Gotta Have It
Well, we made it. Our third release day of 2023. Today, “Gotta Have It”, the new single from Roe’s Garden, is available everywhere for you to get sexy to. Enjoy.
Now, if you’re a fan of Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga, a show I’ve mentioned here before, you might find yourself thinking, “this sounds familiar” and you’d be right. You heard it in episode 1 along with “Invincible” and a couple other songs that are coming soon. Episode 301 was good to us.
Actually, “Gotta Have It” was the first song we wrote for the show. Before we officially began working on season three, Understanding and I had a quick zoom meeting with RZA and the rest of the music team to talk about how we were going to approach the work for the season. The year before for season two, we had traveled out to RZA’s house in New Jersey (the same one that they show the Wu-Tang Clan at in season three!) to work out of a new studio they had built there. I was under the impression I was going for about a month, and that quickly became three. I would drive from my parents house in New York 200 miles on Monday morning to the house in Jersey, sleep on the couch and work at the shed until Saturday morning when I would drive back home. It probably would’ve lasted the whole season if not for a few people catching Covid. Once that studio was shut down for two weeks I took my chance to fly back to LA and finish the season here.
All that to say, Understanding and I were wary of heading east again for season three. On top of that, we knew that this was going to be the last season of the show and so we had to prepare for life after it. On top of that, we had really just begun working with Erica, who was starting to come by the house twice a week to sing. There was a special energy brewing in our house at the time, and when you create, it’s hard to leave the space you’re in and continue that momentum elsewhere. It’d be almost impossible to keep working with Erica from across the country, and if we were back on the east coast for another six months it would be difficult to establish ourselves for post-show life in LA from afar. A couple days after the initial meeting, Understanding and I got on the phone again and pled our case to the RZA. He offered us a test.
Now if you’re not familiar with how the music sync business works in Hollywood, here’s a crash course. To use a song in a movie or a TV show, the company that’s making said movie or TV show has to pay a licensing fee to whomever owns the master recording of the song. Big popular songs are very expensive to use, and music budgets can be limited, so in order to save money, sometimes a production will license a lesser known song, or a different version of a song at a cheaper rate. Showbiz, baby.
RZA understood our desire to stay in LA, but he wanted to make sure we would be capable of completing the job remote. There was a song they had wanted to use for a scene in season 3 episode 1, but it was going to be too expensive, so he asked us to write a song that could be used instead. He also asked us to cover two Wu-Tang instrumentals and to send him all three tracks. If he heard them and was satisfied, we could stay in LA and work on season 3 from home.
We got off the phone and immediately got to work. We did both Wu-Tang instrumentals that day. Quick and simple, for the most part. Not because the songs are simple, but because Understanding and I have been charting out and re-recording Wu instrumentals for the better part of four years as part of our job description. The third track presented the toughest challenge. We needed a 90s R&B track, which at the time was something we hadn’t really ever written before.
The next morning the melody came to me in the shower - ironic, because the song ended up in a shower scene in the show, which was different from the original plan. I recorded a voice memo while I was still in there, got out, dried off, got dressed and immediately went to the studio, where we tracked the whole instrumental. While I walked the dog I called Erica and asked her to come over the next day. By the time she got there we had most of the lyrics and Understanding’s verse. We all sat down and made a few tweaks and then Erica tracked the vocal and Alex tracked the bass. Three days, three songs. We sent them to RZA. We passed the test.
In a way, “Gotta Have It” is the song that started it all. It allowed us the opportunity to work from home all year, which allowed us the opportunity to spend most of 2022 preparing all the music we’ll be releasing this year. Then upon confirmation that the song was going to be used in the show, it made it necessary for us to establish a company that could administer the master licenses, hence the creation of our record label, Beautiful Idiots LLC. The song also gave us the formula for the act that would become Roe’s Garden.
So, if you saw the show, you may have heard it once before, but today “Gotta Have It” is officially out. I hope you enjoy it, because it’s already given us so much.
-J.P.