, Pluss, Terrace Martin & More On Making 'DAMN.' | Album Of The Year

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Go behind the scenes for the making of Kendrick Lamar's Album Of The Year GRAMMY-nominated LP with the creative team who was there in the studio supporting him
Andreas Hale
GRAMMYs
Jan 25, 2018 - 2:02 pm

After releasing good kid, m.A.A.d City and To Pimp A Butterfly to critical acclaim and multiple GRAMMY nominations, Kendrick Lamar made it a point with his next album to create something markedly different from his previous two efforts. With GK:MC being about the challenges a young man faced growing up in Compton, Calif., and the latter encompassing the sounds of black power and pride, the artist formerly known as K-Dot decided to explore the complexities of spirituality with DAMN.

Kendrick Lamar wins Best Rap Album GRAMMY

What initially sounds like his most accessible album to date turns out to be far more complex upon multiple listens. From the rambunctious "DNA" to the jaw-dropping true story of "DUCKWORTH.," DAMN. is layered with deft lyricism, stellar production and multiple meanings that are made all the more significant once the listener realizes that the album was also designed to be played in reverse.

The acclaim swiftly piled up on social media as both fans and critics hailed DAMN. as the third consecutive instant classic in the 30-year-old's catalog. To get a better insight into the mind of an artist who has mastered the art of secrecy surrounding his projects, a few of the individuals who were behind the shaping of DAMN. paint an intriguing picture of how Lamar's spiritual journey was captured in musical form.

Terrace Martin (producer/songwriter): He initially shared the idea about DAMN. to me during the To Pimp A Butterfly sessions but it was really vague. But I knew that whatever we did next couldn't sound anything like what we just did. We needed to do the opposite of what our opposite thoughts were.

*Sounwave (producer): Literally as soon as [To Pimp A Butterfly] was done we started [working on DAMN.]. He goes into these phases where basically his mind is this big storyboard and he's picking ideas: "What if we did this? What if we did that?"

**Lamar: The initial goal was to make a hybrid of my first two commercial albums. That was our total focus, how to do that sonically, lyrically, through melody – and it came out exactly how I heard it in my head. … It's all pieces of me.

"Kendrick is the type to not let anybody know what he’s doing. It'll come out of nowhere." — Pluss

*Sounwave: Once he got his whole brainstorming thing down and we knew the direction we were going, we locked down the studio for months. [I] never left — [we] literally [had] sleeping bags in the studio.

**Lamar: I wanted it to feel like just the raw elements of hip-hop, whether I'm using 808s or boom-bap drums, the idea of Kid Capri. …The initial thought was having [Kid Capri] on some real trap 808 s***. Something I've never heard from him. I got in the studio and had him do a thousand takes. He's the greatest to ever even do it.

Kid Capri (narrator/vocals): The first time I met Kendrick was when we worked together [on DAMN.]. He called to ask me if I'd work with him. ... He told me the direction of the album being God and spirituality, but he already knew what he had in his head and he came up with a lot of what I needed to say.

Pluss (producer): "HUMBLE." started when I was at the studio with Mike WiLL Made-It and we started throwing ideas together. Mike said that this song needed to be "ignorant." He started with that piano. It was simple. And then he started throwing in bass and drum ideas. I did the arrangement. It was missing one little side and I started playing with a sound effect and threw another effect on top of it. That's how that siren sound came out and it put the beat on another level. We knocked it out in 30 minutes. I didn't know what was going to happen to it.

***Lamar: Mike Will sent the beat over. All I could think of was [Marley Marl's] "The Symphony" and the earliest moments of hip-hop, where it's complex simplicity, but it's also somebody making moves. That beat feels like my generation, right now. The first thing that came to my head was, "Be humble."

Pluss: I didn't even know "HUMBLE." was happening until I heard it. I was riding in the car a few months after we did the beat and I got a phone call from my friend at Live Mixtapes and he said, "I know you have something to do with Kendrick's new record!" I didn't know what he was talking about. "HUMBLE." was a surprise for me and it was all over the radio. I listened to it like "This is the beat that we made!"

