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Producer Series: Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II

He has won Song of the Year twice and Album of the Year once, and most people could not pick him out of a lineup. Thirty-nine tracks of D'Mile, the most decorated producer of his generation.

Dernst "D'Mile" Emile II

D'Mile is the son of Dernst Emile Sr., a Haitian-American musician, and grew up in Brooklyn surrounded by instruments. He spent years as a working producer — credits with Kelly Rowland, Janet Jackson and others — before the run that made him unavoidable.

That run: Lucky Daye's Painted, H.E.R.'s "I Can't Breathe" (Song of the Year, 2021), Silk Sonic's An Evening with Silk Sonic (Record and Song of the Year, 2022), and Victoria Monét's Jaguar II. Four consecutive years at the centre of the Grammys, for records that sound nothing like each other except in one respect: they are all played rather than programmed.

That is the D'Mile signature. Live bass, real drums, horn and string arrangements, chord progressions borrowed from 1970s soul, and a willingness to let a song breathe for four minutes without an event. In a production landscape built on loops, he is essentially running a band.

What to listen for

"Leave The Door Open" is the headline — a full-scale Philadelphia soul pastiche that could have been embarrassing and instead won everything. Listen to the arrangement rather than the vocal: the harp, the string swells, the bass movement under the chorus.

The Lucky Daye partnership is the deepest. "Fade Away," "Little More Time" with Victoria Monét, and "How Much Can A Heart Take" with Yebba are all from that catalogue, and Daye is the artist who most clearly benefits from having a producer this musical.

Jazmine Sullivan's "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" is the most extraordinary thing on the list — a spiritual, sung by one of the great living voices, and produced with almost nothing underneath it.

H.E.R.'s "I'm Not OK," Snoh Aalegra's "Whoa," Victoria Monét's "Jaguar" and Ro James' "New Religion" map the rest of the modern R&B landscape he has shaped.

Kem's "Lonely" and India Shawn's "NOT TOO DEEP" with 6LACK are the deeper cuts.

Go deeper

Lucky Daye's Painted (2019) and Candydrip (2022) are the essential albums — the fullest expression of what this producer-artist pairing does.

Silk Sonic's album is short and immaculate.

For the tradition he is reviving: Thom Bell, Gamble & Huff and Charles Stepney are the arrangers whose work this most resembles — producers who thought like orchestrators. That approach nearly disappeared from R&B, and D'Mile's success has quietly brought a good deal of it back.

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