Key Wane Tells All: The Stories Behind His Biggest Hits

The producer behind "Guap" and "Amen" discusses his best beats.

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Complex Original

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Dwane Marshall Weir II is a 22-year-old student at Tennessee State University, studying Arts and Sciences. He's also the beatmaker behind one of the year's biggest rap songs, Meek Mill's hit "Amen."

"People see me on campus, like, 'You're the dude that did 'Amen'!" says the producer better known as Key Wane. "I'll get out of class and there'll be this kid just waiting to ask me questions. It's kind of crazy. At the end of the day, I’ll never let it get to my head. I’ll stay humble about everything. I don’t act like I’m better than any other student. I’m just a regular student blending in with everybody else. I just be doing music.”

His success in music doesn't make it easy for Wane to blend in, but he'll be graduating this December, so it won't matter for long. But for now, it's a complicated existence: “It’s stressful for the most part. I want to make beats all night, but fuck, I got to get up and be ready to go to class at 8 and sit through an hour long lecture. It’s even worse when you get up and you got ideas to make beats, but you keep looking at the clock like, ‘Shit.’ You don’t want to be late, you don’t want to be absent."

We spoke with the young producer about some of his most important tracks and what it's like balancing schoolwork and his new day job. Wane has produced for a variety of artists, including Big Sean (one of his earliest collaborators and supporters), Tyga, and Roscoe Dash. Despite that, Wane sees the advantages of staying in school. "It teaches me how to handle things with time, how to be on time. It teaches me how to multi-task, how to do more than one thing at once. I’ll be doing a term paper and making beats."

Wane's currently working on new tracks with Drake, Jhene Aiko, and even putting in work for Beyoncé. Although it's clear that the best is yet to come, he's focused on the immediate future. "I just registered for my cap and gown," he says about his upcoming graduation date. "Just got to finish up these last credit hours and I'll be ready to go."

As told to David Drake (@somanyshrimp)

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Meek Mill f/ Drake "Amen" (2012)

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Album: Dreams & Nightmares
Label: Maybach Music, Warner Bros.

“I made that around the same time I made ‘So Long,’ because that was during that Christmas break. It’s just like going through records in my momma’s basement, and I just came across some grooves, and I got this vibe. I made these piano keys and came across this riff and added some of my own creativity into it, and added some drums, and hit up my nigga Tone and Sean, like, ‘Let’s go to the studio. I got this cold-ass beat I did.’ They heard it like, ‘Damn, this is kind of sweet. We going to record a reference [track] to it.’ 

“They recorded a reference, and everything was all good. Niggas was fucking with it. A couple like months later, when I went to LA, Sean was like, ‘I fuck with the beat, but I really don’t fuck with the reference like that.’ I remember meeting Meek Mill in New York that summer—that past summer—and I remember he’s like, ‘Yo I’m a big fan of ‘Memories.’ That’s like my favorite song from Sean.’ When he found out I produced it, he was like, ‘Give me your contact, let me give you mine, I want you to send me some beats.’ 

“I was thinking, ‘Cool, Sean don’t want to use it, who else would want to use this beat man? This is a really good beat.’ I was like, ‘Man, Meek Mill would go ham on this.’ It has to be something different too from what he’s putting out. I sent it to him, and literally like a couple days later he hit me up like, ‘This is about to be my single.’ 

“He played that shit for me over the phone right before I went to class. It was crazy. Then I got a phone call, like, ‘They about to put it out.’ We just got the business situated. The Jahlil ended up adding his 808 to it, because my kick was hitting hard like it’s supposed to, and he just added the 808, and that was that.

“I think CNN has a blog or something like that. They called me, and was asking me questions about how I felt [about the controversy with a Philadelphia pastor]. That was dope. Damn, CNN? That was kind of big. I told them I felt that people were blowing this out of proportion. We’re two people who believe in God. Right at the beginning of the song, he’s like, ‘I just want to thank God.’ I guess people just looked that over and just automatically wanted to say everything negative about the song. Nothing is bad about the song man. The song put me in a better place, and that’s like all in God’s hands. I don’t see where people are getting this bad vibe from it when it’s really helping people out.

“Just happy people like it. My family loves it. Everybody loves it. Sean likes it, like, ‘Man, this is a really good song.’ It’s Top 10, it’s just like it was the biggest single of the summer. I’m just like, in awe that I was responsible for that. I was just really thankful that God gave me this gift and blessed me to use it correctly for all this to happen man.”

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Big Sean "Guap" (2012)

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Album: Hall Of Fame: Memoirs Of A Detroit Player
Label: G.O.O.D. Music, Def Jam

“I think I went out to L.A. He flew me out there to work on his mixtape and his album. This is like March or April, sometime around then. When I got to the studio, he had recorded a reference of a song. It was like, ‘Man I think this could be a really big song, make a beat to it.’ I was in the studio, and he texted me the voice memo, and I kept listening to it, and he was like, ‘Man, make it with this type of bounce. Make it like a really big song.’

