The Pigeons & Planes compilation album couldn’t ask for an executive producer with a better resumé. The list of artists Mike Dean has worked with reads like a hall of fame induction: Kanye West, 2Pac, Scarface, 2 Chainz, Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, Drake, The Weeknd, and many more. Now, Dean will be lending his talents to the music discovery site’s first album.
Dean applied for the project much like a fan would. Pigeons & Planes announced their upcoming album, See You Next Year, on Instagram in November, and Mike Dean took to the comments, offering his services. Needless to say, the team took him up on his offer. Apparently, this type of approach is commonplace for Dean. As he told Complex, “Sometimes I’ll just see something on Instagram and I’ll reach out to the person on DM. That’s how, like, half the projects probably get started.”
According to Pigeons & Planes founder Jacob Moore, the See You Next Year team could barely believe their luck. “We had a short list of rising artists that we really wanted to get songs from, and surprisingly almost all of them were down,” he told HipHopDX. “We posted about the project on Instagram just to let people know it was happening, and the first time we ever mentioned it, Mike Dean commented: ‘Need an executive producer?’ We thought it was a joke, but we started talking to him and he was serious. Having him involved has been a game-changer. I would have never imagined him working with some of these artists who are just getting started, but he took every song to the next level and has been so hands-on with the creative process. I’m biased, but this album is sounding so good.”
Maybe these sessions will be more relaxed than those for Kanye’s Donda, which Dean described as “grueling.”
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