Leon Thomas - Mutt

I'm Richie Kesh, here we are.

“This episode of SongExplorer is made possible by IBM.”

It was recorded in front of live audience at IBM's offices in New York City, and it was a great experience. I learned a lot about the work that IBM's doing in partnership with the Grammys, which includes the Grammy IQ trivia game that you can check out at IQ.grammy.com. It was built with IBM WatsonX, and it's just one of the ways IBM helps create smarter business. This episode contains explicit language.

Leon Thomas is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor. He's nominated for six Grammys at this year's Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best R&B album, an album of the year, for a month.

Month is his second album, and I talked to Leon about the title track, which was a breakout hit.

He'd already won a Grammy for his work with SZA, but he reached a new level and his own career with this song and this album. I also spoke to David Phelps and Rob Garinger, aka D Phelps and Freaky Rob, who produced the song. [Music] Leading up the day when you first started writing, "Mud, what was going on in your life?" Right around the time when I was doing the album, but it was a transitional period in my life.

You know, I had records that were doing very well for other artists. There was a song that I produced for SZA, called Snoos, that was like burning up the charts. At the end of the year, I was very frustrated, because I felt like my first album, electric dust, was getting some love, but it wasn't enough to really shake the building. And we had a new president coming in to the label, and it was a very scary time, because sometimes when the person that signs you leaves the label,

the next person could easily say, "All right, we're not sure about this kid." So this record was a survival instinct. I went in top of the year, it was January 1st, 2023. I decided I said, "Okay, we're going to have to go in and really swing hard on something that works." It was literally New Year's Day.

Yeah, literally New Year's Day. January 1st, 2023. My name is Rob Garinger, aka Freaky Rob, and I'm D Phelps.

And we produced Mike. How did you two first start collaborating?

We met when I was 14, and I had to be like 16, and have you been making music together ever since? Ever since. So the way we even met Lyon as my management and David's management had been on our asses about doing content. Me and D were terrible at doing content. What do you mean by content?

Like how you see producers on Instagram, they make the beat from scratch, and then they put it up. And it was like, our manager's was pretty much like, "You guys need to get in on that."

“Like, "You guys should be making videos. You should be showing some of these gems."”

And so we had did a cool idea this day in particular. David was like, "You know what? I'm going to record myself playing the drums, and I'm going to put that up." I was scrolling through Instagram, and I saw a video of David playing drums, and freaky rock playing bass, and I DM them. And you know, it was funny because when they came out, that video didn't have that many views, but it led to him. So...

Meeting up with them was like, "Fonding, lost brothers. I feel like we all listen to the same mixture of lead, zeppelin, Kendrick Lamar. A Miles Davis, pink Floyd. You know, these guys get me. They understand P. Funk in a real way. They understand jazz, art, Tatum, John Coltrane. They get my mind when it comes to wanting to make something that feels like something. Finding that in a collaborator's rare. And we were going to make something special. I didn't know when, but I knew we were going to make something special.

“So when you started working on the song, but how much had you done together at that point?”

Probably about six months in to working. Okay, so you had a solid working relationship with them all? Yeah, and man, we will pull up, you know, Rob had a studio. He named the Playground, because it was like a pretty large room. Yeah, instruments lined in, so any musician could come in and pick up their acts of choice, the keys, drums, whatever. And it was all lined in to logic and we could play.

So when you first started, but how did that day begin?

I walked in on a mission. Top of the year, it's up, I was energized.

Like, I was just like, "I don't want to do it. Six pack is on the way." Like, you know what I'm saying?

“I had this energy to me that felt like, "All right, we got to make something special."”

You could tell he was ready to get to something. Talking to me in David, like we had a congregation. Yeah, and I just remembered Leon with the sunglasses and just like, "Guys, I had it a piffy knee." So while I was on Christmas break, I watched this Elvis biopic, and, you know, he had the hown dog. Almost like a totem for like his world.

And at the time, I had a dog, anicat. And my dog and my cat were bigger in, and my cat, you know, lightly taps my dog on the face with her paw. And my dog had this face like, like, he kind of did something wrong. But it was like playful. And in that moment, his face, I don't know, maybe the sounds crazy, but his face looked like mine.

I was kind of seeing myself in him for the first time.