“I had recorded some steel drums over it, and that was the beginning. I had like a kick and some claps—this is like same-day everything. It was just forming ideas, me and him. He’s a great writer, and there were a lot of people in the studio. It was just bouncing ideas for the record. It was just a skeleton, and Sean was like, ‘Shit, let’s get some of Young Chop’s drums on here.’ He threw his 808s and some high-hats on it, and we kind of had a skeleton at that moment.

“I remember for months, I would work on the beat like every other day ever since I left L.A. I went back to school and just kept working on it. He hit me up, was like, ‘Yo man, add some new stuff to the beat. I was the beat to be bigger, it’s about to be a really big song.’ I just started added more sounds to it, added some keys to it, a bunch of different strings to it, just to give it this more, like, this feel. Like this epic, stadium type feel. I just wanted to give it this type of emotion, and I just added. I would just add stuff to it like every other day. Whenever I had free time, I would just listen to it and want to improve it.

“We went to the studio, not too long ago. This was about last weekend, just came from L.A. working on some sessions with some writers. He hit me up like, ‘Before you go back to school, I want to finish up ‘Guap.’ When I got off the phone with Sean, Sean’s manager hit me up like, ‘’Guap’ is about to be the first single for Sean’s album.’

“We all went to the studio that night, and he was like, ‘Let’s work, let’s finish up this ‘Guap.’ I was like, ‘I already recorded a new version of ‘Guap.’’ He’s like, ‘You did?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, a couple weeks ago.’ I played it for him, and usually Sean, he wants everything to be perfect, and that’s what I fuck with about Sean. He wants everything to be A1, and that’s dope. I was thinking, ‘He might find something in this song that might need to be changed.’ I was ready for that. Then he heard it, he was like, ‘Hell yeah, this shit’s dope. Let’s load this up and get to finishing this track.’ We just added some extra stuff, chopped up some things at the end, and that was it.

“At first it was nothing but those steel drums. I had did some claps in the background, some kicks, and Chop’s 808, and I added the strings and some keys and all the big instruments at the end. It’s just a great outcome. That was the first day I met Chop too. We just be in the studio. We cool. That’s my little bro.”

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Big Sean f/ J. Cole "24 Karats of Gold" (2012)

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Tyga f/ Busta Rhymes "Potty Mouth" (2012)

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Album: Careless World: Rise of the Last King
Label: 
YMCMB/Universal Republic

“That beat so old, I can’t honestly remember. I remember when he told me he wanted to use it for his album, I was like, ‘Damn, for real? You want to use this beat? That’s my super old beat.’ I made that when I was just starting to make beats on like, computer programs. When he reached out, he said he wanted to use it, so I went back in and beefed it up with some of the knowledge I had acquired over the years just making the beat. He had his producer add a couple of things to the second part of the song, and Busta Rhymes came in.

“The majority of the beat man, that was just an old beat. It was really good—I remember that was when I started using pianos in my songs. That beat was old, and when he picked it, I was surprised because it was so old, and I was like, ‘Damn, he’s really fucking with my old shit, so that must mean my new shit is cool.’ My new shit started getting on right now."

RELATED: The 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Beats of All Time

Rockie Fresh "So Long" (2012)

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Big Sean f/ Wale "Life Should Go" (2012)

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Tyga f/ The Game and Mario "Drink The Night Away" (2011)

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Big Sean f/ Jhené Aiko "I'm Gonna Be" (2012)

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Tyga "Hypnotized" (2011)

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Big Sean "Higher" (2012)

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Roscoe Dash f/ French Montana "MoWet" (2012)

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Big Sean "Memories" (2010)

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Tyga "Don't Wake Me Up" (2011)

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Big Sean "Intro" (2011)

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Album: Finally Famous
Label: G.O.O.D. Music, Def Jam

“That was one of the greatest days, because I was considering quitting my job at the car wash that I was talking about earlier. I used to work there like every other summer. I was like, ‘Something has to pass.’ I was praying everyday. I just believed. I knew God sees me working hard, and then I got a phone call one day from the label, like, ‘We’re using ‘Memories’ as the intro to Sean’s album. Send us over the stems, we’re going to switch a few things up, and we’re going to send you some paperwork.’ I was just supremely hyped. I don’t know how old I was. I told myself—I always set these dates and goals—but like, ‘Man I would just love if before my 21st birthday, I get an album placement.’ Two weeks before my birthday I got the phone call. It was like speaking positives into existence. It’s some real shit man. I just prayed everyday. That was my first placement.

“It’s just basically a continuation of where Finally Famous Vol. 3 ended off. It’s great that he got to expand on that on his first album, which was really just dope to me.”

Chip Tha Ripper "Pocket Full" (2012)

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Big Sean "Almost Wrote You a Love Song" (2010)

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Big Sean "My Closet" (2010)

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