On "Heaven For The Sinner” f/ Erykah Badu:"I had this beat for a little while, and it was very simple. The point where I made it, it was just an 8-bar loop. I met Erykah-- last year, 2012 we were on the same bill for a few festivals, one was Decibel in Seattle, she had a show on one night and I played the same place on the next night--so we had met earlier. I met her as well because I had done a remix for this project that she was involved in, this “Re:Generation” film where her and Mark Ronson were in New Orleans, Zigaboo Modaliste was down there, Mos Def was on it, Trombone Shorty as well. It was a real old-style New Orleans shuffle kind of track - and I got to remix it. I kind of remixed it as a way of getting Erykah’s attention I think, that was the objective. It did work, eventually. The next thing, I was invited down when they were doing that track on Letterman; Zigaboo, Mark Ronson and everyone else. That’s where I met her, and it was cool. We immediately realized that there was a connection, musically - we knew a lot of the same people, we were into a lot of the same stuff, the conversation just seemed to be very easy in that respect. I don’t know how familiar she was with my stuff, but she liked what I was doing, I think. She’s a fan of music first, she wanted to hear the tracks. She wasn’t going to agree to do something unless she was feeling the track. The track I sent her, this one, it was very basic at the time - I extended the loop out a little, but I just really liked the way it swung. One of my favorite tracks of hers is “The Healer,” which is the Madlib beat, and I felt this kind of had a little bit of a nod to that.
I just felt like it would fit really well. So you know, it wasn’t an overblown - you know, working with Erykah I could’ve gone this route of really grandiose, kind of track. But I felt this was more personal, a more human sounding loop, more of an old fashioned way of working - you know, 4-bar loop. And I have Kirsten Agresta, a harpist on Erykah’s last record, a track called “Incense” - and I had her play at the top of this track, and it just gave it the movement it needed, and Erykah was into it. And from there on we just chatted a little bit, and she was bouncing ideas backwards and forwards. She’d put a very basic idea down and send it across, and we’d just get talking and kept sending bits and pieces over. I took what she did in the studio and arranged it in a way that I felt worked structurally, and she went back in the booth and re-recorded it. We had about 5 or 6 exchanges, and we were on the phone just talking about how we wanted to figure out the arrangements and stuff. And that’s how it came about. It was just a case of finishing things in London with the string arrangements…there were some woodwinds in there as well. But the basics of it were just this loop."
