How did you get involved with the songwriting camp for Empire?

chief waKiL: I stumbled upon a company (The Match Club) that specializes in music placements for TV and film, and I offered my services. I got involved with them a couple years ago when I finished my album and because they were apart of the music side I worked with them. They came to me last year, and said, ‘there’s a TV show called Empire, there’s a specific song that the producers need about a specific subject.’ The story behind that was Timbaland had a shot at it, and he didn’t necessarily give them what they wanted for that particular song, and another dude had a shot at it and they didn’t like it, so they came to me and was like ‘could you do it?’ because I only had a couple hours to do it for them – so pretty much I found the track that I did, I kinda tightened it up a little bit, wrote the song right there, recorded the demo myself, and sent it to my people, they sent it to the people that work with Empire and it was a waiting game after that. It ended up on the show. Then there were some other songs placed, which were really atmosphere music. There was a scene when Cookie goes into the studio, and they guys are nodding their head to this song and theres this guy in there as if he made the song, but it was really the song that I created, under the alias West Wes.

So what’s your process in deciding what TV Series/Films to write music for?

chief waKiL: I have 15-20 alias’ for different types of songs and in any kind of genres. Pretty much they come to me, they say ‘we’re on this project’ and they sometimes give me the choice if it is farfetched, and usually I take them, because I can handle them. I try anything and usually they end up working out.  

What are your favorite and least favorite placements?

chief waKiL: My favorite so far is Empire, but as I was working on it, the project was way smaller than it seemed. I just had my own little space, I recorded it myself. It isn’t like I met the cast or anything like that, or have anything to do with the recording process. Empire was my favorite because of the outcome and my least favorite was Monster High‘s DVD movies – it was kind of like a two-headed monster, because the process was a lot but the outcome, I was happy with it.