Leon Thomas - Mutt

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. This episode of Song Exploder is made possible by IBM. It was recorded in front of a live audience at IBM's offices in New York City, and it was a great experience. I learned a lot about the work that IBM's doing in partnership with the Grammys, which includes the Grammy IQ trivia game that you can check out at IQ.grammy.com. It was built with IBM Watsonx, and it's just one of the ways IBM helps create smarter business. This episode contains explicit language. [upbeat music] Leon Thomas is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor. He's nominated for six Grammys at this year's Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, and Album of the Year for Mutt. Mutt is his second album, and I talked to Leon about the title track, which was a breakout hit. He'd already won a Grammy for his work with SZA, but he reached a new level in his own career with this song and this album. I also spoke to David Phelps and Rob Garinger, AKA D Phelps and Freaky Rob, who produced the song.

She said, "Take your time, what's the rush?" Ooh. I said, "Baby, I'm a dog, I'm a mutt" Ooh. She said, "Take your time, what's the rush?" Ooh. I said, "Baby, I'm a dog, I'm a mutt. I'm a dog, I'm a mutt"

Leading up to the day when you first started writing Mutt, what was going on in your life?

Right around the time when I was doing the album Mutt, it was a transitional period in my life. You know, I'd had records that were doing very well for other artists. Uh, there was a song that I produced for, uh, SZA called Snooze that was, like, burning up the charts. [cheering] Previous to that, I was working with Drake a lot. But at the end of the year, I was very frustrated 'cause I felt like my first album, Electric Dusk, was getting some love, but it wasn't enough to really shake the building. And we had a, a new president coming in to the label, and it was a very scary time because sometimes when the person that signs you leaves the label, the next person could easily say, "All right, we're not sure about this kid." So this record, Mutt, was a, a survival instinct. You know, I went in top of the year. It was January 1st, 2023. I decided, I said, "Okay, we're gonna have to go in and really swing hard on something that, that works."

It was literally New Year's Day?

Yeah, literally New Year's Day.

January 1st, 2023. [upbeat music] My name is Rob Garinger, AKA Freaky Rob.

And I'm D Phelps.

And we produced Mutt.

How did you two first start collaborating?

Um, we met when I was 14.

And I'd be, like, 16.

And have you been making music together ever since?

Ever since. So the way we even met Leon is my management and David's management had been on our asses about doing content. Me and D were terrible at doing content.

What do you mean by content?

Like how you see producers on Instagram, they make the beat from scratch, and then they put it up, and it was like our managers was pretty much like, "You guys need to get in on that. Like, you guys should be making videos. You should be showing some of these gems." And so we had did a cool idea this