TAYC • some might think our friendship started in 2019 when Melody was made. but it's way deeper than that. that ain't no industry shit. first song we made was back in 2014. "Clique Passion" was the title, when my name wasn't Gracy Hopkins, and his name wasn't Tayc... we lost track of each other for like 4 years or something and my twin @bino_ixi (who's the one that made the introduction) kept trying to get us in the studio. fate made us neighbours, my studio and his were in the same building. 1 day in 2019, I randomly ran into him and see a bag of Rapid'Naan in his hand. I'm like "damn; that's my shit", he's like "damn, that's my shit too", shit felt like the Spider-Man meme 😂. bro invited me to the studio and we ended up making a song titled "HWG" that we never finished (s/o @blkdoe). fast-forward to when I was working on ENCORE: I was missing a song for the transition between "Wrong Reasons" and "Pichet". called Tayc, played him a first song that he loved but didn't see as the right fit for us. he was talking about how we've been waiting for so long to make that perfect song, it needed to be a smash HIT. we ended up booking a studio session 5 days after. I went to that session with just ONE beat I've made in the morning. the beat that became Melody. if it didn't match, there was nothing else we could work on. but I didn't doubt any second. I knew that was it. turns out it was true, that was IT. @jesuistitai and @kencudiwest were here, they can tell u about the magic of that session. had @woetices on the add. production, @sabrinabellaouel coming thru for the ad-libs & additional vocals, @dani.lascar on the guitar, mixed it all (one of the longest mixing process I went through - 27 hours + 25 hours non-stop) then boom. "Melody" was born. enough with the process though. let's talk about the man. Tayc, man. thank you for supporting me throughout the years bro. I've seen you going from a dreamer to a role model to an entire generation of R'n'B singers. from a hustler to a superstar, and you never ever switched up on me. the respect I got for you is undescribable bro. nothing but genuine love for you. and careful, I might leak our first song one day... 😂 -Gracy