A studio match with a trail behind it
Yours Truly’s latest Songs From Scratch film begins with a premise that is easy to mistake for a stunt: put Los Angeles producer Shlohmo and Chicago R&B singer Jeremih in one room and see whether a record appears. The March 5 video is more persuasive because the pairing is not random. It arrives after Shlohmo remixed Jeremih’s “Fuck U All the Time,” and after each musician had already moved toward the other’s territory. The result under construction is “Bo Peep,” billed by the project as their first official collaboration and scheduled for a free release on March 19. Yours Truly’s upload supplies the primary record; The FADER and FACT confirm the date, title, series and release plan.
The film is part of the series made by Yours Truly with adidas Originals. Earlier sessions paired Danny Brown with AraabMuzik and Angel Haze with Lunice, placing “from scratch” somewhere between documentary method and curatorial challenge. The organizers choose artists whose connection is plausible but not yet formal, then make the uncertain middle of the collaboration public. Here, the pleasure lies less in discovering whether an R&B singer can work with an electronic producer than in watching two compatible sensibilities recognize the fit.
The remix before the meeting
The bridge between the artists was Shlohmo’s 2012 treatment of “Fuck U All the Time,” from Jeremih’s Late Nights with Jeremih mixtape. When The FADER posted the remix on October 3, it heard Shlohmo intensifying qualities already present in the original: clipped vocals, tension and unusually spare production. That distinction matters. The remix did not manufacture an experimental Jeremih by stripping a conventional song of its identity. It responded to a performance and arrangement that were already minimal enough to invite pressure, gaps and repetition.
By March, the remix has become more than an unofficial exchange. The FADER’s report says Jeremih had heard it and was touched by it; after learning that the admiration ran both ways, Yours Truly brought the pair together. That is a sturdier foundation than the usual “unlikely collaboration” language suggests. Shlohmo had demonstrated that he could listen closely to Jeremih rather than simply place the singer’s voice inside his own production signature. Jeremih, in turn, entered the session knowing how the producer heard him.
The sequence also explains why the film feels relaxed. There is still uncertainty—no session can guarantee a song—but the basic aesthetic argument has already been tested. DMY’s same-day report describes Jeremih’s loose, improvisational approach settling quickly into Shlohmo’s heavy, slow-moving beat. The musicians are not negotiating from opposite ends of a genre map. They are starting from a remix that has already shown how Jeremih’s phrasing can survive, and even gain force, inside Shlohmo’s darker sense of space.
Why Shlohmo is ready for a singer
Shlohmo, born Henry Laufer, has spent the last several years refining music in which texture carries as much emotional information as melody. On 2011’s Bad Vibes, his drums click, snap and lurch while hiss, field recordings, soft guitar and blurred electronics make the tracks feel physically weathered. Pitchfork’s review called attention to the balance between gentle electronic tones and decaying rhythmic atmosphere. That combination is important to the Jeremih session: Shlohmo’s records can feel intimate without relying on a front-and-center vocalist.
His new five-track Laid Out EP makes the vocal question more explicit. Shlohmo’s Bandcamp page lists a March 4 digital release, while contemporaneous coverage treated March 5 as its wider arrival. The opening song, “Don’t Say No,” features How to Dress Well, and the rest of the record continues Shlohmo’s move toward patient, song-shaped arrangements. A KEXP review hears classic R&B, dark synthesizers, trap-influenced hi-hats and experimental electronic music meeting across the EP.
That does not make Jeremih interchangeable with How to Dress Well, nor does it reduce singers to another texture in a producer’s toolkit. It shows that Shlohmo is already thinking about the practical problem of leaving a voice enough room while preserving the density and drag that make his productions recognizable. “Bo Peep” therefore lands at a revealing point: alongside Laid Out, and after a run of remixes that have let him reshape voices without having to direct a singer in the room.
Why Jeremih fits the space
Jeremih enters from a career that looks more conventional only at a distance. Late Nights with Jeremih, released as a free mixtape in August 2012, widened the picture. Its 18 tracks include appearances by 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane, Fabolous, Twista, YG and E-40, with production credits that include Tricky Stewart and Mike WiLL Made It, according to Rap-Up’s release report. Yet its most distinctive quality is the way Jeremih shifts between clean melody, clipped phrasing and conversational detail. DMY’s review emphasized both the strangeness and directness of the tape, as well as the hip-hop influence on how he stops phrases short and uses the remaining space.
That sense of space is precisely what a Shlohmo beat needs. A singer who insists on smoothing every edge or filling every bar would compete with the producer’s atmosphere. Jeremih can make absence part of the performance. His upper register brings lightness, but his timing prevents the vocal from merely floating above the production. Even in the excerpted session, the interest comes from how he bends around the beat’s weight rather than trying to turn it into a standard radio backdrop.
This is also why calling the pairing a collision between “mainstream R&B” and “underground electronic music” misses the useful detail. Jeremih’s mixtape already contains adventurous, sometimes unnerving production; Shlohmo’s recent work already reaches toward R&B song form. Their public profiles are different, but the musical distance between them has been shrinking. Songs From Scratch gives that convergence a room, a camera and a deadline.
What the camera preserves
The session was filmed at the Cosmic Zoo, the Los Angeles studio associated with Daddy Kev and Nocando, according to Passion of the Weiss. That location is more than trivia. A studio film can easily turn equipment and atmosphere into decoration, but the useful evidence here is behavioral: the artists listen, try ideas and treat the track as unfinished. The official Vimeo edition identifies the film as the latest Yours Truly and adidas Originals session and directs viewers to “Bo Peep (Do U Right).”
The short format cannot show every decision behind the recording. It offers an edited account, not an unbroken document, and sponsorship is part of its structure. Still, it reveals something a finished download cannot: collaboration as a set of responses. Jeremih is not delivered as an isolated vocal file, and Shlohmo is not an anonymous supplier of a beat. Their interaction is the subject. For a series built around making a song from nothing, that emphasis on listening is the real proof of concept.
It also keeps the preview in proportion. “Bo Peep” is not yet available in full on March 5. Reports from The FADER, FACT and DMY all give March 19 as the planned free-download date. What viewers hear is enough to establish pace, mood and chemistry, but not enough to support a verdict on the completed track. The film’s job is to make the wait meaningful: it shows why this pairing was chosen and why the finished result is worth hearing.
A promising first draft
The most compelling thing about Shlohmo and Jeremih’s meeting is that neither artist has to disguise his instincts. Shlohmo can keep the beat low, hazy and patient. Jeremih can use a light touch and elastic timing without shrinking his presence. Their earlier remix connection turns the session into a continuation of attentive listening, while the camera lets the audience see that connection become reciprocal.
For now, “Bo Peep” remains a promise with a date attached. The duo are also scheduled to bring the collaboration to San Francisco on April 5 and Los Angeles on April 6, according to FACT. Those plans suggest confidence, but the studio film is persuasive on its own terms. It captures two musicians finding common ground not by erasing the differences between their scenes, but by recognizing that both already value tension, negative space and voices that can move through a beat instead of sitting squarely on top of it.