I've always worked toward breaking down the walls between genres and status and pop versus underground. It's funny - some producers ask me, 'Man, how do you work on a Bieber record? That would kill my career.' I can work on any record there is as long as they are good records and you're pushing things forward. All that matters is that the music we make is great and that it's confusing to people a little bit. I've only been doing this to fuck things up, so I'm not even sure how I ended up doing these kind of records, but if it all fell through tomorrow I would be happy putting out my rap demos on SoundCloud and starting over again. I never became a producer to go to parties or wear nice clothes or put sales figures on my Wiki page.
Do you feel pressure from your peers to separate your work, though? I don't care what it is as long as it's good. Man, the only thing that's important is what is due tomorrow. Do you separate the work you do for Usher, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber and so on from your work with less 'pop' artists? He's using the producers instead of the other way around. Usher is a smart man, he has been doing this for long enough. I think he wasn't going to these producers for their sounds. He brought house music to the R&B crowds in America, and with Yeah! he brought synths to Atlanta hip-hop. Usher has the power to take a record into any lane. That is something that makes it very easy to work with him. I was so surprised about how much these guys are into music beyond their normal lane. Usher knew about my first album on Ninja Tune, Florida. They put me on to Monsters Of Folk or Grizzly Bear being influences from the start. Him and his entire crew, like his A&R and band member Natural, are all very, very in touch with what is happening in music. Usher came in here with a very clear idea that he wanted to work on a new pop sound and he wanted to push it further with the styles and the depth of the tracks. Is there a strong vision to this album, or is it just a load of songs that sound good independently of each other? You're one of many producers on this, along with Max Martin, Luke Steele, Swedish House Mafia and so on. That might have been the best direction I've ever been given. His concept was that he wanted to "take the strip club to the stadium". Atlanta had a lot of distractions but we managed to make another amazing record there. I was making something like a minimal techno record with Atlanta strip clubs in mind. The idea of pushing cut-off on a synth used so much in progressive house music but pulling back. The production actually started as a house thing with a chord progression that I wrote, but with some time in the studio alone I was making a sort of "wildfire" beat out of it. I think Usher is a bonafide superstar because he's very honest in his songs and people can relate to that especially in the feelings and textures of his voice. Every idea we had, we discussed how the song would relate to Usher's life and then I just tried to help realise these lyrics and feelings. These were all ideas and feelings and then Usher put it into perspective for himself and took the control and feeling of the record to another level. I remember I was tryin' to explain a Portuguese word "saudade" to him when we were just writing the lyrics it's the feeling of nostalgia, but it's hard to make sense of in English. He was relating with me about the idea and how many times you think things are perfect and feel that way but they can pass.
It was a sad feeling but it was beautiful. With this one I had explained to him about a moment I had with a girl where I felt like I could die with her and be content, but I didn't and life moved on, and that point in my life was over. Usher liked to talk to me from the start about the concept of each record. How did the song take shape? did you have the track first or did Usher come to you with the idea? It all felt right even though it was made so spontaneously. After the first demo, people were so hyped on it and even though we continued to work on it over the next two months, very little changed with the production. I knew the concept was very strong and Usher loved it but I think once Usher started to lay down his vocal ideas we couldn't stop. The concept was built first and then it took a few melody lines and the song was written in about one hour.
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