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Steve Lacy Reveals How He Worked On Kendrick Lamar’s ‘DAMN.’

blame it on Patrick Glynn April 14, 2017
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Steve Lacy is only 18 years old. He’s already worked on a critically acclaimed album with The Internet — Ego Death — and started a hyped solo career of his own, kicking it off with the Steve Lacy’s Demo earlier this year. He also just added another layer to his already-impressive resume: producing for Kendrick Lamar.

Lacy produced the seventh song on Kendrick’s album DAMN., “PRIDE.,” which also features vocals Anna Wise. But how did this 18-year-old get on King Kendrick’s radar? We can thank DJ Dahi for that.

“We’ve been making music together, Dahi and I,” Lacy said. “One day he calls me like, ‘yo dude, I gotta get you in the studio with Kendrick.’ I’m hype, but I don’t dwell on it too much ’cause I don’t like to look forward to stuff and then it doesn’t happen.”

After a month goes by, Dahi invited Lacy to a studio session with Kendrick the day after Halloween. After a time went by of jamming, the studio got quiet and everybody was just chilling on their phones. Then Lacy shot his shot.

“I’m like, ‘yo, let me play you some stuff.’ I just said it. Shooting my shot. Least he can do is say ‘no,'” Lacy continued. “A couple days before that I had a session with his friend that’s on a lot of his tracks, Anna Wise. So the song that I did for [Kendrick] came from this acoustic session that was recorded on my iPhone.”

After editing the song and putting a beat over it, he played it for Kendrick and Kenny got Lacy to give him his number.

“Then I hit him up again to see if we’re about to go work and then he says he’s finishing up the album. So I go, ‘tracklist’ with the eyeball emojis, and then he goes, ‘LOL.’ It was called ‘Wasn’t There’ at the time; it’s track seven. But it’s called ‘PRIDE’ now. … I still haven’t gripped what I just did, but it’s crazy.”

Listen to the story told in two parts below.