Terrace Martin: I got the call to work on "LOYALTY." while I was working with 9th Wonder and Rapsody on Laila’s Wisdom. I heard something with Bruno Mars' "24K Magic." The original talk-box player on that record is a genius by the name of Mr. Talkbox. He had a sound that I loved. I just wanted to reverse it, tweak it and give it a new edge. I got with DJ Dahi and Sounwave to put it together.  I thought this would be dope for my album. But then I thought that nah, this would be for Kendrick and I called him and told him "I got some s***." He had mentioned the idea that very day that he wanted Rihanna on it.

**Lamar: I've always wanted to work with Rihanna. I love everything about her, her artistry, how she represents women to not only be themselves but to express themselves the way she expresses herself through music and how she carries herself. I love everything about her, so I always wanted to work with her. I did the record and immediately, her name popped up. Reached out, we locked in a studio, and made it happen.

9th Wonder (producer/mixer): I was in Los Angeles in December of 2015 and I went to see Kendrick. We were at the beginning stages of Rapsody's album, so I had a bunch of beats on me. I played him 20 beats and he said, "Let me get those." I didn't find out that there were at least two beats on one song ["DUCKWORTH."] until he sent me a video snippet of him playing an MP3 off his computer. It was a 9-second clip that played right when the beat changed. After it was over, I hit him back saying, "Yo man, what the hell?" and he put "LOL" and that was it. I gave him the beats in December of 2015 and he sent that video in June of 2016. I hadn't talked to him in six months and that came out of the blue. I noticed on the MP3 that the name of the song was "Life Is Like A Box Of Chicken." I didn't hear anything else until it was time to clear samples.

Pluss: Kendrick is the type to not let anybody know what he's doing. It'll come out of nowhere.

9th Wonder: The night before I was supposed to fly out for SXSW and Kendrick calls me and says, "I need for you to mix the beat part of this record." Khrysis and I are mixing the beat that night and I'm just listening to the beat. Khrysis is saying, "Are you listening to what he’s saying??" When I’m listening to music I'm listening for the flow pattern before I'm listening to your words. So I listened to the words and I had to sit down, man. ["DUCKWORTH."] is making so much more sense to me. I texted him immediately after I heard it and asked if it was a true story. He said, "Yep. And I left some stuff out."

**Lamar: It was just the right time [to tell that story]. Top Dawg himself didn't know I was going to do it or even execute it in that fashion, to be the last song or to be anywhere. Just making it made sense. I remember playing it for him, he flipped because further than the song, when you really can hear your life in words that is so true to you and that affected your life one hundred percent through one decision, it really makes you sit back and cherish the moment. I think that's something we all did playing that record. Like man, look where we at. We're recording music for the world to hear and we're taking care of our families. We're blessed. But listen to these words, like this is what happened. This is real life. It's amazing and since a kid I've always said to myself "anything is possible and it always comes around 10-fold, confirmation." And that story is confirmation.

* As told to GQ Magazine
** As told to Zane Lowe of Beats 1
*** As told to Rolling Stone

(Andreas Hale is a former editor at BET.com and HipHopDX.com. His work has been featured on MTV, Vibe, XXL, Jay Z's Life+Times, Black Enterprise, Ozy, and more.)

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GRAMMY Album Of The Year nominees for 2018

(L-R) Jay-Z, Lorde, Bruno Mars, Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar

Photos: WireImage.com

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Poll: Who Will The GRAMMY Voters Choose To Win Album of The Year?

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Make your pick: Who do you think the GRAMMY voters will choose to win Album Of The Year?
Brian Haack
GRAMMYs
Jan 26, 2018 - 3:16 pm

There are less than two days left until the start of the 60th GRAMMY Awards, and excitement levels are rushing to ever greater heights for all of the Awards nominees.

Heading into the GRAMMY Awards each year, one of the biggest curiosities for viewers and nominees alike is always the burning question of who will take home the coveted honor of Album Of The Year.

