Jay’s mother, Gloria Carter, comes out as a lesbian on “Smile.”Īw, yeah. But what were the circumstances that led to this and how do you feel about it? The truth needs to explain why you are the way you are, why you did what you did. But there’s a difference in talking about it for the sake of response and for the sake of honesty and the truth. Mainly because if he talks about himself, it’s going to bleed into that regardless. No, we never directly spoke about that album. I put the sample from the singer Hannah Williams - it starts off with, “I find it so hard/When I know in my heart/I’m letting you down every day.” I remember him hearing it and looking at me like, “O.K., fine.” I created that beat to box him into telling that story. We just wanted him to respond and then let it be and still touch on other things. One that I didn’t see him record that really hit me was obviously “4:44.” Me, him and Guru, his engineer, knew that we didn’t want him to do an album of “Lemonade” response. Were there specific verses Jay wrote that really hit you? Some of the tracks that say they were co-produced by Jay-Z, those are the ones where he gave me the idea of the song, like Nina Simone’s “Four Women”. I knew it would just keep him going, keep him engaged. He kept adding songs into this playlist, so I made pieces of music out of all of it. My philosophy was scoring his reality, his lifestyle and his taste. I asked him: “What do you listen to? Because I’ll sample some of it.” He gave me this playlist and we began to make pieces of music out of the music that he listened to. Jay posted a playlist of songs that inspired “4:44.” What were some of the musical touchstones for your production? It was almost like a therapy session for all of us. That was the core creation process: conversation, ideas in the morning, treadmill, coming in to talk about it and then we’d lace something or not lace something. He would get on the treadmill and sketch out ideas. After that, every other day I would send him three to four new ideas. I sat with him and played him maybe 70 ideas. What kind of beats did you present to him initially? We have 12 albums, why 13? I had to know that I could be of assistance to pull things out of him. As a producer, I said, “How do I score that thought?” I wanted to see something new happen. He said, “I want to do an album where I talk about the things that I’ve never talked about.” He told me he wanted to open up and give people more. What were your initial conversations like with Jay about what would become “4:44”? These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Over the phone from Los Angeles, the producer - who was named executive vice president of Capitol Music Group in June - discussed pushing Jay-Z to new emotional places, how he chose samples, the influence of “Lemonade” and Beyoncé’s role in recording.
“We did that maybe Monday?” No I.D., 46, said with a laugh. “4:44” was recorded largely at No I.D.’s Hollywood studio beginning in December and wasn’t finished until very recently (hence the line on “Family Feud” about Al Sharpton’s freshly viral summer selfies).