Phonte started singing the melody he told me he had in his head for the last few days. He even had most of the words figured out as well. I remember thinking when I heard it initially, "This sounds really happy" and musically I wanted to cater to that without it sounding too light and therefore not taken seriously. With the references made in his lyrics, "When is a chord, more than a chord?" and "...sevenths and ninths" I knew from the jump that it would be important for the instrumentation to have just as much of a voice in this one, possibly even something more stripped down musically. As Phonte sang the lyrics, I began to follow him on the keys up until we hit the end of the main phrase, "sevenths and niiiiiiiiiiiiinths..... niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinths...." and we both knew that we needed a change there. With the the song feeling so bright and upbeat at that time, I went right to a minor chord first to darken it some and give the music a little more contrast. I remember us experimenting with a few different ideas on that change. I think what ended up sealing the deal on the one we decided on was the progression I put together to get us back to the original phrase (the spot where he says, "...remedyyyyy.... remedyyyyyy.... remedyyyyy-eeeeee"). I still have about four slightly different versions of this song recorded on my voice memo app with just my keys and his vocals. This song literally evolved as we played it all the way through. EACH TIME we heard something different. For example, after the first or second time demoing, Phonte wanted to try a shortened measure (at 0:21, the measure is in 5 rather than 6), which worked perfectly. And why not mess with the song count within a track with so many music references? It was only right. After we finished up, we were READY to get that music recorded. If we were in my studio in Maryland, we MAY have started and finished the song that night. I remember him saying, "Yo, let me know when you record THAT shit." I took the ideas, recorded demos and rolled on back to my hotel room because it was damn near 6 a.m. and I was EXHAUSTED. But wen I got back to the room, there was a fire alarm going off. Listen man, have y'all been in a hotel room when the fire alarm is going off?! That sound is deafening! Which of course, in an emergency, it should be. But when there ain't shit happening, and it's just going off to be going off?!!? You want to choke the shit outta somebody. But I was tired, man. I walked back into my room, covered my head with pillows and PASSED OUT.
After waking up at around 10 a.m., I hit the road right back up to MD. The very next day, I sat down in my studio to record the piano, Rhodes and bass guitar parts for this new one and sent it over to Phonte at about 5:30 p.m. Some seven hours later, Nic and I received an email from him with the subject line, "Sevenths and Ninths" that read:
"AND ANOTHER ONE"