As in years past, the category is positively stacked with tremendous talent, and an intriguing genre diversity that leaves the decision quite open ended: just who will take home GRAMMY gold?

Will it be rap royalty, courtesy of Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. or Jay-Z's 4:44? Fresh, inventive reimaginings of classic sounds and vibes, as heard on Childish Gambino's "Awaken, My Love!" or Bruno Mars' 24K Magic? Or will it be the deeply personal and exquisitely crafted futurepop of Lorde's Melodrama?

Make your pick below, and see who our readers think the GRAMMY voters will pick to win it all.

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Who will GRAMMY voters choose for Album Of The Year for the 60th GRAMMYs?

The 60th GRAMMY Awards will take place at New York City's Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Jan. 28. The telecast will be broadcast live on CBS at 7:30–11 p.m. ET/4:30–8 p.m. PT.

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Jay-Z AOTY Oral History
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Jay-Z, No I.D. & More On Making '4:44' | Album Of The Year

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Take a look back at the making of Jay' GRAMMY-nominated magnum opus album with key collaborators
Kathy Iandoli
GRAMMYs
Jan 25, 2018 - 2:04 pm

The legend of Jay-Z's 13th solo studio album preceded the actual work.

Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake Win Best Rap/Sung Collaboration

Following 2014's "Elevator Gate" and Beyoncé's candid GRAMMY-winning project Lemonade, rumors swirled that Hova would release his own album in response.

Once the New York City buses with 4:44 emblazoned on the sides started rolling around in late spring 2017, speculation ran rampant about the title being informed by the incident —  a hotel elevator camera capturing Solange attacking him as Beyoncé looked on. (The address of Le Bain, the hotel's rooftop bar, is 444 West 13th Street. Meanwhile, Jay-Z's favorite number is 4.)

Just how intimate was Jay-Z planning to be?

On June 30, 2017, we found out.

4:44 is much more than the sum of its parts. On one hand, it's the quintessential one artist/one producer masterpiece, as Jay and super producer No I.D. pieced the LP together (with famed engineer Young Guru) until perfection was achieved. On another hand, it's a coming of age project for not just Jay-Z, but hip-hop in general. 4:44 travels beyond the ageism crossroads rappers have often reached and lost their way. Jay-Z proved that grown rap music can exist and punctuated it by being an open book and stripping away his mystique. He admitted past sins, acknowledged failures (for perhaps the first time in two decades) and the result was his most personal project to date — yielding eight 60th GRAMMY nominations, including Album Of The Year.

No I.D., Jimmy Douglass, Chaka Pilgrim and other key participants revisit the making of the album and how the magnum opus came together.

*Jay-Z (artist/co-producer): Before I started this album I studied — not just hip-hop — any genre. I studied Prince, I studied Mike [Jackson], Bono had "Beautiful Day" [when] he was like 40, I think. Just like from the beginning of someone's career, and that sort of album that really means something that touches the culture. The touchpoint that moves, that starts a conversation, and be really f***ing good. It's a hard thing to do because you're so removed from where you were at the beginning.

No I.D. (producer): We had discussed this type of project for a couple years. When he first came to me — two, two and a half years ago — he told me he wanted to do something that was a little more revealing. I think at the time I didn't have a sonic direction; he didn't have a sonic direction. It kind of led to us running back and forth into each other. I really was just trying find something sonically to do that would be different, but familiar.

*Jay-Z: No I.D. came to me with a technique. He said, "I got this thing. … I got your next Blueprint. … I know that's a lot to say."

No I.D.: I told him, "I got something," and played him tons of beats that kind of had the technique, and some of the stuff we ended up using was in that batch.

*Jay-Z: We were at the Roc Nation offices here in L.A., and he played me what he was working on, and I was like, "That's amazing."

"4:44 was putting all of the marbles on the table on every front — between the home front, the fan front, all of it. It's like, 'Here it is: all or nothing.'"

