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A producer, songwriter, artist, and engineer who has worked on GRAMMY-nominated and platinum projects with a long list of artists including Nick Jonas, Bella Poarch, Benson Boone, Gucci Mane, Salem Ilese, and several others. Based in Los Angeles, he has been written about in major music media such as Billboard and Rolling Stone. Last year there were more than 233 million streams on Spotify alone of songs that he wrote.
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Notable Guest Quotes

“It was, often with collaborators, you'll find it's like in the first, sort of, meeting, it's kind of just like feeling each other out.  And that was, you know, generally speaking, exactly what was happening there is, we were just trying to figure out, like, what are our musical tastes, that sort of thing.  So, we just wrote a song to write a song.  That was our first discovery that that particular group of people actually has a really great chemistry and we've written together a lot since.”

“I think oftentimes there is sort of a bit of a catalytic moment early in the writing process… The most exciting part, time, of writing a song, even bigger than, like, it doing millions of copies or platinum records or, you know, Billboard, whatever, is always the moment after you write it.  There is this really electric feeling of sort of what could be.”

“You could write a song and go, ‘Hey, this is perfect for Justin Bieber,’ but if Justin Bieber isn't in that place musically, then it's not going to hold a lot of weight in that respect.”

“I also think often it's like, a little bit of perspective is massively your friend.”

“I also could be really wrong.  And I could be really right.  And I try and just go, ‘Okay, like, anything's possible.  Don't write off anything.’  But also you still have to, like, listen to your instincts that day, that week, that month, of what you think is good.  And that's the whole thing of just making art.”

“The writing of a song to me is by far the most passionate part of the process.  And I don't think that's ever going to get old.”

“We sent them some songs and they loved what we were doing.  And so, I ended up signing to, it's a group called PRMD, which is sort of a venture with Avicii, Avicii’s manager, and a bunch of other people – a label and publisher out of Stockholm – and so that was my first publishing deal.”

“Sometimes it's like when you're trying too hard to write something that doesn't want to come out, you just sort of end up writing yourself into circles… It's better just to be like, hey, let's just chase whatever.”

“It's also taking big bets.  It's going, ‘Hey, how can I do some things that are very practical, and also how can I do some things that are, on their face, not particularly practical, but if it goes well, could be a cultural and dynamic global shift’?”

“Surviving is the first part.  I think sometimes we get so caught up in, ‘What kind of music do I want to be making and how do I want to be viewed?’  We forget that, like, well, if you can't pay rent, you can't really make music.”

“Early in your career as a producer, you think, ‘Hey, this doesn't feel big enough because I haven't added enough.’  And in truth, often it's because you haven't sculpted it, or you haven't captured it, in a way that you are capable of doing that.”

Songs on this episode

“Get a Guitar” (by RIIZE)
“Maan Meri Jaan” (by King and Nick Jonas)