DAT BOOTY

Have you ever wondered to yourself about wanting to know what a song is about, or how an artist came up with a concept, or maybe even how they were able to turn their idea into a work of art? Well, here you go! This is the story behind Dat Booty.

a hip-hop song? really?

Okay, let me start by saying that I have never written a Hip-Hop song before. Ever! To be honest, this one truly was an accident. After the countless hours I spent on this song rearranging and reworking it because of constantly seeing new visions for it, I am certain I will try another one at some point in the future.

a song about booty

I know... I know... kind of cliche to write a Hip-Hop song about booty, right? Well, let me explain. Again, this was not meant to be a serious song at all. You see, like all men everywhere, I am devoted fan of a shapely rear end on a beautiful woman. I must admit, my wife's gluteus maximus is extremely intoxicating for me, so understand, this is not a song just about booty, but about DAT BOOTY!

IT JUST SORT OF HAPPENED

Friday afternoons at my job (yes, I have a real job) tend to die down which gives me an hour or two to mess around and usually get myself in trouble. One particular Friday, my wife and I had been texting sporadically throughout the day. A couple of the texts got into a little banter about getting down and dirty that evening. Little did I know at this time, we would end up babysitting our eighteen-month-old granddaughter that night (more on that to come later).

So as the day starts winding down, and with this free time I jump onto Suno, and decide I am going to push the flirtatious teasing to another level. I wrote up a quick little poem and phrased it into lyrical prose, then set a few quick parameters for a Hip-Hop style song, because my wife is a super fan of 2000's Hip-Hop. What came out fired up my creative brain fluid to a feverous boil. It wasn't great or anything, but holy cow! It got my mind running into overdrive with all the possibilities. What started out as me imparting upon my wife my intent to get DAT BOOTY quickly turned into a complete obsession.

the madness of a concept

Right at the end of the day, I got a call from my wife saying the kids were asking if we wanted to keep our granddaughter. My number one thought was, well hell, there goes the booty call. My second thought was hell yeah, we want to keep her, which overrides the first thought. The problem though, is my brain was firing on all cylinders with a blast of nitrous oxide creating an explosion of ideas for this new song. When my ADD takes over from being inspired like this, there is no such thing as just turning it off. I have no idea how I am going to tame this raging fire enough to be able to give my granddaughter the focus she needs and deserves. This is obviously going to be a long weekend.

That night, I tried jotting down some of my ideas as they were coming to me, so that I would not forget them. All the while I was simultaneously eating imaginary food she was creating on her play kitchen and singing songs with her from The Trolls movie we were watching for like the 231st time. Needless to say, I wasn't being very productive at anything because of being torn in different directions mentally.

After a night of tossing and turning between composing in my mind and the Kung Fu lessons I was receiving from a toddler in the bed that night, I got up with the baby around 6:30, got her bottle made and a pallet laid out in the living room so she would watch The Trolls movie for the 232nd time. Finally, I was able to get the laptop out and arrange all the thoughts and ideas I have had for the last 24 hours.

FROM CONCEPT TO CREATION

Little did I know that what I had just started would turn into a complete obsession. It started with my original concept where a man is laying it down thick with flirting smack talk about how he would rock the girl's world, "Tomorrow you'll forget about all your woes, 'Cause Daddy's gonna show you how he curls them toes" and "Girl, you ever seen fireworks in your eyes? I'm gonna light that booty up like the Fourth of July". Remember, this started out as me running some game at my wife! It is normal for the two of us to play around like this, so why not make it into a song, right?

Then, the idea that it needs to have some back and forth between the guy and girl to give the song some tension building chemistry, "So you wanna take me for a ride tonight? Only real men know how to treat me right" and "You think you can handle what this has inside? Boy, you must be dreaming with that foolish pride."

Finally, I got two verses written that I was happy with. Next, I took the original work I did for this song; if you can call a text message to my wife saying, "Let me get 'dat booty!" as a work of art. I rearranged it to where it would work as a chorus with a little repetition and the hook phrase "Girl I need to get that booty."

I needed a way to get this song started. It always seems like it is easier to work on the verses and choruses as the parts of the songs are so open ended, but it always seems that the into to a song seems more of a dilemma as you are starting from dead stop and want to figure out way to set the pace for the song. What I came up with was the idea of a group of fellas cat calling a female going by, "Yo! Did you see that? No, what? DAT BOOOOOOTY!!!"

Now, how am I going to get this to sound the way I want it? I wanted to give it a retro Hip-Hop vibe, but at the same time have a driving, grinding chorus. I decided that horns were needed to get the old school vibe going but wanted more of a dub step style rhythmic thump to the choruses. Mind you, every time I came up with a new idea, I would add the prompting, tweak everything, and work it repeatedly until I achieved what I heard in my head. AI is an awesome tool, however, what I hear in my head is what I want. Not even AI can read my mind, so there is a ton of work put into this song with the AI tools, but also in my DAW (digital audio workspace) software. Days were spent pulling down stems and cleaning them up and rearranging them to finally get the vision I had in my mind. It was so much fun, but I have never worked so hard on one song before. The end result was over 250 generations of this song to be able to get the stems I wanted, and roughly about two weeks of rearranging, tweaking, and mixing my studio space. My first Hip-Hop song is complete!

FAN FOR LIFE

I want to back up just a little bit on this to tell you a little more about that Saturday when we had our grandbaby, though. As I worked through the original ideas, I kept generating the song each time. I was playing it through my laptop and noticed out of the corner of my eye, that she was dancing by her play kitchen every time I played another version. After a while, I would be working on more of the song and then I would hear her singing, "Booty Booty". She would ask me every time I saw her for me to play her "Booty Booty", so I would always play her the latest version I was working on. To this day, I am certain that she has heard Dat Booty more times than The Trolls songs. Not only that, but we also have another of my songs that she calls "Our Dancing Song" that I will be releasing in the near future called May I Have This Dance. I have a playlist of my songs in the works just for her and there is no doubt that if no one else likes any of my songs, I will die a happy Pop, knowing she is my greatest fan.