No I.D.: As we began to actually hone in and work and [Jay-Z] knowing I had the specific technique, I was like, "What direction do you want to go in?" He had a playlist, and he was saying, "This is what inspires me at this moment." I was like, "Give it to me and let me work off this template, so to speak."

Ron Gilmore Jr. (keys/bass/vocoder): When I came in, a lot of the samples were already done — a lot of the drums were already done, and what I was doing was embellishing, maybe adding a bassline here or there.

No I.D.: For the majority of the time it was me, [Jay-Z], and [Young] Guru, and it would either be at my studio or his house, which automatically made it super intimate. No one knew that we were even doing it. So once he made an announcement — if we really got going in January, then he kind of walked in by April and told everybody "Hey, I've got an album." And it was out by June.

Dave Kutch (mastering engineer): It was pretty close to the release date that we did everything. It all happened very, very fast.

Jay-Z: We kind of moved on the fly because in the beginning, I wanted to drop the title — which we did, we put the 4:44 all around on buses and on billboards.

Will Perron (creative director): We went back to the old way of doing things — billboards and posters and subways.

Jay-Z's 4:44 album title on a bus

*Jay-Z: By the night it was like on the Channel 11 News everywhere. CNN was like, "I think Jay-Z is dropping an album." I dropped the billboard and it got figured out in 24 hours, and I was like OK we've got three more weeks.

Jimmy Douglass (engineer): The nature of it was quite simple: There's only one surprise element, one time.

Chaka Pilgrim (video producer): Jay came up with the deeper meaning of the songs on the project overall, and we kind of figured what was the visual accompaniment to it. We wanted to do something that was non-traditional, not music videos but a little more esoteric that allowed you to put yourself in the place of [Jay-Z] in being honest and open on where that can lead.

Kutch: The first song I worked on was "Kill Jay-Z," and I was like "Oh my god." It was similar to the first time I got to listen to Lemonade entirely when I mastered that. When you heard the full lyric, and you heard the full storyline. It hits you like a ton of bricks. This much honesty. This much difficult honesty coming through in a project. It shows you why Jay-Z is Jay-Z.

Douglass: At first I was like, "This is an amazing piece of work. It's amazing that he can actually be able to bare his soul and be able to apologize to his wife for his ill behavior. This was a really unique way of doing that, and it's amazing that he's in a position to have a platform like this to do that instead of bringing roses and chocolate home." That was my first impression. As I listened more, I was like, "He's saying some real s***." I was blown away.

Jay-Z: I've never been so open for so long; usually it's been one song, two songs, three songs on an album — then it's sprinkled in other songs. But for an entire album, to make 10 "You Must Love Mes" is new and kinda makes people uncomfortable.

Pilgrim: It's like the song ["Kill Jay-Z"] says, "You can't heal what you never reveal."

Perron: Originally, we'd thrown some ideas around about what the album was going to be called. It was meant to be this really stripped away record, very didactic and super honest. We threw around ideas of doing like these grotesquely honest photos, and throughout the exploration of this — and the record was getting closer and closer to being done — it seemed obvious that "4:44 was the lead song on the record and what the record was anchored on. We landed on that being the title."

Douglass: I was awestruck by what he was doing and the courage that he had. It was putting all of the marbles on the table on every front — between the home front, the fan front, all of it. It's like, "Here it is: all or nothing."

*As told to Rap Radar podcast

(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

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Lorde's Album Of The Year-nominated 'Melodrama'
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Lorde, Jack Antonoff & More On Making 'Melodrama' | Album Of The Year

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Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Lorde's acclaimed second album, and its journey towards an Album Of The Year nomination
Julian Ring
GRAMMYs
Jan 25, 2018 - 2:03 pm

Arriving in New York to record her sophomore album, Lorde faced what seemed like an impossible task: to somehow create a musical statement as honest as her first. The New Zealand native — real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor — was just 16 when she released Pure Heroine, a widely acclaimed pop culture critique and snapshot of suburban youth. But after a dizzying rise to fame and a painful breakup, she knew her next album had to come from closer to the heart.

