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.

The story of how the song Deep End came into existence and became a hit is kind of wild.

One person who really didn't see it coming is the person who created it, Fushai.

She's a singer and songwriter from New Jersey.

You might have seen her competing on the voice in 2018.

Soon after that, she got asked to make a pack of vocal samples for the music platform's splice,

where users can download samples and include them in their own songs, royalty-free.

Coming up, Fushai tells a story of what happened with one of those samples and how that led to her making Deep End.

Deep End has now been streamed over 385 million times.

Fushai became the first black female artist to hit the top 10 alternative chart in over 30 years.

Here's Fushai breaking down the twists and turns that went into making Deep End.

My name is Fushai.

When I got offered to do the sample pack, it was right after I got done shooting the voice.

I was just eliminated from the voice and I was like, fuck what now.

And I was so hard-broken.

I really thought I ended up being further better than met someone from Splice, the sample pack company,

and de-exing into a pack of 250 samples.

He's like, if you have extra vocals on your computer, anything unused, you might be like, okay, this is cool.

I can make money and just release this thing. It's like a residual income.

Usually, a sample pack is ooze-as, maybe a word or two.

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