“This entire process was just trying to get our ideas as fast as possible before the inspiration left our heads.”

Sheck Wes‘ breakthrough hit “Mo Bamba” led to a joint deal between G.O.O.D. Music and Cactus Jack in early 2018, but the party-starting track has continued to surge in popularity. On September 8, the single debuted at No. 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since climbed to its current peak of No. 42. While Sheck’s booming vocals are an important part of the song, producers 16yrold and Take A Daytrip set a tone with their ominous beat.

“I already knew I was gonna invite Sheck to the studio, but only if the beat came out hard. We ran through a couple sounds, and I just started playing the keys on it,” 16yrold tells Genius. “I was really influenced by ‘Live SheckWes’ to make a real ignorant melody. I remember I just made that loop. I was like, ‘Damn. This is hard.’”

David Biral of Take A Daytrip says the beat’s foundation came from another song they were working on. “Towards the end of the beat, 16 started playing on the Prophet 12,” he explains. “I was sitting in the back of the room at the time, and I was like, ‘Yo, there’s a part in it that we should replay, perfect it, and turn it into another beat.’”

Biral’s producing partner Denzel Baptiste describes how their laptop froze while they were recording, leading to the beat dropping out at the beginning of Sheck’s verse. “As I’m looping it, everything just freezes. The song is still playing in the headphones, but I can’t move the mouse,” he says. “We were like, ‘Oh no.’ But then as soon as he was like ‘Oh! Fuck! Shit!’ then everything just came right back. It unfroze, then eight bars after that just magically appeared.”

Check out the full Deconstructed episode above to learn more about how the song was made, and read all the lyrics to Sheck Wes' “Mo Bamba” on Genius now.