“It’s a good problem to forget making a great song.”

When I pull up on Cardo and his producing cohorts Yung Exclusive and Johnny Juliano, they’re hunkered down to work in a mid-city Los Angeles Airbnb near The Grove. Weed is the only visible form of recreation—pre-rolls and papers are scattered across granite tabletops—but that seems to be more fuel than anything else. I’m clearly interrupting, but these guys rarely stop working. On a walk from the backyard to the kitchen after a smoke break, Cardo reflexively reaches for a nearby laptop and tinkers with a beat. It’s muscle memory.

The sessions are piling up. ScHoolboy Q is in the home stretch of his fifth album, and there may be a legend or two who require his presence, too.

“He was just sitting right there, in that chair,” Cardo nods.

This same chair? Yesterday?

“You're sitting in André's chair. That's big bro.”

I’m at the dinner table in the modern-deco living room, while Cardo swivels his six-foot frame aimlessly in a stool at the kitchen’s L-shaped counter. We’re flanked by Exclusive and Juliano, who comprise his Everything Is Gold (EI$G) collective, and occasionally chime in on our conversation while finishing up beats on a pair of laptops. Which is currently centered on André 3000, who was apparently the occupant of the same green-velvet plush table chair that I’m slouched in now.

“That's big bro,” Cardo repeats. “André is somebody that's better than you expected, the most highly energetic guy that you can possibly speak to. He came to my fucking house and recorded in my room—not here, my other house. This nigga came to my room for hours, he didn't leave till like 6:00 in the morning. We were just sitting there watching figure ice skating.”

At first, Cardo almost opts to play it coy, lest he jinx it. Then he decides that saying it out loud, on the record, will have a manifest destiny effect: “I’m gonna just say it and put it out there: André 3000’s on my album.”