How BAND4BAND Was Made - The Full Story
How It All Started
We already knew Central Cee from working together before. The first time we met him in person was during the sessions for West Connect featuring Luciano. A few months later, Central Cee had a live festival show in Germany near our city, and we linked up with him again backstage.
After a few drinks and good conversation, we decided to hit the Amaterasu music studio from Gorex in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. We had about one hour. We played him three beats — the BAND4BAND beat was already roughly 80% finished at that point, just not arranged yet. Central Cee vibed with it immediately and laid down his verse right there.
One Year of Waiting
After that session, the song sat for over a year. It even got leaked multiple times on TikTok with Central Cee's verse on it. We were honestly a little fucked up at that point because we thought the song was burned and would never come out.
Then one night, me and Ghana were sitting in the studio like always. Ghana was scrolling through Instagram and suddenly told me: "Yo bro, Lil Baby is with Central Cee in the studio right now." I pulled out my phone, clicked the volume button — because Instagram Stories are muted by default — and heard our beat playing.
We were so hyped. Completely lost it.
Central Cee and his team reached out via iMessage very shortly after to fix everything, which we did. A few days later I got sick, and Lil Baby wanted some beat changes. So I literally handed my MacBook over the balcony to Ghana so he could act fast and finish up the Lil Baby version. The song got released that same week — and it blew the whole internet up. It still does to this day.
The RapTV Beat Breakdown
After the release blew up globally, me and Ghana Beats flew out to Los Angeles for a few days. We linked up with RapTV — one of the biggest hip-hop pages on Instagram with over 12 million followers — to shoot a proper behind-the-beat breakdown.
We wanted to do a legit beat deconstruction and show how BAND4BAND was really made. Yeah, our English sounds very German and funny at times, but we keep it real — that is how we are.
The video has since crossed 300,000 views on YouTube.
The Sample Controversy
There was some noise online from people claiming we used a sample from Aasis Beats off Looperman. The loop they pointed to does sound very similar — we will give them that — but we simply never used it. It was a false claim.
Part of the reason we did the RapTV beat breakdown was to address exactly this and show our process from scratch. There is a small moment in the video where the editing team at RapTV cut something that created a semitone discrepancy — producers with trained ears will catch it — but that is a video editing artifact, not how the beat was actually built.
The LA Trip
Those few days in Los Angeles were surreal. Going from making beats in our studio in Germany to being in LA doing press for a record that the whole world was talking about — it does not feel real even looking back at it now.
Travis Scott Playing BAND4BAND on His World Tour
The motion around this song was unreal. At one point during his world tour, Travis Scott played BAND4BAND and the crowd went absolutely crazy. Watching that from Germany was unbelievable for both me and Ghana.
Travis literally said on stage:
This might be the biggest song in the motherfucking world for a very long time!
That gave us goosebumps. The reel from that moment went viral — 1.6 million views on Instagram and 1.9 million views on TikTok:
UK Podcast and Press
The momentum did not stop at RapTV. Podcast formats from the UK and other platforms started reaching out. We did an in-depth interview breaking down our journey and the making of BAND4BAND:
We are unbelievably thankful for everything that happened around BAND4BAND. From a beat made in Gelsenkirchen to Billboard, Travis Scott's world tour, LA, RapTV, UK press — the whole ride has been insane. But we keep grinding and still work every single day. The best is yet to come.