POWER HITTERS:
TAKE A DAYTRIP
Our Power Hitters feature turns the spotlight on the brilliant songwriters and producers behind the biggest smashes in the biz, the players who regularly step up to the plate and deliver a hit—and frequently drive it clear out of the park.
David Biral and Denzel Baptiste, aka the production duo Take A Daytrip, have overseen hits in multiple genres: club bangers, stadium anthems and other tracks essential to the Millennial and Gen-Z catalogs. Coming together as freshman at NYU, they soon began hearing their songs booming through NYC nightclubs. They now grace the A-list of production teams.
Biral and Baptiste are executive producers of Lil Nas X’s forthcoming debut full-length, Montero; lead single "HOLIDAY” (now certified gold) was followed by a genuine monster, the #1 global smash “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name).”
The pair's breakthrough moment came in 2017 with Sheck Wes’ “Mo Bamba,” which they co-produced with 16yrold. The blistering track became a staple for a generation of raging hip-hop fans before it graduated to stadium-sized success as a collegiate sports anthem. The cut is certified 5x platinum, with 1b+ on-demand streams.
In 2018, Take A Daytrip connected with Juice WRLD for “Legends,” a tribute to the late XXXtentacion; those sessions also produced material yet to be released. The following year saw their first collaborations with Lil Nas, on the multiplatinum singles “Panini” and “Rodeo” f/Cardi B. Both tracks appeared on LNX's debut EP, 7, solidifying the artist's success beyond “Old Town Road.”
The producers scored their first #1 last year with Kid Cudi & Travis Scott’s behemoth collab, “THE SCOTTS,” which also happened to be Cudi’s first chart-topping single. They would go on to helm more than a third of the tracks on Cudi’s Man on the Moon III: The Chosen; that set debuted at #1. Biral and Baptiste also broadened their horizons in 2020 by co-writing Weezer’s “Hero,” their first cut to top Alternative charts.
Of their experience in the biz so far, Take A Daytrip stated jointly: "We've learned so much working with artists like Kid Cudi and producers like Mark Ronson (Miley Cyrus) and Dot Da Genius (Kid Cudi), people we grew up listening to and have had the privilege of collaborating with in recent years. We take those lessons into every session we do and each song we make. Since we were young, we’ve devoured music from all different genres. We started off as DJs and quickly saw how certain records could bring different groups of people together that wouldn’t cross paths otherwise. We’ve always strived to do that with our records. We’d love to work with artists like The Weeknd and Drake—artists that build worlds for people to live in."
The duo share production credit on Lil Nas' new single, “Industry Baby,” with Kanye West. It drops tomorrow, 7/23. More is on the way.
Take A Daytrip is repped by Jon Tanners and Cody Verdecias at Blood Company and signed as writers to UMPG.
Photo above by David Dickenson; L-R Denzel Baptiste, David Biral
