The Weight of What Could Have Been

On The Flycast, the conversation drifts from the raw emotional power of Jennifer Hudson singing "Impossible Dream" on The Voice to a sprawling meditation on talent, regret, and the years that got away. The hosts—Nick and Hitch—spend the episode circling a single uncomfortable question: Is it too late to chase the dreams you put down?

The Producer Who Stopped Making Beats

Nick describes a version of himself that almost existed. He had FL Studio downloaded, bought Nexus and Omnisphere VSTs for hundreds of dollars, paid for Splice subscriptions, and spent probably $1,500 on drum packs and plugins. He was learning to sample. He was getting good. Then he stopped.

"I probably stopped taking Addy," he says. The Adderall was the engine—when he was on it, he could sit in front of a computer for twelve, sixteen, twenty-four hours straight and lose himself in production. When he wasn't, he had no interest at all. Now he looks back and wonders: "If I just would have took it serious... could I have made something out of it?"

He's not imagining becoming a number-one producer. He just wants to know if he could have been good enough to hang—to make beats in a studio with people, to be the guy someone like Justin Bieber calls when they need help with a song. "That's my dream," he says. "To be the guy that they trust."