I heard that you and Push would wake up at 6 a.m. and ride bikes before getting to work because you’re both early risers. Push also revealed that you warned him about becoming a “mixtape rapper.” What inspired that comment?
Two things. First, we did get up early and work in the morning because I’m a perpetual student, and that’s the reason why we send our kids to school very early in the morning. That’s when the brain is most awake, and I’m a perpetual student, so we were up in the morning.
The second thing is: He’s so disciplined about the version of himself that he had chosen to give the world all these years. Each of us has 64 notes, and he picked an octave to say, “OK, this is the only thing that I will give to the world.” And I wanted him to play outside of those things. Like, that laugh that’s on the album, I’m not making that up. He’s not acting. That’s literally who he is. He’s so karma-based that he loves when karma comes back to strike. It tickles his soul like a little child. So when you’re hearing him say those things, I strategically placed those laughs where those bars are, because those bars hit you the same way that karma hits him, and he laughs. So I wanted people to know that about his personality. “Might buy your bitch a jeep. I can make you lose your sleep.” That laugh, he means that! He really finds joy, and that’s his happy space. He loves karma.
For me, I’ve known who Arthur Fleck was all my life. It’s him. That’s who the fuck he is. He’s really that. And he hadn’t seen Joker. That’s the funny thing. I had to get him to watch it. He hadn’t even seen [the movie], and when I got him to watch it. I was like, “Bro, you know this is you, right?” And at first, he thought I was kidding. I had to tell him I wasn’t kidding. He’s watching the shit that he does, and he’s like, “Oh, this is me.” Literally, we really did look at Joker. We looked at it the whole time and just kept it on mute, and if a beat didn’t match it, it didn’t make it. If the verses weren’t maniacal enough, it didn’t make it. And if I couldn’t find a good place to put his guttural laugh… because he does this thing where he laughs high-pitched in a loop. He does it until he’s out of breath. He loves it, and there’s nothing better than that.