James Laurent's exclusive breakdown of "Midnight Speeding" from his debut album "Degen Z"

(Hook)
Wonder how I’ll get away
Yeah I know it’s pay to play but now I’m
Screaming, Scheming
Working on my midnight speeding off 
In the rearview, sirens trynna catch me
120 on the dash thats the best speed
Whippin’, Grinnin’
Yeah you know I’m midnight drifting off

(verse 1)
Blacked out all the wheels and the windows
No plates, that’s a case and we ain’t with those
Got it registered, but I ain’t say to me
Gin on my breath and some diamonds on my teeth
I’m just midnight speeding
Got these streetlights gleaming
Got my whole car leaning
I’ll be need for speed dreaming
I’m just racing for my meaning in the middle of the night
Red and blue trail and it’s sounding like

(Hook)
Wonder how I’ll get away
Yeah I know it’s pay to play but now I’m 
Screaming, Scheming
Working on my midnight speeding off
In the rearview, sirens trynna catch me
120 on the dash thats the best speed
Whippin’, Grinnin’
Yeah you know I’m midnight drifting off

(verse 2)
So don’t wait for me, I’m going down with the whip
Don’t wait for me, I got some NOS in this bitch
Spotlight from the twelve putting me on blast
Don’t care, long as I got my foot on the gas 
My engine revving, knowing that’s a blessing
V12 worship like I made it my reverend oh
I got some underglow and yeah a couple dash lights
Know I’ve been a fugitive in all of my past lives

(Hook)
Wonder how I’ll get away
Yeah I know it’s pay to play but now I’m
Screaming, Scheming
Working on my midnight speeding off
In the rearview, sirens trynna catch me
120 on the dash thats the best speed
Whippin’, Grinnin’
Yeah you know I’m midnight drifting off

 

From the second I first hit record on this instrumental, produced by DutchRevz, I knew I was making the lead single of my debut album. It was 3am when I set up my microphone, put on my headphones, and turned out all the lights in my studio. Illuminated by the soft orange glow of my tube compressor, my computer monitor glaring a blank Pro Tools session. I never quite know what I'm going to record when I load up an instrumental, I find my creativity is at it's highest potential when I allow myself to get lost in the music and say what comes to mind. The next five hours leading into the early morning was an indescribable creative experience. It felt as if the picture was painting itself and I was just the brush. By 9am I finished writing and recording all of my vocals, as well as mixed and mastered what would come to be the original demo of Midnight speeding. For two years now since that night, I have held the finished version of this record close to me.

It has been an interesting feeling as I've worked on this album for so long knowing that I was just sitting on this hit. It motivated me to not settle until the entire project could stand it's own against Midnight Speeding. This was one of the first tracks in my career where I really solidified my style of vocal layering my harmonies on the hook, I take a lot of heavy influence from pop music and old 80s songs when it comes to vocal layering and at least to me, I think Midnight Speeding was the first time I was able to properly translate it to my own genre and style.

At times it also did demotivate me just as much, wondering if it was a fluke, or a perfect storm I'd have to wait for again. Because I never write my songs ahead of time I usually end up recording something tangential to what I'm currently feeling or experiencing in life, so I found such a beauty in this track that had nothing to do with anything other than the freedom of the road. I also found it a tad demotivating while I was mixing it as I must have mixed This track 8 or 9 different times in different ways, and the final version we hear today is the very first mix I did.

Midnight Speeding is the sole reason I have this album at all. Truly, it was such a good song that I could feel it in my core, I would invest whatever it took to put a project around it, and 4 years later I am proud to say I did it.

 

Creating the Cover art:

I Started with the idea of a cel-shaded animated music video I could make inside of Unreal Engine for Midnight Speeding. I gathered 3d assets to be the base of the cars and began painstakingly hand painting every single 3d model line by line by line.

This whole process took around 200 hours of work to hand paint

This inadvertently taught me a great deal about 3D modeling throughout this problem as I wondered why models wouldn't import into Substance Painter, or layers would be incorrect.

This lead me to do some research where I learned about UDIMMs, UV tiles and UV mapping, So once I took the each of the cars into blender and took the 3d models apart piece by piece to rebuild their uv mapping the way I needed it to be, I exported the fbx back out to substance painter and could finally start painting.

This first one, the main car, took the longest by far, I worked on it for atleast a month and a half, just painting away in my spare time while I learned the technique of Cel-Shading.

 

The Next few cars went by way quicker and looked a little cleaner, just repeating the process. 

 

The very last touch I wanted was to add Helicopter that could follow the chase with a spotlight. I had to decide what camera angle I would want to shoot the scene from in the 3D software because drawing the spotlight is a matter of perspective and not going to be passable from every angle.

 

 

FROM VIDEO TO COVER:

This is the cover I had initially created for Midnight Speeding...

But this just didn't sit right with me. This isn't what Midnight Speeding is, Midnight Speeding is those days as a kid playing Midnight Club Dub Edition with my dad on PS2. Crashing my car into everything as we played. So I decided to whip up an alternate with the cars I had made for the music video.

I grabbed the cover of one of the Midnight Club games and brought it into photoshop, I then relatively guessed the angles of the cars and took screen shots of the hand painted cars in matching positions and went to work.

Here is my photoshop session to create the Final Cover Art for "Midnight Speeding"

 

1: Add Cars into Photoshop session in the same layout as reference

2: Add in the base of the background

3: Darken + Blur background

4: Paint in the road

5: Overlay city light reflections onto the painted road

7: Add Reflection of Car 1 in road

8: Add reflection from main car's headlight in road

9: Duplicate cars, slightly enlarge and darken, then blur to create motion

10: Add base of Helicopter in Middle Ground sky

11: Duplicate Helicopter and place slightly behind first helicopter

12: Repeat last step with a third helicopter to create motion blur

13: Overlay prism blurs on cars for color and brightness

14: Duplicate Prism Blur for enhanced brightness

15.1: Add Spotlight From Helicopter

15.2: Add a center focus lens blur to create depth

15.3: Lens Distortion

15.4: A bit of Film Effect (Grain, Gamma, Desaturation, Contrast, Brightness)

15.5: Shadow + Highlight balance

15.6: Color Grade

15.7: Create a Lens Flare from Spotlight

16: Smudge Background Sky

17: Add Light Reflection off of road in front of Cop Car

18: Paint in Colored Police Lights

19: Add a highlighted white core to police lights

20: Paint a Shadow under white car

21: Add in Base for city buildings in middle ground

22: Blur and Darken City Buildings

23: Darken top of left side buildings to blend into sky better

24: Lower Exposure on city building and sky to create intensity from spotlight

25: Add Fog to the sky

26: Don't know how to finish Cover Art & start trying random things, i.e. butterfly

27: Desaturate it

28: Add drop shadow to butterfly

29: Spend 4 hours settling on what font looks best

30: Add outline, an inner gradient overlay, & drop shadow to text

31: Tweaking the Contrast, Gamma, Exposure

32: Realize the main cars windshield is whited out and tint out the other cars

FINAL: To be honest I did this change using Photoshop Express on my phone while at the fair so I don't have layer by layer, but I added an overlay of dust / glitter, A film filter, A Medium Vignette, & a tiny bit of film burn.

That was how I created both the song and the cover art! I hope you enjoyed the breakdown of just how much work I put in to my art instead of walking outside to my car and just taking a picture with it.

SAVE "MIDNIGHT SPEEDING" (out 10/3)

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My Second album single "Dangerous Love" Releases November 7th, 2025!

MY DEBUT ALBUM "Degen Z" RELEASING EVERYWHERE DECEMBER 12TH, 2025!