Last week B.o.B. released his new single, “Airplanes ft. Hayley Williams of Paramore,” which has quickly risen in popularity (most notably sitting comfortably in the top 10 iTunes singles). The hip-hop song’s chorus was written by Kinetics & One Love, aka Jeremy Dussolliet ’09 and Tim Sommers ’10, who also recorded their own version of the song, known to many Cornell students. The Sun sat down to discuss “Airplanes,” song writing and how getting accidentally put into a program house can change your life.

The Sun: How did you guys start working together and collaborating on your music?

Jeremy Dussolliet: When I transferred to Cornell I never filled out the housing application so I got thrown in the only freshman dorm that had room at the time which was JAM — Just About Music — where Tim was going, because Tim actually has a background in music. So the first day when we had our orientation meeting in the common room we had to go around in a circle and everyone had to say what instrument they played. Everyone was naming instruments and all the crazy bands that they played in, and then it gets to me and I’m just like “yeah, my name is Jeremy and I rap. I’m really into live instruments. If anybody ever wants to collaborate with me let me know.” And seriously, the room was silent for 30 seconds — you could hear the crickets — and then this little blond kid from across the room raises his hand and is like “yo what’s up I’ll collaborate with you. I’d be down for that.” And since then we were boys.

Tim Sommers: So we both had roommate issues and then in November we switched and became roommates and good friends. And for the rest of the year I would always play piano in my room and Jeremy was like “you should think about producing or making beats, you’d be good at it because you actually play piano.” And I said maybe — but I didn’t really like hip hop, I was in jazz band and I was a music major so I was doing that but then the year progressed — Jeremy opened my eyes to more music and hip hop and I got more into it. Towards the end of the year I started messing around with beats and stuff. That summer is when I really starting learning a lot about it and playing around with different programs and then the next year, my sophomore year, we started working together more and writing songs and we made our first song sophomore year.

Sun: Where did you guys come up with the name Kinetics & One Love?

J.D.: I was Kinetics before I met Tim — since the 10th grade or so. Kinetic energy is energy of motion so I was just going to make moving music.

Sun: What about One Love?

T.S.: I was trying to think of a name for a while and I had a bunch of different options and then I thought of One Love. A lot of people use “one love” to say bye. They’ll say peace or one love. It means peace and an anti-fighting thing to say.

J.D.: You sound Buddhist, that’s like The Lion King. When people say “why One Love” what do you always say?

T.S.: True. Music is my One Love. I’m obsessed with music. I just love music, it’s really my one love. I play the piano for hours everyday, all my free time is spent on music. And it sounded good with Kinetics.

Sun: Jeremy, where do you get your inspiration with writing? What inspires you?

J.D.: Well, I was always writing poetry and stories in high school and then that changed into rap songs. Back then, and still now, you can probably listen to my music and hear the heavy Nas and Eminem influence — modern stuff.  I’ve been pretty influenced by rappers like Lupe Fiasco. His rap substance in his music — you can still dance to it, but there are so many meanings on so many levels. Did you ever listen to the Lupe song called “The Instrumental?” I could listen to that song 50 times and I’d still have no clue what he’s talking about because there are so many different levels. I just think that I understand it and then I lose it. One song I could listen to it over and over again, that’s the stuff I like.

Sun: How did you get your inspiration for the song “Airplanes” in particular?

J.D.: The chorus of “Airplanes” — just picture, you’re sitting on a rooftop, you’re feeling shitty and you’re like “man I just wish I could see a shooting star” and you look up to the sky and there’s no shooting stars, there’s nothing to turn to. But there are airplanes. That’s the literal background of “Airplanes.” So you’re like “Do airplanes count? Are airplanes fair game? Do they count as shooting stars?” So you hold on to whatever you can find.

Sun: Tim, what about the music?

T.S.: Well the music came first. When we first started working together I was just playing piano one day, I started playing this one thing and Jeremy was like “yo that’s really cool, turn that into a beat.” So I turned it into a beat and he really liked it so we used it on “Airplanes.”

Sun: And where did the verses come from, Jeremy?

J.D.: You have to understand, the B.o.B. song did not use our beat or the rapping of the verses. They bought the words and melodies of the chorus.

T.S.: The music of the B.o.B. is based off my vision of the music, the same chord progression, the use of the piano, which is the main instrument. But they kind of used my beat as inspiration and then got one of their professional producers to make it sound more professional and for the radio. They sound similar if you play them back-to-back. You’ve heard our version right?

Sun: I love your version! I like it better than the B.o.B. one … I was going to ask you — it seems like people who were listening to you for a couple of years now, they like your version better. I don’t know if it’s because it’s you guys or the Cornell references [the original verses make note of dorm life and the gorges] … But how do you feel about those things being gone in the new B.o.B. version?