With the help of producer Jack Antonoff and a team of studio veterans, Lorde channeled heartbreak and loneliness into the deeply personal LP Melodrama. The album earned Lorde her fifth GRAMMY nomination and her first for Album Of The Year.

Here, Lorde and key collaborators recount the making of Melodrama.

*Lorde (artist): It kind of takes a second, I learned, to write your way out of the record you just made. There was a real hit of, like, "I just don't have another one. It could never be good enough."

** It wasn't until I went through heartbreak, and moved out of [my parents'] home into my own house and spent a lot of time totally alone, that I realized I do have very serious, vivid feelings I needed to get out. Working with [producer Jack Antonoff] opened me up to feeling a lot; he was the perfect person to help me do that.

*Jack Antonoff (producer): I was like, "Let's just gather around a piano and see how you're feeling, and see what has happened to you since your last album that's really worth sharing." That was very important. It opened up a big space, which was, "OK, there's a way that you can talk about all of these things that have changed, and it's not going to put you on an island."

***Lorde: The first record was "we" and "us." And this record is "I." The focus does close in. I think that was necessary to get to the level of frankness that’s in there.

*Antonoff: [On Pure Heroine], Ella had these electronic sensibilities. But there are guitars on this album, there are all these analog-based instruments. It's not about minimalism anymore; it's this bigger, broader thing. It's a very different album in terms of the palette of sounds. I think that started by the fact that we wrote the album sitting around a piano.

"It wasn't until I went through heartbreak, and moved out of [my parents'] home into my own house and spent a lot of time totally alone, that I realized I do have very serious, vivid feelings I needed to get out."

Tom Elmhirst (mixing): It's my piano. I bought it from an NYU professor. … It's a really beautiful upright that was made here in New York.

Because they were working literally next door to me — upstairs at [Electric Lady Studios] — the proximity was obviously really close. … [They were in] a really nice live room with plenty of daylight, and it’s got the piano and a few other instruments set up for vocals.

They would set up a Pro Tools setup in there, and [mixer/engineer Laura Sisk], Jack and Ella would be in there doing their thing all day, all night.

****Laura Sisk (mixer/engineer): One of the coolest parts of working on this album was watching the songs come into existence. Jack and Ella are both super creative and very honest songwriters and it was thrilling to watch stories or conversations turn into songs that I absolutely love.

*****Lorde: ["Sober II (Melodrama)" is] the second part of one of the first songs that we wrote where I really started to understand what the album would be, which was "Sober." The two of them kind of came around the same time, this was April [2016] — I remember Jack and I went out to Coachella and we got a studio in Palm Springs.

In the first part, it's very much like the party's in full swing, and maybe sort of tipping over into that area where it might be a little too much, and then ["Sober II (Melodrama)"] is sort of singing from the perspective of the deflated room. There's such a sadness to the lights being on after a party, you know, this whole room has sort of been washed in this dark, and to see the corners of the room again can always be a little bit heartbreaking.

Elmhirst: The title song is really simple. It's not complex, and it wasn't a huge mixing process. But the clarity of the vocals and the simplicity of the track — you need a great artist to do that. I think [Lorde] did it really well.

******Antonoff: "Green Light" became a very important song to the album. It was a big moment.

*Lorde: [“Green Light” is] me shouting at the universe, wanting to let go, wanting to go forward, to get the green light from life.

******Antonoff: There was a night that we really cracked the code on "Green Light." We had these parts. We went and saw someone play at the Barclays Center, and there was all this jangly piano going on. It sounded like someone banging on a piano. We went home and started to put that in, and that's when it started to make sense.

****Sisk: [Jack and I] often work on different aspects of the same song in separate rooms and that ability to tag-team the work lets us move at a very fast pace, which is super important given the amount of projects we collaborate on.

Randy Merrill (mastering engineer): The album was mixed by a few different engineers, all with very different styles, so tying it all together to feel like an album was a bit challenging.

