You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

This episode contains explicit language.

Bus driver is a rapper from Los Angeles, and since 2001, he's been releasing albums with a signature hyperliterate intellectual style.

But over a decade later, Bus driver has found himself reaching for something more intimate and personal.

In this episode, he breaks down the 2015 song, World's To Run, along with the tracks producer Kenny Siegel.

It features guest vocals from Anderson Pack and Milo.

And coming up, you'll hear how their contributions shaped Bus driver's vision for the song.

Hello, this is Reagan. I go by Bus driver.

Kenny Siegel's a DJ producer who's been around for years and has been my engineer since 2008 or 2009.

I first heard the beat for World's To Run in Kenny's studio, which is playing us something that he was working on.

And it was pretty simple, and it was really just elegant.

I'm Kenny Siegel. I initially just kind of like looped up this little acoustic guitar loop.

I added the drums that night.

A group that I work with a lot called Penthouse Penthouse, they came over to record a song for

themselves, and that day we plugged my friend's guitar into the SB404.

The SB404 is this little sampler and it was like this crazy aha moment because it made

the guitar sound like this old sample.

So I added the drums and then I was like what's the next element to add?

I raided that session I had just done with Penthouse Penthouse so I chopped up a bunch of those

guitars from that other song and that kind of lays the backbone chords of the whole song

with those chopped up guitars that Mike Parvisi from Penthouse Penthouse playing through the SB404.

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