Kenny Beats on the Regional Sounds of Hip Hop

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a reason Kenny Beats is one of the great young producers in hip hop because he does his homework. Kenny has a vast understanding of the regional sounds and histories of cities to pull from when making beats. For an artist, this allows him to find a common musical language with rappers, which gives him a leg up in an art form as hyperlocal as a rap. Everything from the popular local dances to the type of crime most prevalent in different cities can inform the sound of a local scene and influences how Kenny might approach making a beat. Today, we're kicking off a two part series of interviews with Kenny Beats and The One You're About to Hear, which was taped a while back. Kenny maps out the evolution of regional sounds in hip hop, drawing parallels between disparate cities and now hip hop has evolved from creating beats out of old drum samples known as breakbeats, to sampling and referencing itself. I should also say that Kenny producer theme song The One You're About to Hear as if he were Rick Rubin in nineteen eighty five. See ifing gets which Specie Boys song it's based on. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmonds. Here's Rick Rubin and Kenny Beats at Shanglu La. What's a good what's a good place to start? Well, really, like, first off, everything that you and I have talked about when it comes to regional hip hop and these things, I'm talking about such a short time period. Yes, I was born in ninety one, so I'm really thinking a little bit before when I was born, and then how that came into all the stuff I grew up with, and then all the stuff I'm actually working in now and what that was routed in. But oftentimes, like most of the parallels I'm finding between two cities or two artists or influence going on in the radio now or even on like a street level, it doesn't go back as far as like hip hop's roots go back. You know what I mean When I talk about like all the connections between Memphis and Atlanta, and all the connections between Detroit in the Bay Area, or even like Florida and New Orleans. The real like common denominator for me all started by the time like drum machines and eight O eights were introduced and those kinds of things. So I'm not even thinking back as far as like when Boombap hit any of these cities or g Funk or even that, It's just the conversation starts there, yes, you know, and like I think it's just so interesting how like there was like the first big rapper like signed coming out of Detroit that people always talk about was this dude named Robert s got signed in like nineteen eighty five, and that was like very reminiscent of like Brooklyn hip hop and like you know what I mean, like New York kind of stuff. But like the common conversation with Detroit is always eminem Kid Rock, Danny Brown, Big Sean, like those are the people like on the Mount rushmore of big commercial hip hop in Detroit that comes to everyone's minds. But what's going on on the street level there right now is so different than any of those four big artists. And it all started from what I understand with like artists like dex Osama and artists like Team east Side and what was dexas grouping of the Choppa Boys, and like I can play an example right now, the easiest parallel to always draw with people as Detroit in the Bay. It's all really fast. When people talk about Bay Area music, they really do think of like a mustard beat, or they think of like these kind of like swung G funk influenced, you know what I mean, kinds of production and raps and stuff. And Detroit to me is what all the people in the Bay are always talking about and listening to when I'm talking to those artists, and the first time you hear what I think of is like the current style that goes on in that city and where all those kids draw from. The forefather is from the late nineties, you know what I mean. It's it doesn't go back decades and decades, and like when you hear decks of stuff, you hear big reverbi pianos like piscicado strings and acid basslines, it's always these don't don't, don't don't play some play something my moment shout, I've gotten the reason why I got this vest on me. Yeah, these niggas won't needn't come in I so you can hear like it kind of sounds like the beats are being made with like the stock string sound, the stock piano sound, the stock bass sound they had. But when I listen to it, it's very often in early like Detroit rap and this subgenre of it an acid base wound, like the same similar kind of bass sound. And Detroit is also known for fathering techno, and there's a lot of those same sound palettes used. So in my mind, I'm like, Okay, somebody learned how to make music in Detroit around people who were familiar with these certain synthesizers, these certain drum machines or whatever. But what was resonating where they were from wasn't for on the floor drums, wasn't techno, wasn't this. It was different kinds of patterns, different kinds of beats. They were probably listening to stuff from other cities. So when they go to do a high hat pattern on a t R A to eight, or they go do a bassline on an old juno or whatever it is, they're emulating the melodies and the drum patterns and everything of hip hop, but they're using techno sounds really if you look at it, and I think that's where like the early Detroit sound came from. The tempo and everything got updated by what kids were listening to in this net, but it really was from Detroit techno elements. And when you listen to the biggest rappers in Detroit right now, if you go to a party in Detroit and play these songs like the entire room knows every word if even if they have no hook, you hear such similar elements. And the producer today, who I think everyone considers just the godfather of the current Detroit sound as hell of a And when you listen to some of the hottest stuff going on out of the Bay or like artists like Geasy, you know what I mean, or artists like that are coming out of La right now, a lot of their sound is informed by these tempos, these kinds of kick pounds, these drum patterns, And I think when you look at Mustard and you look at like how he took over radio in twenty twelve with these big basselined hundred bpm beats and that I think it's a combination of like these Detroit and Bay sister city like kinds of styles of beat making and rap. But at the same time, the producers he grew up listening to probably weren't the guys making these beats in Detroit. He was probably listening to the Battlecat, and he was probably listening to DJ Quick, and he was probably listening to LA music, where the sound choice is different and the bounce is different. So like when you talk about g Funk or you talk about like legendary La and Bay producers, like, it's much more swung and much more funky, you know what I mean. And it's a much different kind of attitude than the Detroit shit, just like being in the Motor City is a way different attitude than being in the Bay. And so I think they were inspired by each other. But Mustard was going to use a softer, rounder bass sound instead of that acid base because it might be a little more smooth, but he's still going to keep it at one hundred bpm. The only the only difference is sound choice. To me, really a little bit of tempo, a little bit of sound choice, but it's essentially the same vibe and you're getting across like the same kind of feeling and you listen to like, like even in other huge Mustard songs like be Honest