Believe
Release date: TBC Label: Fool's Gold
A-TRAK
"BELIEVE" FT. QUAVO & LIL YACHTY
A-Trak recently recruited Lil Yachty and Quavo for his new single "Believe," which is quickly becoming a hit. The song has already racked up 1.6 million Spotify streams since it dropped two weeks ago and is one of the most popular songs on A-Trak's SoundCloud page.
"A couple of years ago I started something that became a ritual over the years, which is just to go down to Atlanta to work on music for a couple of days at a time," he says. "With the song 'Believe,' that was recorded a year ago. I just put the files on my hard drive and came home and didn't touch them for months, for some reason. I don't think [Yachty and Quavo] anticipated necessarily that I was gonna change the song as much as I ended up changing it. To them, it was just like, 'Oh, we made a track', you know?"
After fiddling around with the beat for a while, he finally had a breakthrough. "Initially when I was at Promnite's crib, it didn't have the notes in the beginning," he explains. "It was just steady chords. And I just moved those notes. I like when the first instant of a song is recognizable and having that made it more unique than just a straight chord... You wanna create the illusion that that's the only instrument you're hearing, but there's a piano and a synth in there. But you're not even supposed to notice."
He even drew some inspiration from a classic Nickelodeon cartoon. "You might notice this sound... I call it 'Rugrats.' That's what this track is labeled. That's a category of sounds for me. Piano chords in the hook. Then there's this little hit. Like those little percussions."
A-Trak is no stranger to Migos and Lil Yachty: they've been mainstays at multiple Fool's Gold Day Off events for years. On their new collaborative cut "Believe", the chemistry is palpable. Recorded during hangout sessions at Atlanta's Quality Control Studios, the song finds two of the hugest names in rap playfully trading lines like Jadakiss and Styles P in their prime. The result is both intimate and anthemic. From the opening bars, it's obvious you'll be hearing this song everywhere. Who ever thought a song about a vacuum could be this catchy?
A-Trak from Fool's Gold label out of the States have picked up daytime Radio 1 plays (Adele Roberts, Clara Amfo), Radio 1Xtra (Semtex, Charlie Sloth) and Kiss Fresh. It was a Zane Lowe World Record on Beats1.