@5thchildmusic Breaks Down #MCWG w/ #TheProcess: "What You Need"

The second track on the album and the first single "What You Need" was really special because I got to work with one of my heroes, Lionel Crawford. I grew up listening to cassette tapes full of beats that he used to make. Fast forward about 20 years, I found out he was living in Jackson again and I stopped by his studio to check out some new stuff he'd been working on. About 3 tracks in, this beat comes on with these military-esque drums and a choir singing these apocalyptic notes and immediately I just knew 'Yeah, that one."
I rode around a couple of days listening to just the beat because I rarely get time to just sit and write. I was on a long road trip for work and just had a playlist of the beats for the album as I would try to think of hooks. I started doing adlibs to the beat like "Uh... yea... Yo... Yea... Whatcha need." And then i just kept saying that over and over... "Whatcha need." Then I wrote the rest of the hook in my head and hurried back to work so I could write it on paper.
Once I had the concept, the song only took about 15 minutes to write. (I HAVE to have a concept). Because I didn't make the beat, I didn't have any idea of the format so I just wrote one really long verse. It was kind of meant to be an anti-"Hometown" (from Pianos in the Dark).
Once the record was finished I sent it to Melvin C. Robinson because I saw that he was running a deal to shoot videos and I saw what he'd done for Skipp Coon. I had the idea to do the comparison with the candy and the drugs a long time before we shot the video but I wasn't sure about it because someone told me that it might come off cheesy or people might not get it. We shot the video in a day and he took about a week to edit it. It came out better than I'd even envisioned it.
I always perform this track acapella because of the gasps and reactions that the lyrics get. There are always so many words in my songs and the beats have a lot going on so sometimes the actual meanings and sarcasm can get lost in the shuffle. I remember performing it...uh... somewhere and Michael Milnick suggested that I make it the first single. A lot of people have told me that it's there favorite track on the album. Gotta respect ‪#‎TheProcess‬ ‪#‎MyConversationsWithGod‬ ‪#‎WhatYouNeed‬ #5thChild #5thChildMusic