The Samples and the Story Behind That's What I Want to Do

That's What I Want to Do by T. Nguyen is out worldwide July 23 on all streaming platforms. Preorder opens July 13.

The Jazz Chords

These jazz chords are what give the track that floating, melodic quality. The feeling I was going for was something that overtakes you slowly, like you are drifting into it rather than being hit by it. The sample was already close to what I needed. I did not change too much. I took the whole thing but started it from a different section, and that shift in entry point changed the emotional weight of it entirely. Sometimes the best sample flip is the most restrained one.

The Core Vocal Sample

The title of the track comes directly from the sample. Just that phrase: that's what I want to do. I originally pulled a few other moments from the same documentary, but they did not survive the process. That one line did, and it ended up being the right choice. It carries the whole feeling of the record in six words.

One thing I did not know until I was already deep into the project: the documentary came out in 1990. I had assumed it was from the 70s or 80s based on the footage and the feel of it. Finding that out did not change anything about how the sample felt, but it was a reminder that the culture being documented was still very much alive when the cameras were rolling.

Why Paris and Why This Sample

I was traveling through Paris and Europe when I started building this track. I knew I needed a vocal sample, and I started thinking about what I could pull from that was connected to Paris or French culture in some way. As a Vietnamese person, the history of France occupying Vietnam is not something that sits quietly in the background. It is part of the story of where I come from.

Using a sample tied to Paris felt like a strange, meta way of engaging with that history. Not confrontationally, but honestly. The track became a way of processing something that does not have a clean resolution, and the sample gave it a voice that I could not have written myself.

Paris Is Burning

The vocal sample comes from Paris Is Burning, a documentary that has become one of the essential records of underground culture in New York. It captures the ballroom scene, the drag culture, the roots of voguing, and the communities that built the foundations of what house music grew out of. If you have not seen it, it is worth your time. The fashion, the language, the people, and the music history woven through it are all extraordinary.

Sampling from it felt like an act of acknowledgment. The culture documented in that film is directly connected to the music I make. Bringing a piece of it into this track was a way of tracing that line back to where it started.

What Everything Sounds Like Together

I went deep on the sampling for this one. I pulled from the documentary extensively, which means I have a lot of material that did not make it into the final track. Because of that, I am thinking about cutting it up and releasing it as a free sample pack. If that is something you want, let me know.

When everything plays together, the session becomes something different from the sum of its parts. The groove, the chords, the vocal, the texture, the rhythm. It stops being a collection of decisions and starts being a record.

That is what I want to do.

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