JaVale McGee made beats as a hobby and played a melody for Justin Bieber's songwriter Pooh Bear at a studio session. That melody ended up on Bieber's 2020 album Changes, which got a Grammy nomination, making McGee a Grammy-nominated producer without expecting it.
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I was just making beats and it was just something I was interested in. It was just another passion of mine. So then when I got to the NBA, I started working with guys around the Oakland area. And in the process, I met this amazing songwriter named Pooh Bear, and he's Justin Bieber's main songwriter. We get in the studio, he hears one of my beats and he tells me, "Hey, take the drums off. Lemme just hear that melody." I'm playing that melody and he's like, "All right, load this up." And he just starts writing a song. He made one song. That's the only song he made. Then it was over. I was like, "All right, cool. Appreciate it, bro." I don't know, maybe 2, 3, 4 months later, he called me. He's like, "Oh yeah, "Man, you made the album." I'm just like, "What are you talking about? What album? We didn't talk about any albums or anything." He's like, "You made the Justin Bieber album." Damn, like, that's fire. Like, amazing. I made a Justin Bieber album? Like, it's on his "Changes" album, which got nominated for a Grammy. So that's in turn how I was nominated for a Grammy for being a producer on a Justin Bieber album. I'm available.