And that honestly really hit me. I wanted to find a way to kind of tie in all of these songs about unrequited love, about maybe being a player at times. Or maybe not being the right kind of partner at times. And I wanted to find a way to really encompass all of that from a very vulnerable place, rather than a place of bravado. I was like, "Hold on, my pound dog. All of this, all right, we could tie this together."

And I thought it would be a real fun playful hook, you know, because my dog is a mutt.

“You know, he's a German shepherd, Husky Pit.”

So he's just got a lot going on in the term mutt. Immediately, it just had like a ring to what the vibe was right. The one thing about him is just like, we know a dream when we see him and we're going to empower it. And so we were just like, "All right, let's get it." So did you start with the music?

Well, funny enough, the music already was started. It was started already. Yeah, we just didn't know it.

Basically, he broke, kind of gave us what he was searching for.

Sonically and then we just started pressing play on beats and stuff. But we always do. And then I found the session on accident, looking for another beat. I was supposed to play Lyon and play the beat. And then I tried to stop and he was like, "He was like, "That's it."

That's it. Me and David looked at each other like, "What the hell?" Because it was so bare bones. It was just kind of like an A bar loop.

“Because we used to make sketches like we would be at the studio so long.”

Either he, David would get bored, just go start some shit and I'll come back to it later. At every thing or I would do the same thing. We like literally save stuff like Rob. Come back to this or David ad keys to this.

And it was one of those things.

And I low key have forgotten about it. I'm like, "This shit is hard." And Lyon was like, "Yeah, I want to go ahead and build this out my brothers." I spent years producing for other people. Sometimes it's nice as an artist to walk into something that's started.

And then if I have ideas, I'm down to go back and forth with the producer to see if we can take it to another place. But it can be a little exhausting if you're trying to do 100% of everything. And less fun. I like the collaborate, man.

It's like a party in the studio when you get there with your boys. When everybody's together and everybody's coming up with really cool ideas. The art of collaboration can really turn into a really positive thing. So at this point, all you had for the instrumental was drums, 808, and a sample. Yeah, the sample was silly, low song by an gentleman.

I still need love song. Rob is the reason I heard silly love song. He was cleaning up his studio one day on a Sunday. My studio was a wreck at the time. We had just recorded a bunch of different sessions going on that week.

So the studio was in Shambles. And that's my happy place. I David knows I'm a very old soul. I'll put on oldies. I'll clean up.

But I didn't know what's funny is I thought he knew what that song was. Because this is like backyard barbecue Chicago music. Like my grandmother's my uncles. They're stepping to this. They're having a good time.

They've happened like this is like a part of my childhood. You know? And when I seen him go to the computer after listening to it, I was like, oh, shit, he hears something. That's him on drums.

That's what got me. Like, I was like, yeah. But I know how big the song is personally. Right. Like, okay, well, this in Shambles.

But Leon is just like, I don't give it dead. This is a great song. Like, you know what I'm saying? But we're thinking about the actual logistics, like the real part of it.

Right. Like, you're thinking about how do we do this without having to rely on a sample?

So you literally made it a point to try to recreate or interpret it. The whole feeling.

“What is the difference between using a sample and then doing this kind of interpolation”

that you're talking about? What does that change? Yeah, finances. Literally. You pay either way.

It's just dependent on how much you get to save a little bit if you go one way opposed to the other. But I do think us being able to interpret it. And to interpret it, the song actually did add a unique energy to the song. Well, how did you go about doing that?

How did you recreate the sample? We built over the sample. So like, the basing guitar like Rob knocked that out real fast. piano. Shout out to Leon a lot too because like with the strings,

he kind of took the initiative to get those things recorded.

But at the time when I first heard the instrumental,

there was no bass here. And once again, I told you I had this mission. I was like, we now need that p-fun. I was like, you know, Rob, you could play a bass line. But I wanted to have like that while like Booty, you know,

Booty Collins is known for like, you know, his use of the wild wild pedal and that open clothes feeling. It gives so much structure to the bass. And it's like really dope and vintage. You know what's that funk?

That drum and bass is a marriage desk like, you know, me and D've been playing together almost 20 years. So it's like some things, it's just a chemistry thing, you know. The story of my continues after this. Song exploded is sponsored by IBM.

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create a smarter business. After you put together the bass and drums and the elements of the beat, what happened next? I feel like after we built it, we got out the way,

another person that helped with this song is a busy crew. He's a great songwriter from Miami, rapper artist. Shout out to my boy, busy crook, because we sound each other ideas through a text thread

and having been doing that for years now. So we have a text thread for eight years of just endless verses. Paragraphs long, like it's crazy. And I knew what the hook was going to say, but I needed verses that felt fun and playful.

