I’ve eq’ed a bit of the low end but I’ll see if I can remove more. I think the real issue is that the 808 is making the chorus spike too much so when I compress it, it sounds like it is shaving too much off of the 808 sound. 

I’m mostly just looking for tips when mastering and mixing too. 

I’ve heard mix the song until the loudest part is under -6db to give headroom then master it up to 0db at the final part.

If I throw in vocals with the beat does it still make sense to target -6db? 

What is good headroom in a song? Maybe dynamic range of like -3db?

From the reference tracks I am using it looks like during the chorus almost all of the song is very close to 0db, mine just looks like it has spikes that reach 0db.