How Mia Moretti Turned An Old Gospel Song Into A House Banger — EXCLUSIVE

Mia Moretti is taking the club to church with her thumping new single “Best I Can,” a party-starting banger that has an inspiring backstory. While trying to get the rights to sample an old club gospel track she’s always loved, the in-demand DJ actually tracked down the uncredited singer — and now, Vonita White is finally getting her spotlight after re-recording her vocals decades later.

“I was expecting to just sample the record,” Moretti tells NYLON, referring to an old Jasper Street Co. release. “Then I found Vonita on the internet, and I sort of went out on a limb and asked her if she wanted to meet up to re-sing the song for my record.”

The result is a fresh-sounding club anthem with some seriously soulful history, blending au courant production flavors with a vintage sound. Below, Moretti details how the special track came about and shares the perfect house playlist to listen to along with it.

How did you first discover Vonita?

I heard Vonita’s voice on a gospel house record from Baltimore. It’s a track I have always loved and played anytime I got that chance, usually when I recognized some house heads in the crowd that were getting down to the classic stuff or the Chicago stuff, then I would slide in some gospel and really take them to church. There were a few lines in the track that would always stay in my head. I would catch myself humming them when I was going to bed, or the next morning when I was making coffee. As a producer, it’s that ear candy that I’m drawn to. I never knew who the singer was, but I decided to look it up one day on Discogs, and that’s when I discovered Miss Vonita White.

What made you want to work together?

I reached out to the label that had put out the original track and was in contact with them to clear the sample. This is one of the hardest parts of my job: contacting the original writers, producers, singers, and publishers, and patiently waiting to hear back while anxiously wanting to release the heat you just finished making!

The clearance process with the label went on for about a year while they decided if they wanted the track to be sampled; during this time, I had found Vonita on the internet and introduced myself. I saw she was still living in Baltimore, still singing, and had recently put out a gospel album. A few months later, she came in from Baltimore to meet me at the studio in New York. Vonita nailed the vocals and sounded just as beautiful as she had almost 30 years ago when she originally sang it. We played around with some other vocals, some ad-libs, and even a new track. She was such a light and a joy in the studio, she had me on my knees laughing the whole day.

How would you describe making this track?

This was the first track I made when I began producing. I made it three years ago and then spent another two going back and forth between the two lines I wanted on the vocal break. This is the hardest but most important part of making a record for me. It’s all about the story. The songwriting is what takes me on a journey in music, so, in my records, you can imagine I don’t take it lightly. I tediously go through lyrics for hours, days, and, in this case, years, until it’s the perfect poetry of a song.

What do you love about house music, and in particular, making it?

There’s a famous expression: “House music is for everyone.” For me, that’s the beginning, middle, and end. It doesn’t divide, it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t hate. It’s for whoever wants to come together on the dance floor and share the moment together. That might not be true when we leave the club. The world doesn’t always want to give us that, and I certainly can’t do very much to change the world, but this is something I can do and a moment I always want to provide my community.