“Bigger Than You”
I found Cudi browsing MySpace one day. He had ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’ on his MySpace and it had like, a few hundred listens. And I’m like, ‘Who the fuck is this? This song is a smash.“And I’m looking at his Top 8 friends, and I see Plain Pat. So I call Pat, and I’m like, ‘There’s this fucking guy, he has this amazing song, and you’re in his friends.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s this new guy I got, I think I’m gonna manage him. That’s my dude, we’re just starting out. You should produce some shit for him.’
“The first song we ever did was ‘Bigger Than You,’ which leaked but it never came out. The title on the Internet is ‘Do It Alone,’ but it’s really called ‘Bigger Than You.’ That’s a cool song. I wish that song got more shine.
“It was supposed to be the intro for Man on the Moon. But Cudi left a CD in some dude’s car in Cleveland and dude put the whole thing on the Internet. So that ruined that song. But it’s a great song and the first thing we ever did.”
“Is There Any Love?” ft. Wale
“That was the second song ever I did with Cudi. I was listening to records with Cudi—that was our thing. Before I got into sitting at the piano and we would come up with songs, we would just listen to records, listening for samples and ideas.“I had this Trevor Dandy record, which is like this rare Canadian gospel record. We were listening to it and there was no question that it was amazing. The drums were there, it was all there in the song.
“I tend to sometimes overproduce things and ruin the sparseness of what we started with. That’s where a guy like Plain Pat being in the studio is so critical, because Pat was like, ‘Just fucking loop it.’
“I was trying to add all these keys and make it my own thing, but the music was amazing, so he was like, ‘Stop fucking around.’ Pat’s got the ear to tell you when to stop or when to change. And he was like, ‘Just loop it and leave it be.’
“It’s a straight loop off a gospel record. That’s all it needed to be. I added some keys on the chorus and changed the timing on it a little bit. Pat was the one who had the ill idea to put the 808s off a little, like in weirder spots. The 808s come in unexpected.
“Cudi would be at the studio hanging out a lot and Wale was always around. They were boys. Wale just put out his mixtape. They were peers, so we had the idea like, ‘What about putting him on the record?’ We did that and it turned into this mixtape classic.
“We put it out and it leaked, and that’s when things were starting to pick up with Cudi. Everything we did and put out, we got a good response on. That was the first thing we ever did that came out and saw the light of day.”
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