J. Cole’s “MIDDLE CHILD” marked his first release of 2019, reuniting the North Carolina MC with producer T-Minus. On the track, Cole explores his place between the old and new generations of hip-hop, making him the “middle child” of rap. The song samples “Wake Up to Me” by ‘70s Philadelphia trio First Choice, and is the Dreamville boss’ highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 hit to date, peaking at No. 4. T-Minus recently sat down with Genius to break down how “MIDDLE CHILD” was made.
As T-Minus previously shared, clearing the sample through the music licensing site Tracklib allowed them isolate the horns before adding in the drums. “I put some reverb on [the horn sample] to give it that effect of it being a little bit more airy, a little bit bigger,” he explained. “[The drums are] actually very reminiscent of KOD ‘cause a lot of it’s very like stuttery kind of hats, very short but rhythmic. And playing along with the hi-hats is a clap sound, rim shot-like perc sound, and a bell sound.”
Moving on to the kick pattern and the 808, Cole already had an 808 pattern in mind. “He had the idea of it going from low to high,” T-Minus recalled. “When the beat comes in and the 808 hits, it hits you. It hits you really hard. The 808 is slapping. To add a little bit more energy to the song when it drops, we added some hi-hats as well.”
The track wasn’t done until T-Minus added his signature flourishes from songs like Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools” and Lil Wayne’s “She Will” to give it a trippy vibe. “It has that kind of low bass-y, kind of moving pad-ish kind of bass,” he said. “At the end of the record, we kind of added this effect to make everything kind of sound dark and kind of trippy.”
Check out the full Deconstructed episode above to learn more about how the song was made, and read all the lyrics to J. Cole’s “MIDDLE CHILD” on Genius now.
