I read a Noisey interview where Elton was
expressing his love for Young Thug.
As soon as I read that I was like, “This
is amazing.”
These two souls need to be brought together.
I literally like read every Elton John song.
When he says, “I’m gonna be high."
"I’m a Rocket Man.”
I thought that when Young Thug heard that,
he would just know where to go with it.
I reached out to Young Thug's A&R, Geoff Ogunlesi.
So in early 2016, I sent him an email and
I was like, “Hey can we get Young Thug and
Elton in a room and I’ll make a song?”
He thought it would be probably difficult
to corral them in one spot.
He was like, “Why don’t you try to sample
something?”
When I first heard the piano under Elton,
I was really excited because I had found different
chords that worked with his melody.
And I got that feeling.
I was like, “Oh, it really does feel like
you’re flying.”
So here’s the “Rocket Man” a capella
played at normal speed here.
When I first tried to sample this, I did the
obvious thing and tried to use the whole chorus
and I made just a garbage beat.
So, I knew I had to just get a little more
creative with how I did it.
Read all the lyrics again.
Saw “And I'm gonna be high.”
Let’s just bring “Rocket Man” to it.
So yeah, I slowed it down using Transpose,
warped it, put it back in the correct key.
So I brought the first part of his phrase,
made it a lot faster.
And then made “high” shorter.
The way I got the “high” to just feel
like one continuous high, and I use this strategy
a lot.
It’s where you take the sample, this part
of the sample is just a reversed version of it.
At the time I really just didn’t have like
crazy stuff.
It’s Decimort Version 1 which is like a
bit crusher.
I have the classic Valhalla, then I have FabFilter.
It’s kind of like a dub delay.
And then on top of that I put another Valhalla
to make it super spacey.
Yeah so the sample is a little bit degraded
by being so stretched and manipulated, but
when you put on all the reverb, it kind of
hides that.
Putting all the effects on it and creating
the song title, “High”, is what helped
bring it into Thug's world.
So I was just still in my apartment, and the
only thing I had was like, a guitar, a Scarlett
Interface, and like a small MIDI keyboard.
So I was like this needs live piano.
I’ve seen so many greats recordings of people
playing in Rubber Tracks.
I found this very like, naturalistic piano.
What he’s playing here is in a higher key
but just super super common pop chords.
The piano recording was five semitones higher
so I just brought it down to B flat major
just using Ableton Transpose.
Because I couldn’t record a live piano,
the pianos just weren’t long enough to actually
fit into the rhythm.
So in the same way that I took the Elton track
and reversed his voice, I did the same thing
with the piano.
After I had this part down, I was like alright
so I need to add some rhythm to the track
for the drop.
The first thing was just making sure the piano
aligned with the vocals, and then moved on
to the drums.
You can make your version of trap drums stand
out.
Maybe one way to switch it up is just put
in one sound that you’re not used to hearing
with this rhythm.
For this track the sound was this Tom.
The way I got that was using Sausage Fattener
at maximum fatness.
The other more unique sound in here is this
perc.
That’s just sidechained to the kick to give
it more of a dipping feeling whenever the
kick hits.
The one different feeling about the hats is
that it’s two different hats.
Both panned left and right.
And then together.
So then there are two 808s that are in it.
There’s this 808 that’s made from Nicky
Romero plug-in.
That has a lot of the bottom end, so I found
a Southside 808 and just put that under it
as well.
So here’s the other 808.
Having two 808s can be risky ‘cause it can
sound kind of muddy.
Honestly I thought Alex Tumay, the engineer,
would just know what to do and how to EQ it
and make it sound nice.
And I thought that there was room for one
more warm, textured kind of sound.
So I did this bass.
And this only happens twice in the song, but
it’s just one little extra moment.
It sits against that blown-out Tom sound and
it breaks up the piano.
So this is what it all sounds like together.
The mission was to bring Thug into Elton’s
world and vice versa.
I knew it would cause a reaction in some way.
But his style has always been super flamboyant
and expressive and exciting and Elton has
had the same thing.
I thought it would a super positive thing
to just see them together and see two icons
embrace each other.