Elmhirst: There was a lot of forwards and backwards on the album. I would finish mixes, and then productions would change. So it was a tricky balance of being flexible while remaining creative.

GRAMMYs

***Lorde: We labored over every little sound, every word. To a level that I think people would never even pick up on.

Merrill: On the mastering side, it was all about tapering the sounds of each of the songs to that they felt cohesive as an album, with one song flowing into another with a feeling of consistency.

*Antonoff: It was a hard album to make. If you change a breath on a vocal take, [Lorde will] notice, and she'll like it or she'll hate it. It's a meticulous process with her, and this particular album was an intense journey. I think that's what it had to be.

***Lorde: [Melodrama is] about contrast: really big and grand, and really tiny and intimate. Going from the personal, emotional stuff to the headlines and the web. It goes from the world to my bedroom.

We finished it… and I said to Jack, "You realize, I can go anywhere I want now."

* As told to Rolling Stone
** As told to Vanity Fair
*** As told to NME
**** As told to Vice
***** As told to NPR
****** As told to Billboard

Catching Up On The GRAMMY Awards Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? Just Say "Talk To GRAMMYs"

(Julian Ring is a music journalist and critic. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, NPR Music, The Wall Street Journal, and Consequence of Sound, and he has written for The Recording Academy since 2010. As a curator at Pandora, Ring reviews independent music, programs blues stations and produces creative editorial.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Pandora Media, Inc., nor was the article written on Pandora Media, Inc.'s behalf.)

The Oral History Of Childish Gambino's 'Awaken, My Love!'
Feature

Childish Gambino, Ludwig Göransson & More On Making 'Awaken My Love!' | Album Of The Year

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Through commentary from key players, follow the twists, turns and experimentation that informed how Childish Gambino assembled his Album Of The Year GRAMMY-nominated LP
Ashley Monaé
GRAMMYs
Jan 25, 2018 - 2:00 pm

Not long after the first 30 seconds of "Me And Your Mama" sounded, it was evident that Donald Glover's former hip-hop alias, Childish Gambino, was on some other s***. After honing his trippy rhyming skills on his 2011 debut, Camp, and 2013's Because The Internet, the world saw Glover take a voyeuristic turn for the stars — all while his name and status ascended with the overwhelming success of his FX series, "Atlanta" — with his third album, "Awaken, My Love!"

Childish Gambino Performs "Sober"

A strikingly funky masterpiece worshipping the Afro-futuristic philosophy birthed by Parliament-Funkadelic, Glover's rebellious ambition made for unarguably one of his best bodies of work. All the while, it ultimately reminded us that in 2017 and beyond, funk's sexy and slow-burning tone still has the ability to move the masses.

To date, "Awaken, My Love!" has received an outpour of acclaim, including its debut at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and a 60th GRAMMY Awards nomination for Album Of The Year, one of five total nods.

Below, key players behind "Awaken, My Love!" share their story of how Gambino achieved sonic gold.

Ludwig Göransson (producer/bassist): I first produced some of [Childish Gambino's] first two albums and when it became time to make the third one, we just sat down and had a discussion. He talked about how he wanted to get in the studio and experiment with a band. We didn't know where exactly it was going to go but we basically booked a studio for two weeks, got a full band in there, and spent everyday jamming on ideas and seeing where we could take it.

Bernie Grundman (mastering engineer): At first, [the project] was under a different name: Charles Stone. It may have been a fictitious name. But even Childish Gambino, I wasn't aware of that name. But as time went on, we understood what was going on. This was like a new experience for me in way. We started back in March [2015] and it was really one of those things where they kept sending various things for me to work on and we'd just send things back and forth.

Ibra Ake (cover artist): I feel like there's no set moment when Donald told me he was doing "Awaken, My Love!" I always work with him in some capacity creatively so I'm always hearing different music he's working on. So it never truly ends. It's just a matter of when it's packaged and released. One day I ended up just getting an email about shooting cover art for the album.

