BTS • MELI - Studio Session

I was sitting at home playing Fortnite when suddenly, a melody came to mind. I knew it was catchy, so I grabbed my phone and recorded it on a voice memo. Blaks, one of my closest friends, had been urging me to make music again for years, but I never felt the urge. Maybe it was a lack of inspiration or a loss of mojo, or perhaps a bit of both.

But once I had that melody, I knew I wanted to create a song around it. I called Blaks, and we booked a session for Wednesday. These Wednesdays became our weekly, dedicated sessions over the next year, but neither of us knew that at the time. We sat down at the instruments, and I played him my melody and my concept for the song—an Arabic/English fusion of Afrobeats and RnB. He loved the idea, and we got to work!

First, we needed a beat. We stumbled upon a producer named Z3NA, a Nigerian Afrobeats producer. One of his beats immediately caught our attention, and we knew we had found the perfect foundation for our song. The rest of the process flowed effortlessly. Within 30 minutes, I had written the first and second verses, but we were still unsure about the chorus. Blaks suggested that I go into the booth and freestyle some ideas. I call Blaks “The Oracle” because whenever he says I’m going to come up with something in the booth, it happens. The first take of my freestyles ended up being the one we used for the final chorus.

In short, we had created “Meli.” It was over a year before anyone would hear the first song I had made in nine long years!