Kendrick Lamar’s Engineer Describes “Crazy” Process Of Making Diss Songs Aimed At Drake

Many people were impressed by Kendrick Lamar’s victory in his feud with Drake due to the frequency with which he released music. His engineer, Nicolas de Porcel, recently opened up about the process of creating those scathing diss records.

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“It was a little crazy,” he told EngineEars. “I got a call and it was like, ‘Stay on call, you’re gonna be working.’ I would get the song and like six minutes would elapse and they’d be like, ‘How we looking?’ It was very high pressure.”

He came to realize that the pressure he felt in being monitored was due to their urgency in getting the songs out. “As Dot was releasing these records, it was like, I was turning in the masters [and] it would drop like 12 minutes later,” he said. “It was amazing .”

Nicolas de Porcel had a hand in mixing and mastering three out of four of Kendrick Lamar’s diss tracks, namely “ Euphoria ,” “ Meet The Grahams ,” and “ Not Like Us .” These records were all released in under a week, with “Euphoria” coming on a Tuesday (April 30) and “Meet The Grahams” and “Not Like Us” both releasing on the following Saturday (May 4).

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Compton rapper Problem recalled K. Dot’s reaction when he heard Drake’s “Family Matters” and how he responded. “[Drake] dropped ‘Family Matters’ and I text [Kendrick] like, ‘This ain’t it. Man, it’s time to step on his head.’ He was like, ‘Say less,'” he recounted. He revealed that he stepped away to use the restroom and when he got back to his phone, “Meet The Grahams” was already out, giving “Family Matters” less than an hour to sit with the people.

“I said, ‘Wait, wait, wait!’” Problem said. “I text him like, ‘Ni**a, you already [dropped the song?!].’ He’s like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this ni**a to drop something.’ [Drake] didn’t even know what he was going to get. Man, Drake shot a video and all this sh*t. Sometimes you just gotta know what to do and what not to do.”

Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet The Grahams” successfully hindered any impact that Drake’s “Family Matters” would have, and “Not Like Us” coming less than 24 hours later was the knockout blow. The 6 God attempted to rally back with “ The Heart Part 6 ,” but the damage was done and he bowed out of the beef days later.

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