“Alright” is one of Kendrick Lamar‘s breakout hits from his iconic 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly. The single is one of the Compton rapper’s most recognizable songs. The uplifting and chant-friendly hook with production from Pharrell Williams eventually became the unofficial theme song to the Black Lives Matter movement.

But “Alright” almost never made it on To Pimp a Butterfly. In the latest episode of Spotify’s The Big Hit Show podcast, producer Sounwave explained how the platinum-certified anthem was a last-minute addition to Kendrick’s 2015 album.

The longtime TDE beatmaker recalled Pharrell playing beats for Kendrick Lamar in the studio when a Sony executive, Sam Taylor pulled him aside and played him a track that the Neptunes hitmaker had originally made for another artist. 

“He plays me the skeleton of ‘Alright’ and I just remember my jaw drop,” he said. “It was literally just the 808s and the keys, and Pharrell had the melody of ‘We gon’ be alright.’ And I was like, ‘Bro, what is this?’ Oh my goodness, I’m freaking out. And I immediately run, I was like, ‘Dot, you have to come hear this.’ He plays it for Dot, Dot stopped everything he was doing and starts to write to ‘Alright.'”

Despite falling in love with the beat, Kendrick Lamar struggled to find a home for the song on To Pimp a Butterfly, whose heavy jazz and funk influences didn’t mesh with Pharrell’s upbeat production. Sounwave refused to let the record go to waste, though, and with the help of Los Angles producer and saxophonist Terrace Martin, they perfected the song to Kendrick’s liking.

“We loved that record so much that I said, ‘Ok, I’m not letting this record die,'” he said. “I literally have to go back in, last second of the album, like literally at the crunch time, I think we had one more day, and added drums to it.

“And I just remember about three hours, just me and Terrace [Martin] locked in that room. We came out, I said, ‘I think we got something.’ We played it for Kendrick. And I just remember him, his eyes lit up. It was like, we did it. This is finally it.”

He added, “We had no idea it was going to be what it was going to be, but we just knew that felt perfect with the rest of the album after that.”