J.D.: You can’t really compare the two. They’re like two completely different songs. Ours is a love song and B.o.B. does a pop song, it’s much shorter. It’s cool when people say ours is better but you have to take your hat off to B.o.B. for making it so good. They made it into a pop song that everyone is feeling right now.

T.S.: We’re not competing at all; it’s two different versions. If you’ve been listening to our version for over a year now and you hear this other version you’re going to be biased towards us because you’ve heard it for so long.

J.D.: They’re just different — it’s hard to say.

Sun: So I know that sometimes rappers or artists start as songwriters and then become their own act …

J.D.: Ne-Yo started out songwriting for a while and then when he was built up he became a performer. Kanye West was producing for a while and then finally came out as a rapper. It’s just hard for someone who has no record, with no name at all to burst out and sell records — it’s all about clout. So this route is a great way to get your foot in the door and get your name known and then when you do go to a record label and want to be an artist you’ll already have a pretty big base.

Sun: So is your goal ultimately to continue working together as an act other than being songwriters?

J.D.: It’s not one more than the other, we’re trying to do both. When you’re a songwriter you’re not just one rapper, you’re like 10 rappers. When you write songs you can be writing for so many different people. You’re writing not just for one person in the top 10 — I want to have five people in the top 10 singing songs that I wrote. That’s my goal, but at the same time we want to be in the spotlight also. We’re going to keep writing and perform around the city this summer and see if our songwriting deal will lead to an artist deal in the next year.

Sun: Going back to “Airplanes,” how does it feel to hear the song on the radio or to see it so high up on iTunes?

J.D.: Yo, it’s crazy; it doesn’t feel real at all. I’ll Google search “can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky” and there are millions and millions of results — people quoting it on their Facebook or naming their photo albums after it.

T.S.: It’s really surreal. But originally the song was going to be a Lupe Fiasco song and two months ago we found out that Lupe didn’t really want to do it anymore and it was going to be a B.o.B. song. And two months ago no one knew who B.o.B. was, so we were a little bummed out. But we were still so happy that our song was going to be released on a major label by a major artist. But since then B.o.B. has blown up — his song “Nothing on You” is number one on iTunes and a week after it became number one on iTunes, “Airplanes” came out. So we’re really lucky that he blew up and his follow-up song was “Airplanes.”

Sun: Have you heard yourself on the radio yet?

J.D.: I haven’t yet. People text me saying they just heard my song on such-and-such station. Today [Monday] on the radio the DJ was like “coming up next B.o.B.’s new single” and I got so excited but they never played it. I think it needs a few more days before it really picks up.

T.S.: The song only came out last Tuesday. Usually a song takes several months after its release before it really catches on so it’ll be another week before it starts getting heavy radio play.

J.D.: “Nothing on You” dropped in November. It wasn’t big on iTunes and it definitely didn’t get radio play until end of February/March, five months later.

Sun: Jeremy, you said that Eminem was one of your influences.

J.D.: Oh my God, it sounds so cliché because he’s white and I’m a white rapper. But seriously, Eminem is probably in my top two favorite rappers of all time.

Sun: So what’s it like to have him rapping in your song?

J.D.: It doesn’t make sense. It’s completely surreal. It hasn’t even sunk in yet. When we first read that Eminem was on it — there was a Wikipedia article — we thought it was a complete rumor. We didn’t take it seriously at all. We kind of laughed at it. And then a week later our contact at Atlantic played the song to me. I heard his verse stop and my chorus come in and I was like, yo, this is not real life at all.

T.S.: [Laughing] He texted me “this is the happiest moment of my life” — and you were serious.

J.D.: People don’t really appreciate Emimen because they don’t know his older stuff, like way back, before his first album, when he was rapping at the Rap Olympics, before he was found by Dre. He just does some of the wittiest and craziest word play and I used to study that shit. It’s just so surreal to have that rapper of all people on “Airplanes.”

Sun: So Tim, you said you’re a music major…

T.S.: I double majored in music and economics. I graduated a semester early.

Sun: How do you feel, as a music major, to already have this kind of success?

T.S.: It’s funny you say that because most people who are music majors at a major university would never go into pop music. A lot of big producers, singers and songwriters today were never music majors. They just always were writing songs and had their big break or whatever. So it’s kind of weird to be a music major at a big university and go into pop music. I’m like that one kid who does pop music and hip-hop in my graduating class. Everyone else is doing classical composition, jazz studies and stuff like that. A lot of big producers never studied music theory or had musicology or music history and I’ve studied jazz and studied all kinds of music so I think it’s a real advantage for me. I have all these different influences that all culminate in my style and my taste as a producer.