Kari Faux (vocalist): Prior to him making his album, we had worked together. He remixed my song. So essentially I was a part of his Royalty camp, which is like his crew of people that he works with. We were all staying in this house in the Hills that he called the Factory. At the time, he was working on "Awaken, My Love!" and "Atlanta." I was also working on my album, Lost In Los Angeles, too. It was like one big creative house so everyone had a hand in each other's projects.

"['Awaken, My Love!' is] one of the more adventurous left turns we've seen as far as musicality in a long time."

Göransson: For this project, we just wanted to start in the studio and jam and experiment. It was for quite some time that we did that. And then Donald and I went back to my studio and sat with that for almost a year and made a crazy experimental album that we later kind of scrapped and made a different album, which is the one [that was released].

*Childish Gambino (artist): It's funny, I think people hear the album and, to be completely honest, it wasn't a lot of fun. It was actually really hard. I was going through a lot, and I also think in America we're going through a lot right now, with everything that's going on.

Göransson: It took us two years to make "Awaken, My Love!" It is significantly longer than our usual turnaround time because we essentially made two albums. We first made this extremely experimental body of work that was really out there. We only ended up keeping "Me And Your Mama" and made a universe from it. It was definitely the seed from the album. When we had to go back and rediscover what we wanted, that song was like the bones of what the album became. So we always went back to that song.

Grundman: ["Awaken, My Love!"] had a certain uniqueness to it for sure [when I first heard it — not knowing who Donald was]. There's a lot of interesting elements in "Awaken, My Love!" It's almost theatrical. It seemed to be an album that moves from different points of views and inspirations.

*Childish Gambino: Actually, there wasn't a ton of vocal stuff done. I think people hear "Redbone" and they're like, "Oh, he switched all his vocals." And like, there was no vocal pitching on the album. I just sang differently. ... Some sounds on it aren't instruments at all. They're just my voice, or just clicks on my tongue.

Grundman: It had some classical elements, too. It was picturesque and funky. That made it more interesting for me, but it meant more work. An album has to flow and be comfortable going from tune to tune to tune. And so we had to fool around with things here and there and with the equalization to get things to flow and feel enough similar to where they have an album continuity.

Göransson: This album was definitely challenging. In the process of making it, we basically had another full-length album that we thought was it and then we realized the music was cool but it wasn't what Donald had in mind. So we had to go back to the drawing board, get the band back together for a second time, switch gears and really focus specifically on what the sound Donald was going for. It's always challenging when you make music and have to throw it away. Another challenge was taking all the organic music recorded with the band in this like psychedelic world and how to make it in a way that it could've been made 30 or 40 years ago.

Ake: The artwork itself is very interrupting. We wanted it to scare a kid if they found it in the right circumstances, as like vinyl. It was very open to interpretation, but I feel like Donald trusted me a lot with a lot of the taste choices. Many times, he's thinking [about] or changing ideas faster than he can articulate so I kind of have to present him with what I think he means and we adjust from there. Essentially we referenced Funkadelic art and just how the art felt raw and over the top. There were a lot of spacey elements too. If you look at that image, it's not something you see every day. It's like a Björk image.

Faux: Looking back, I just remember there being a lot of music being played all the time. Those instruments were live, like actual musicians would come to the house and set up a jam session in the middle of the living room. They'd play for hours. It was really dope to see an album come to life. Even now when I hear "Redbone" on the radio it's so weird because it's like, "Wow, I was there at the inception of it."

Ake: I think [an Album Of The Year] GRAMMY [nomination] is well-deserved. It's one of the more adventurous left turns we've seen as far as musicality in a long time.

Faux: It's really dope because Donald works really hard. I mean, for us that know and have worked with him, that's already known. But to actually have like zero degrees of separation and be so close in proximity of this man and see how hard he works, is inspiring.

*As told to "Triple J Breakfast" radio show

(Ashley Monaé is a Brooklyn-based writer. Her work has appeared in the pages of PAPER and Nylon and online at Pitchfork, Billboard and Highsnobiety, among others.)

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