Steve Lacy Produced Kendrick Lamar’s "PRIDE." On His IPhone 6

The Internet‘s Steve Lacy produced the PRIDE. beat for Kendrick Lamar, which was the seventh track on Kendrick Lamar‘s 2017 album DAMN.. He made the beat on his iPhone 6 using Garageband and recorded background vocals on the song alongside Kendrick Lamar’s regular collaborator, Anna Wise.

Steve Lacy pulled up to a Kendrick Lamar studio session with his good friend and Kendrick Lamar’s house producers DJ Dahi.

“A month or so goes by, [Dahi and I] link up on Halloween and we pull an all-nighter, we’re making beats the whole time. He asks me, ‘yo, what you doing tomorrow?’ I’m like, ‘oh nothing, I’m chilling. Why, what’s up?’ He’s like, ‘oh Kendrick has a session tomorrow, you down to roll through?’ I’m playing it cool like, ‘yeah dude, for sure. What time yo? Okay cool.’“

During the session, Steve Lacy played a song he was working on with Anna Wise titled “Wasn’t There.” Kendrick loved it and the song ended up on the album.

“The song I did for him came from this acoustic session that was recorded on my iPhone,” Steve Lacy says. “I showed Anna Wise how to record her vocals and she recorded this whole idea over these acoustic guitar chords I came up with, a small little drum loop that I made and then I took her vocal stems and made a beat over it. This was the track where he [Kendrick Lamar] was like ‘Yo, put your number in my phone I need this.’ I went there a couple more times to work on some stuff and this song he was just sure about. He loved this one. Then I hit him up again and he said he’s just finishing up the album so I go ‘Tracklist?’ with the eyeball emojis and he said ‘LOL.’ It was called “Wasn’t There” at the time but it’s called “PRIDE” now. It’s still hitting me I still haven’t fully gripped what I just did but yeah it’s crazy to think I was in a classroom just 6 months ago.“

Steve Lacy also produced Foldin Clothes for J. Cole.