One of my favourite tracks from the Solange record TRUE is the last song, “Bad Girls’. Although it is seen as a cover of one of my songs, we actually tracked the Solange version before mine was released. The Blood Orange demo I had made had been floating around on a cdr i would give away at shows I would play a few years ago.

Part of Solange’s genius is her ability at creating and transforming vocal arrangements (e.g the final minute of this song). Many things Solange did vocally changed how I then would sing the song in future Blood Orange performances, inflections and adlibs that my mind would never have gotten to. I love how the lyrics, when turned into first person become less of a judgement call but more of plea.

The craziest thing about this song though, is Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire coming in to play bass. It was mid-October 2010, and I remember us sitting in the house in Hollywood, nervous, waiting for him to turn up. Solange said to me “You know, as producer, you’re the one that has to like, tell him what to do?” I shat one.

He turned up, looking incredible as ever, and was instantly sooo warm and friendly. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We played the song to him (which I should add, at this point was around 12 minutes long) and we listened to my bass parts. Now, I don’t really see myself as a bassist, but I feel I can get the point across.. but having probably one of the greatest bassists in the world listening to bass parts I had recorded in my bedroom, is really wild, and scary.

We decided to run the song on a loop, and have him sit across from me and just jam through it. Keeping my bass part in the track as a counter to his, my tone being the more trebly and compressed, his being the thicky funky power lead. It was incredible. i’m pretty sure that the first 2 minutes of Verdine’s bass in this song are from a one take that he did, which we left completely un edited. 

Afterwards he told us stories of Earth, Wind & Fire in their early days and then, still completely in shock at what had just happened. We said our goodbyes.