Inside The Credits 005: Sounwave
Sounwave’s Slow + Steady Expansion Beyond Kendrick & TDE’s Right Hand
Sounwave has been producing for Kendrick Lamar for longer than I’ve been aware of him. I first heard “Ignorance Is Bliss,” after I saw a post on Nahright about Dr. Dre praising Kendrick and that particular song on the radio. That song is produced by Sounwave’s fellow TDE production savant Willie B, but after I heard it I pressed play on the full 2010 mixtape (O)verly (D)edicated. I knew Kendrick was going to be my favorite rapper of all time (still holds) when I heard “The Heart pt.2,” and I knew Sounwave was an immaculate producer that fit him distinctly when I heard “Alien Girl (Today With Her)” and “Barbed Wire.” The dual threat of drums and synths in both tracks creates a controlled cacophony of hazy atmosphere for Kendrick to philosophically fly through.
Sounwave has been a major part of Kendrick’s entire catalog during and post his TDE saga. The most concise way to dive into his credits over that time is to rank my ten favorite tracks he has SOLE producer crediting on. He also has co-producer credits all over the place, but this is the only way to even narrow it down. Here we go:
A.D.H.D
Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe
FEEL
m.A.A.d city
Hol’ Up
Barbed Wire
King Kunta
Alien Girl (Today With Her)
She Needs Me
Mortal Man
Sounwave has also been a go to for many others within the TDE roster, which of course has now bled a bit into pgLang ie. Baby Keem. However, for some time now, he has embarked on a slow yet steady foray into a variety of realms separate from his home bases and particularly the Hip Hop genre.
The impetus for this topic being at the core of this INSIDE THE CREDITS post (which you may have deduced from its title) was listening to the new Kali Uchis album, ORQUÍDEAS, with my girlfriend (and editor of this newsletter) in the car. I said I liked the production on the track “Perdiste'' the most, as it surrounded Uchis with an optimistic sounding lower register that lifted her vocals to their most natural pocket. My girl looked at the credits as I drove and told me Sounwave was the main producer (get you a woman who hops in the credits FOR YOU). It made me remember a prior observation I had made about Sounwave’s post Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers executive production. I noticed he was traversing genres and producing for artists I was surprised by. So I dove back into the credits to see where this all started. Of course, one of his first forays away from TDE was also with Uchis. The 2017 track “Tyrant,” where Sounwave added synths, slipped him into a distinctly Pop R&B pocket where he could expand his atmosphere from poignant philosophy to emotional vulnerability.
I am going to deduce that the collaboration he experienced in the To Pimp A Butterfly sessions is partially responsible for this. That album was released in 2015 and in 2016 we suddenly see Sounwave pop up within other tones for the first time. Randomly, the first credited examples are for a UK pop r&b singer/rapper Raleigh Ritchie. We hear the beginnings of the transition here as Ritchie peruses youthful psychological grapplings over Sounwave’s almost vortex-like textures. He begins a move toward more emotive simplicity in spaces but doesn’t quite fully commit. Then we hear his production on two tracks for his TPAB collaborator Thundercat’s 2017 album Drunk. On “Lava Lamp” we feel Sounwave’s pull into yearning and melancholy. There is an inherent malleable compassion that appears in his palette that would help him feed Uchis and also Kendrick on DAMN.
The pulsing synths underneath Uchis crooning, “Look me in my iris, I can see your silence,” on “Tyrant” are stirring. When I heard “FEEL'' on Damn, it was the first time I was reminded of the emotional release Kendrick was capable of since “The Heart pt. 2.” Around this same time we got some miscellaneous Sounwave production for Jack Antonoff’s band Bleachers Alt Pop heartbreak track “Goodbye,” Marc E. Bassy’s Pop R&B romance ballad “Westside Love,” and Funk R&B singer songwriter Prince Charlez’s relationship struggle song “Make It Work.” He had begun to find the sonic range of his heart.
I next saw Sounwave appear in a sudden set of credits for an 8 track album in 2019. I thought to myself at that moment, “Who is Red Hearse?” Propelling off his prior exploration, Sounwave formed a group with Jack Antonoff and soul singer Sam Dew which resulted in a full gut wrenching Indie Pop R&B project. This marks the first time in writing this Substack that I found a body of work and group I didn’t know existed that blew my socks off and reproved my theory simultaneously. Within the 8 tracks there’s everything from sharp pining, to destabilizing jealousy, to gripping passion, and unencumbered shamelessness. Sounwave is right at the core of the all the open orchestration. The album feels like a sheer emotional release. For Entertainment Weekly in August of 2019, Sounwave explained how this was a necessary shift into another part of his musical self when he said, “Me and Kendrick are very intense people in the studio. We want everything to be perfect. But with this, it just flowed smooth.”
From then through 2021, Sounwave would go on to make the track “London Boy” with Antonoff and Taylor Swift, “what am I” with Mahalia, “holy terrain” with FKA Twigs and Future, “Forgive Me” with Chloe x Halle, and more. He was off to the races.
Then we come to the “Sounwavaissance” of 2022 where he was arguably the year’s most formative producer. He executive produced Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, which is easily Kendrick’s most vulnerable album as he outlines his therapeutic journey. Beyond this though, Sounwave executive produced a poignant Soul/Gospel album by UK singer Gabriels, produced two songs on a Marcus Mumford Folk album, and produced three songs on Taylor Swift’s Midnights.
“Lavender Haze,” the Midnights opener produced by Sounwave, was the first song I ever heard by Swift where I had the thought “let me listen to that again for pleasure.” The Compton-bred arranger went all the way from helping my favorite artist find his shine to helping me vibe with an artist’s sonics whose music I didn’t even enjoy prior. What a ride.
Inside The Credits 005: Sounwave- The Playlists