Valee Quotes

I play a little bit of everything. I beat on the walls. I whistle. I scream. I go outside and scream because it sounds cool when it's recorded. I play drums on a chair. I snap, clap... just anything to build the track and make it feel like I want it to.

Sometimes I go in and try to write beats, but I just trash 'em, and then the next time I go in, I'll make like six beats - six legit, nice beats. I'm really particular with how it needs to sound.

During the day I'll work on music. I have a sampler and a drum machine out with me and I write new songs while we're on the road.

I don't sample. I'm not like one of these guys who concoct some beat on my sampler and just turns it in.

I'm intrigued on how music is made, that's how I started getting into it. Of course I've been in the booth before, just joking around to see how it is, and I'll make a couple of beats here or there and help my artists out. But other that, I'll stick to listening.

A lot people don't know that Mannie Fresh is one of my favorite producers because I used to just be fascinated with how he would be producing stuff. He'd be silly, too, when he raps.

I record into my phone as soon as I hear a track. Melody comes first for me, and then my gibberish usually forms into lyrics and a concept from there.

I like making sounds and putting it together, I'm not just a singer or a producer.

'Who Do You Love' was kinda cool to make. I just made the beat; I was self-determined to make beats at the time.

One of my favourite Donald Byrd tracks is 'Think Twice,' and I didn't want to sample it. I've always enjoyed when other people have sampled it, so I wanted to instead of making a beat with it or something like that, or freak the beat of whatever. I wanted to just recreate it in my own way, like how I heard it.

I usually write to the beat. Really, the beat can make the song itself.

We work pretty fast. I might be working, and I might knock out two, three songs. Quavo might come in two, three himself. Offset might come and do the same.

When you're making music, you don't look at what's going on in the studio next to you.

I must have 300 songs unreleased or unrecorded, lying around. I'm a production machine, it never stops.

I played around with GarageBand before, but I'd never actually made a proper song. So it was getting into the studio with him where I made my first proper song. I've always loved creative writing, so I had done that as well.

You get the beats. You write to them. You go in the studio and lay it down. Hopefully, a song comes out sounding good. If it comes out sounding good, you put it to the side with the rest of the other good ones, and you try to decide which ones you're gonna use on the album.

With 'Defenders,' we had some very barebones ideas, but the bulk of it came together very quickly over in Ibiza. The main thing I like about that record, looking back on it now, is the change in the texture of the production from 'Screaming For Vengeance.'

People will go through 50 beats from a producer and pick the best ones, go make a song on that beat. That's cool, but someone coming to me and hearing what I've been working on, picking out pieces of all of that, and then adding some of their own ideas is way more exciting.

I think it goes back to me being a recording mixer and engineer. Because of all the technology now you can make music yourself and a lot of people are doing that now. I started out doing that a long time ago and I found when I did that I came up with a unique sound.

The neighbors prefer I don't do vocals at night. It gets a little iffy when I'm screaming.

If the beat feels like it don't make you move right, I scrap that and go to another track. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, sometimes it takes an hour to get one done.

When you're sitting in the basement trying to get on, you have no choice - you've gotta figure out how to make a song: 'I've gotta bang on these buttons until it sounds good.'

If I sample a song, I usually make samples out of the whole album. Then I move on after that. Doesn't mean I'm going to release that whole album, but I do that.

I was 16 when I recorded 'Flashlight.' I produced it, made the beat, wrote it, recorded it.

I started making beats in high school.