Certified Fresh: Mike Will Made It Explains The Making Of “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” “No Lie” & More

If Mike Will Made It, it’s probably that knock. Thus has been the case since the 23-year-old Atlanta producer shot onto the scene as the man behind the boards on Meek Mill’s 2011 hit “Tupac Back.”

Since then, the beatsmith has padded his credentials whipping together tracks for Young Jeezy (“Way Too Gone”), B.o.B (“Just A Sign”) and producing chart climbers like Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” Future’s “Turn On The Lights” and 2 Chainz’s “No Lie.” Not a bad couple of years.

Now adding R&B tunes to his beats blitz producing singles for Rihanna (“Pour It Up”) and Brandy (“Do You Know What You Have”), and culturing his budding production company EarDrummers Entertainment—with producers Marz and P-Nasty—MWMI is on the verge of becoming a household name. In this special edition of Certified Fresh, HipHopWired caught up with the sought after beat maker in Miami between shots for DJ Khaled’s “Bottles and Bishes” video shoot and got the back story behind some of his biggest beats. Hit the jump to start…

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Photo: Mike Will

“Bandz A Make Her Dance” – Juicy J ft. Lil Wayne & 2 Chainz

“Juicy reached out to me and said he was ready to work. I told him I was working on my mixtape [Established In 1989]. The first song we did was a record called “Cash.” That record ended up being dope. It stood out on my mixtape. The second song was “Bandz.” I switched up the snare like eight times on that beat. I was trying to find the cheesiest snare I had to make MFs be like, ‘Yo, why would Mike Will use this snare?’ It’s definitely different. A lot of people aren’t trendsetters. I feel like that’s my job to bring new music, new sounds and variations. With “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” I felt like it was genius of me to say stop on how many sounds were in that beat and at the same time put that big snare in there. [Juicy] told me he recorded “Bandz” in his girl’s kitchen. I was like, ‘You recorded over my beat in someone’s kitchen?’ I told him, ‘Send it over to me.’ When I heard it, I was like this sh#t is a smash. He leaked it out on the internet and the song just grew organically. Before the label even knew about it, it was already on the Billboard charts.”

“Turn On The Lights” – Future

“I shopped that beat to plenty of R&B artists and writers. It wasn’t the traditional R&B track. One thing I knew about Future is he’s real unorthodox. We think pretty much the same when it comes to daring to be different. We already told each other we were going to take the streets over first, and once he got the deal we were going to take it to the next level. I always knew he had it in him especially coming from the Dungeon Family.

As soon as he got the deal we did “Neva End” and “Turn On The Lights” in the same night. We were working on “Turn On The Lights” and vibing back on forth. I remember we were doing the four bars and going into the chorus when he would start singing. At first he was trying to rap it and I was like, ‘Nah bro you have to sing that.’ He was like, ‘What you trying to turn me into an R&B nicca?’ I was like, ‘Whatever works.’ He did it and he nailed it. That sh-t sounds crazy as hell.”

“Plain Jane (Remix)” – Gucci Mane ft. Rocko & T.I.

“I didn’t really want that beat to do too much. The beat is really one level then it filters out and comes right back to that level. It’s not too many sounds on it. It sounds like a f-cking machine. I brought it to Gucci. He was doing that flow outside the booth [Starts to rap beginning of Gucci Mane’s verse]. He went in the booth and started doing something different. I was like ‘No, you gotta use that same flow you were using out here.’ He was just freestyling over the whole beat. He ended up doing that flow in the middle of the beat.

I brought it back to the beginning to make it the first verse. He came up with that hook and a second verse. While we were in the studio Rocko hit me up about some beats. Gucci got on the phone with him and told him to come to the studio and Rocko killed his verse. Then Tip and Gucci locked in and he hopped on it. We shot the video and it did what it did.”

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“No Lie” – 2 Chainz ft. Drake

“That was my baby. As soon as the beat was done I was like, this sh-t got to go to 2 Chainz. This was right after “Got One.” I went and played it for him. He was like, ‘I got to get a big feature on it. I might have Birdman talking on the hook. This might be my intro. I might have Diddy talking on the hook.’ He ended up hitting me at like six in the morning, and was like, ‘Drake just put a hard azz hook and verse on that beat.’ He was like, ‘We out of here with this one.’

[2 Chainz] kept telling me about this sh-t for months. I went on the road with him one time and he let me hear it on the bus. I knew it was out of here, because I knew the hook after the first time I heard the song. I told him not to play it anymore because I knew they were going to play the f-ck out of it on the radio. I wanted to be surprised.”