After a record-breaking week of album sales – Rag’n’Bone Man takes us behind the scenes in the latest instalment of the Beats by Dr. Dre Beat x Beat series. Alongside his producer Two Inch Punch, they offer an exclusive look at the making of the track ‘Human’, which has now gone platinum and is currently sitting at #2 in the charts.
This a massive week for Rory Graham, who is the Critics’ Choice Brit Awards Winner and also up for best British Breakthrough Act at Wednesday night’s awards.
His album ‘Human’ broke records to become the biggest ever debut from a UK artist on Apple Music and smashed the first week of sales, going GOLD in its first week and is the BIGGEST DEBUT #1 THIS DECADE. It outsold the Top 15 in the UK album chart combined and is the biggest week 1 sales of any BRITs Critics’ choice award winner.
Looking back at Human now, after all the acclaim and after the Beat x Beat – has your perception of the song changed at all for you?
“It’s one of those things – we wrote it such a long time ago, and I hear it on the radio and I play it live so much, but you don’t think about the intricacies of the actual song, and when you break it down, you realize actually how much you put into it. Cos you kind of think of it in a certain way when you play it, but then hearing the little bits of production and all the stuff that you added to make it what it is – when you actually break it down there’s quite a lot to it – so its nice to hear it like that.”
What came first – lyrics or the music? And is this your usual song-writing process?
“Yes, it kind of was: the melody was already there. My mate Jamie Hartmann kind of already had a melody down and he played the melody to me, and I was like ‘sick I really like it, let’s write the lyrics to it’. But actually quite a lot recently, I come up with the lyrics first and then the melody – so this was the other way round. It’s quite nice to do that, because you know you’ve got quite a clear subject that you want to talk about, and if the melody’s already there it makes the process quicker.”
What song and what artist would you like to see a Beat x Beat by next and why?
“I’d like to see a Stormzy track probably – I really like that song Scary. I just like the production and his explosiveness on the track. I haven’t seen that many interviews with him as well, so I’d like to know a bit more.”
