Drake’s “Nice For What” is an intricate tightrope act. The song produced by Murda Beatz it managed to make the disparate parts coalesce into one grand vision.
The story of how the song came together makes it seem like all of that complexity wasn’t difficult to manage. In an interview on the Rap Radar podcast, Murda Beatz shared that he worked on the song with Drake while the rapper was playing video games.
“We were chillin’ at Drake’s house,” Murda said. “We’re playing [NBA] 2K, and we came up with the idea to get like a female artist, to sample a female artist. So I asked my manager Cory, like, ‘Yo, what do you think?’ He’s like, ‘[Lauryn Hill’s] “Ex-Factor” and then Drake’s like, ‘Oh, what part?’ And we picked the part, chopped it up, I made the beat while he was playing 2K.”
Murda also revealed that the first pass at the song was written in under two hours.
“He sat there,” Beatz continued. “Wrote the shit in front of me. Cut the shit in front of me. Yeah, we had the shit done, beat and song, probably like hour and a half.”
