Omari: So take us through your creative process in making a hit song. Like I know you had a background of becoming a producer before you took rap seriously. Do you step into your "producer bag" to find the inspiration from a sample, or do you just go about it by rapping about what's on your mind at the time being?
HDBeenDope: So let's use something like "Top," for example, right. Cause that song I dropped last month, and I feel like that's probably like my most like hit sounding record, you know what I mean?
I got an email basically saying like— Oh, Madden is looking for some horns for the soundtrack. And I'm just like, "okay, cool, like I know Madden." And like, I just hear horns. That's the first thing I'm hearing. So, I made this beat and I like cooked up these horns and it was a dope beat.
And then as soon as I hear like the baseline of the track, then I try and come up with a hook. So I came up with a hook and it was like, all right, this sounds good. I added some drums. And I was like, alright, this is cool. But it wasn't, it like, it didn't sound like it. So I was like, you know what, I need to go back in and like, try to just make something else.
I was just sifting through samples and I just randomly came across the top sample and I heard that and I was like, "Oh shit, this, this sounds like I can hear this in the stadium." This is kind of like that. You know what I mean? So from there, it's just me just pulling up the voice memo on my phone and seeing if I could come up with some type of hook. It's crazy. Cause I was actually looking through my voice memos today, just searching through. Cause I just got mad ideas in there. So like in there when I'm kind of like running out ideas and I was hearing the original for top and it was like very wild to hear where it was.
Omari: So you can see your progression and say "oh I did that."
HDBeenDope: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, but that's where it starts for me. It's like, it really just starts with the instruments of the track. And then if I can come up with a hook, then I'm like, "alright, bet I know there's something to this." But if I lay down the instruments and I feel like I can't get a hook, then I probably just end up putting it on the back burner until the inspiration sparks later.