T-Minus Explains How His Natural Studio Chemistry With J. Cole Led To “Middle Child”

J. Cole’s new single, “Middle Child,” finds the North Carolina rapper reuniting with producer T-Minus, who also handled production for last year’s “Kevin’s Heart.” In a new interview with Complex, T-Minus explained how the track came together, noting that his natural chemistry with Cole has been building since they linked up last year.

“He has a great understanding of production, he’s an incredible producer himself, so he knows good production when he hears it,” T-Minus said. “The way we work is we kind of just start from scratch, and we just brainstorm from there. Him and his manager had an idea to pull a sample out, so we went online and we found this really cool loop. The moment we heard it, we all reacted to it.”

T-Minus explained that the track came together in one day during a session that pre-dated Cole’s highly publicized Revenge of the Dreamers sessions in Atlanta earlier this year.

“We filled this beat out, he started writing to it, he recorded it—it was pretty much done within that day. The whole record,” he said.

The Canadian beat maker noted that Cole’s own background as a producer helped the two get into the rhythm of creation together:

He is a producer at heart, so he knows what he wants when he’s producing. But also when he’s working with other producers, so sonically, I think he’s in touch with my sound, he likes the sonic quality of my sound, he likes how my stuff hits. So it just works perfect, because he has a great vision of where he sees the record going, so when we click up, it’s easy, because I can just start building a beat, and he knows exactly what he likes. He gets very technical. It gets to the point where everything is meticulous, where like, BPMs are changing by one, or keys are changing, we’re changing the key of the track and we’re very much perfecting it together.

Genius recently broke down everything you need to know about “Middle Child,” which is set to be the first of many J. Cole releases in 2019:

Read T-Minus' full Complex interview here and catch up on all the lyrics to J. Cole’s “Middle Child” on Genius now.