The first verse and I think the second verse were constructed years ago.

It just never found a home on another song.

I feel like finding something potent to say, that's clever and cool takes more time, but melody is the fun part. So yeah, melody was like, that was my first line.

A lot of this stuff on this record was like, my first line and I refused to overthink it. No, no, no. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.

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I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. It's really slick. It's the slick talk. You might say that'll make the girl you really like laugh, but also who knows.

And then Phelps, he never does this, but he was like, what if you do like a calling response

thing? Totally on, we need something to connect the phrases and I love to go get Chick-fil-A and I came back and the shit was like, I was like, whoa, like, no, that shit is fire. He had harmonized them too. I used various speed and I did the falsetto part in the middle.

It's like intricate stuff, but then it's also, it's play, maybe we were at the playground and I was just playing and I was trying to impress my friends and say, like, oh, look. It's a little falsetto. He does at the top. Oh, right.

It's crazy. So sweet. It's like those money notes. Like those runs were so crazy to me. Then I went back to my home and recorded the actual vocal that's out there in the world.

That was a fun experience because I knew the vocal I put down just sounded like bourbon and I wanted it to be a little cleaner and just like really precise. I'm glad I'll take the time to re-record. But I let my guard down for you, said I'm looking my guard down for you, said I'll be

“Va' on the boat, so you can bring my heart if you want to.”

She said take your time, what's the rush? Take your time, what's the rush? I said, baby, I'm a dog, I'm a man. She said take your time, what's the rush? I said, baby, I'm a dog, I'm a man.

I'm a dog, I'm a man. The layers of this project show the vulnerability that are within a dog. I mean, I think anybody that owns a dog understands that even that vicious pit bull loves the cuddle and I think there's a duality behind that. When you finished the song, did you already have a feeling that this was going to be

a hit? I knew I liked it, I would play it at my house and I could drive to it, you know, it was a kind of song that I could enjoy, but it's tough being like an alternative R&B artist, I would say, sometimes like it was kind of hard being an outsider in the beginning, but around that time, I did a lot of self reflecting, a lot of dreaming.

and waking up that year, I was like, things are going to change, I'm going to be everything

“I'm capable of and I'm going to continue to just have fun.”

And now, here's mutt, by Leon Thomas, in its entirety. She said take your time with us, I said maybe I'm a dog, I'm a man, she said take your time with

us, I said maybe I'm a dog, I'm a man, I'm a dog, I'm a man, I guess we're already

full party, my blood is, I see that it's pretty busy, so I've got trouble driving in here, but on my guard down for you, said I'm put my guard down for you, said I'll be

“vulnerable, so you can make my heart if you want to, she said take your time with us,”

she said take your time with us, I said maybe I'm a dog, I'm a man, she said take your time

with us, I said maybe I'm a dog, I'm a man, I'm a dog, I'm a man, I'm a dog, I'm a man, no critter, I'll come through, it's time to break it in, back to live a pentax 'cause You can't stay if you want it's been what it almost likes. One of the homestay I had in a minute. It's been a minute. I had a pop of sugar, baby ain't your feeling. But it's never the same as the first time we did it. But I let my guard down for you. I said I'm with my guard down for you.

“I said I'm with my guard down for you. I said I'm with my guard down for you. She said take your time with me.”

Take your time with me. I said baby I'm with my guard down for you. She said take your time with me. I said baby I'm with my guard down for you. I said baby I'm with my guard down for you. I said I'm with my guard down for you. I said I'm with my guard down for you. To learn more, visit songexplotor.net. You'll find links to buy or stream, but you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Disco.

The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Songexplotor is a proud member of radiotopia from PRX, and that work of independent, listener supported, artists don't podcast. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, I read a newsletter where I read about the making of some of these episodes and about music and film and the creative process. You can find a link to the newsletter on the Songexplotor website. You can also get the Songexplotor shirt at songexplotor.net/shirt.

I'm Rishikation Airway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia from PRX. Thanks again to IBM for their support of both Songexplotor and the Grammys. IBM helps smarter businesses like the Recording Academy find new ways to connect with and leverage their data wherever it lives. Let's create smarter business.

IBM.