About The Way (feat. Mac Miller)

"The Way" is a song by American singer Ariana Grande, featuring American rapper Mac Miller, from Grande's debut studio album Yours Truly (2013). The song was written by Amber Streeter, Al Sherrod Lambert, Jordin Sparks, Brenda Russell, Miller, and the producer Harmony Samuels. It was released by Republic Records on March 26, 2013, as the first single from the album. The song's backing track is based on the piano melody from Russell's 1979 song "A Little Bit of Love", and is melodically and lyrically similar to Big Pun's 1998 song "Still Not a Player", which also samples "A Little Bit of Love". "The Way" peaked at number nine on the US Billboard Hot 100, which became Grande and Miller's first top 10 song on the chart. The song was also Grande's first top-10 appearance on the Hot 100 for a lead female artist since Yael Naim's song "New Soul" charted in 2008. "The Way" was eventually certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over three million units in the United States. An accompanying music video was directed by Jones Crow, and released on March 28, 2013. It depicts Grande and Miller dancing inside a room covered in balloons, as Miller takes several photographs of Grande.

On December 12, 2011, Grande released her debut single "Put Your Hearts Up", which is a bubblegum pop song with a vastly different style of music and target demographic than "The Way."[7] Whereas the lyrics in "The Way" deal with the subject of a flirty, romantic relationship, some sections with sexual implications, "Put Your Hearts Up" was a song aimed at young audiences, with lyrics about making the world a better place. During a radio interview on KIIS-FM on March 25, 2013 about her debut single, Grande confessed that she had in fact "hated" both the music video for and the song itself, considering it to be "a terrible first impression". She added that she had wanted to "pretend it never happened before it already happened" and that she had felt no enthusiasm to promote the song at the time. In a 2013 interview with Billboard, Grande implied that her music needed to relate to her maturing personality. Although she insisted on being "there for [her] younger fans" while portraying Cat on the American teen sitcom Sam & Cat (2013), Grande also wanted to perform music as a result of "growing up". "The Way" can be seen as the reboot of Grande's singing career, steering her toward an older demographic and a different musical genre than where she originally began.[who?] In January 2013, she met with producer Harmony Samuels, at which point he presented her with a demo of the song that featured the vocals of co-writer Jordin Sparks, whom the song was originally intended. The beat he had created for the single, samples Brenda Russell's "A Little Bit of Love" either directly or indirectly, via Big Pun's "Still Not a Player". Grande immediately connected with the sound and asked Mac Miller to feature on the song with her, to which he responded, "Sounds like a hit to me."The song was recorded that same month, and caught the attention of Republic Records VP Charlie Walk when he heard it being played from Republic co-founder Monte Lipman's office. "It was 8:00 one night, and I heard a song coming from Monte's office through my wall. He called me down and I played a video, a DIY of Ariana Grande. We heard the song and I immediately made the decision to set it up [and] put the song out.