MIC/LINE (formerly named Sound Check) is HYPEBEAST Radio‘s music-centric show that looks to deliver in-depth conversations with your favorite artists, digging into their origin stories and asking the questions you want answered. For our newest episode of season three, we have The-Dream, one of the most important songwriters and R&B artists in music.

Over the course of his career, The-Dream has written songs with some of the biggest musicians in the industry such as Britney Spears, Ciara, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, to name a few. Outside of his songwriting prowess, The-Dream successfully crossed over as an R&B star, most recently releasing his sixth studio album – a 38 track, three-part installation dubbed Sex Tape Vol 1, Sextape Vol 2, Sextape Vol 3, via his self-owned label, RadioKilla Records — last December.

Over the course of over a decade, The-Dream, born Terius Youngdell Nash, has made music that is enjoyable for any age group but found his most success with the young adult demographic.

“I’m liberating the people that said, ‘I’m going to grow up, I’m going to get a job, I’m going to work, I’m not going to ask anybody for anything. I just want to do my thing.’ We forgot that those people in the middle, me included, needed a certain joy to keep our shit going too,” he said.

For this episode, The-Dream discusses becoming a songwriter in the music industry, what it takes to break into the field, transitioning to becoming an artist and when you should stick to just songwriting, his newest projects Sextape Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and Vol. 3, his loves for cars and a ton more.

Keep up with everything HYPEBEAST Radio and subscribe to MIC/LINE on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast or wherever else you enjoy your podcasts. Feel free to reach out to our host, Manny, on Twitter at @ECM_LP and follow HYPEBEAST Music for more original content and music news.