Sun: So when you came to Cornell you wanted to live in JAM?

T.S.: I wanted to meet other kids [interested in music] and then I met Jeremy, which was funny because he didn’t want to be in JAM.

Sun: Did you want to study classical music originally?

T.S.: Originally I was just an Econ major. But I was still taking mostly music classes and I realized it would be dumb not to be a music major too, so I decided I was going to double major. I ended up taking way more music classes, and had I not been a music major I would’ve regretted it. I was interested in all these jazz bands at Cornell for three years but once Jeremy and I started hanging out I realized I enjoyed producing more and I realized that’s what I wanted to be.

Sun: So are you doing this full time or are there other jobs that you’re doing?

J.D.: I’m working full time. We got signed as songwriters in February and before this ever happened I needed a real job and I was planning on going to law school next year. Right now I’m working at City Hall doing campaign financing law and now that I have this I’m debating whether I want to go to law school or not. Ideally, Tim and I should be in a studio or in a house somewhere and doing this all day and have the opportunity to make music without worrying about midterms or our day jobs. It really all depends on how well the next stuff goes. Right now I have a 9-to-5, it’s not too demanding, I’ll keep it for now. But if the next year works out maybe we’ll be working full time as songwriters.

T.S.: Up until about six months ago I was planning on getting a full time job using my Econ major but once we signed, we got money upfront so I have money to live for a year and keep doing music. I’m going to be dj-ing in New York City, so I’ll have extra money from that, so I’m just going to be doing music full-time for a year and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out I’ll just get a real job.

Sun: What does being signed as songwriters mean exactly?

J.D.: We have a songwriting deal with Warner/Chappell. Basically we have one year to write three full songs to be commercially released like “Airplanes.” If we only do choruses, which was the case with “Airplanes,” it only amounts to a fraction of a song. These fractions are all determined by negotiations, so in the next year we need to release anywhere from three to nine songs.

Sun: How excited are you about that?

J.D.: It’s a dream come true! I’ve been trying to become signed my entire life.

T.S.: Getting signed is the one thing that allowed me not to get a real job full-time.

J.D.: Getting signed changed everything. Now to my parents, who never took me seriously as a rapper or a songwriter, I can be like “Ma, I have a songwriting deal.”

Sun: So if someone had told you guys this would have happened when you met at the JAM orientation meeting what would have you said?

T.S.: Wow, I don’t know. It’s really funny how we met because it was such random chance. Jeremy should have never been in JAM, I never wanted to come to Cornell originally. Looking back I realized it was the best decision of my life. If I hadn’t come here I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am now.

J.D.: I transferred to Cornell from a music school [Bard], a really artsy school. Bard College is the most liberal school on the East Coast and I left Bard because I wanted to go somewhere bigger. Then I got into Cornell and was lazy on the housing application and got thrown into JAM. If anyone had told me by the time you graduate you’re going to be showing at Atlantic Records, writing for Eminem I would have been like “I like that you’re an optimistic, that sounds cool, but you’re fucking crazy.”

T.S.: We can’t believe it, it’s so crazy.

J.D.: At Parents Weekend formal [at Sigma Alpha Epsilon] literally so many little sisters and little brothers of kids in my house would be like “oh my God I love your song. I show all my friends. Everyone in my high school loves Airplanes. Congratulations!” All these parents wouldn’t stop talking to me about it, it was just crazy.

Sun: [Laughs] That’s not surprising! Thank you both so much for your time

T.S.: Wait, don’t you want to hear Jeremy freestyle something?

Sun: Yes!

T.S.: Not to put you on the spot or anything Jeremy … but he’s pretty good at freestylin’

J.D.: Yeah, yeah. Alright, you want a freestyle? / Fine, I’ll give you a crazy one. / This will be the most read article in the Daily Sun. / It’s Kinetics & One Love, / perhaps you may have heard of us. / I never claimed to be the hardest, only claimed to be the nerdiest. / Knowledge so heavy I could pop tires, / I got fire. / I win battles in plaid shorts and topsiders. / And Tim’s beat is so fly it could make your car sail, / over the guardrail and into the yard sale. / It took a long time coming for kids to understand our music. / I say whatever, it’s better late than never / like a transfer student. / Now everybody is showing me love because of Airplanes, / I think the only thing that’s more appropriate is Megan Fox’s last name.

T.S.: [Laughs]

Sun: So good.

J.D.: You got that recorded? It’s gonna be worth money one day, with Tim’s beat on that it will beat “Airplanes.”

Download all of Kinetics & One Love’s album Fading Back to Normal for free at kineticsmusic.com.

Kinetics & One Love — "Airplanes"