for kid Ink, like you hear the piano influence and you hear other things that are very Detroit it's just he opts for the snaps and the no hats and the chill little like like the little chants and extra percussion and hat rolls rather than the really strict fast you know what I mean, hats and percussion of this and that. But it's similar sound choice too. You hear those same like chant sounds and same rim rolls and everything in both the beats. It's just a matter of like swing bounce mustards a little behind the beat or I feel like Detroit stuff is either strictly quantized or if anything, a little ahead. Do you think that, um, the local drug choice makes a difference in the tempos and it's it's got to. I mean, if you look at the Bay, like one of the biggest movements ever out of the Bay is a high fee movement. And if you look at mac dre and keep the Sneak and all those kinds of guys like it was very informed by Molly, you know what I mean, and like by the drugs that they were doing and stuff. And in Detroit, I mean it's not necessarily drugs, but the type of crime and the type of things that go on their prostitution mainly and the different types of drugs, like much more harder stuff. From what I understand, that gets sold in Detroit way more prevalently is that's talked about in the music way more, you know what I mean, And from what I understand, the Bay Area and Detroit of that in common with prostitution and things like that. But you hear about different kinds of things because this music is getting made on a street level and they're just talking about what they know in that city. And that's what gets the biggest reaction is the people who are being the most authentic and the most honest and the most regional. They're talking about things that specifically, you know, this neighborhood. Like when you talk about New Orleans bounce music. One of the characteristics of bounce music is call and response. From day one with a big Freeda and Magnolia Shorty and those kinds of people, like it was always about getting the audience to respond to something that you were saying. Even in the beats, it would be there'ld be these big chants and something about like let me see you bet it, let me see you bets it, let me see you The energy is incredibly yeah, and it's so high up and the whole genre of of of bounce music is based in two or three drum samples. If you ask anyone who knows anything about bounce music, they'll tell you the trigger Man, uh drum loop is what basically the whole genre was created off of it. If you look up just the trigger Man, it's but the original record is the show Boys. Everyone knows this. The whole genre is based in that. And it's like that that one break created this whole thing, and it's from drum machines, you know what I mean. It's not a James Brown thing. It's not an old meters like loop. It's someone played those eight oh eight rims and then sampled that and forty other songs and it created a tempo and a vibe and this and that. But like when you see the like the call and response thing that goes on and bounce music turned into cash money and no limit and artists like Juvenile or credited being at the start of dance music and then they turned into like crunk music from there. And then you see little John all of a sudden be influenced by these big call in response channel if you like everything he was saying was always like further Crowd, like to the Windows too. I was like, it's very New Orleans bounce, you know what I mean. Even if you look at like the influence on Memphis to crunk music and Little John, Like, there's so many different parallels there. And at this point when you trace back either the artists I'm working with, the artists I'm big fans of, I'm not always like, oh, this goes back to this old DJ Premier record and that was sampled from this James Brown record, because I feel like so much of hip hop is like that. But now we're so far along that it's like I'm tracing it back to people sampling something off an ASR or you know, an NPC, and that only goes back to the early nineties, late eighties, you know, like G Easy and Cardi B have a current song. I think it's called no Limit. Let me play it. If I hit it one time, I'm a White book, if I hit it two times in the like of if three Times I'm a White it's the it's a sample of slab of My Knob by three six Mafia. They redo the flow. There's things about the beat that are really similar than give Me don't have the eggs, don't have to pay Memphis super Memphis like MPCs TR eight to eights, super simple patterns. But like asap Ferg's biggest song last year Ride with the Mob, hamdu A La check and with Me and do your job is the name Bimbala did the chain tona photo watch Presi Plaine Jain, Yeah, make Guiney chain arrested piece So and that's a huge New York artist and then a huge Bay Area artist and Cardi also a New York artist, all being influenced by an old song from Memphis, and three six Mafia were known for slowing down the trigger Man break that came from New Orleans. They all tie in in a weird way. So like this has been something for me that's just been such a phenomenon in the last few years, because I stopped making hip hop for a while, and I came back to it and was so scared that my card would get pulled off, not understanding you don't even certain thing that's going on in a city, or the lineage of it and or how to make it or the sound choice, and so I would get stuck in these little pockets of being like Okay, I'm working with this kid right now from Baltimore. I need to understand more about what goes on there in the rap scene, in the dance music scene, what kind of dances come from there, what kind of attitude the people have from there, and why the type of crime it's on in the city. It's like, all these things inform the conversation of what my high hat pattern is going to be when I get there that day. And it's sometimes something that's small that gets the person to get on the record and do their thing or not because you're assuming, like, oh, let me just let me clean that up that snares a little ahead of the beat, let me just quantize that for you, and then do a similar beat to your last single. And then guys get there and they're like, nah, this doesn't feel right. And it's not always even the volume in the studio or the sound choice or anything like that. It doesn't rhythmically hit where they're used to it hitting in their head when they think about home and they think about the process of making music that they started with in their basement with their friends, and it probably affects a comfort level in there in the way the rhyme works. It's like if you're used to a certain bounce and writing to a certain bounce and a comfort level, it's harder to it's harder to channel that. Yeah, if it's bouncing different, even if the temple is the same. And I think guys assume that they're being a good engineer or a friend to the artist or the song by trying to clean something up with an equeue or trying to put it on beat, or trying to make it relate to something that they think is working right now on the radio or for another artist, blah blah, And that's where you lose everything. And for me, it's like understanding when a new artist comes to the studio from New Orleans that it's not always a conversation of like, oh, do you understand the trigger man break and help bounce music started? It's not that, but it informs where they're from, what they grew up on. Maybe they lean towards these kinds of tempt Maybe they scored these rhythms, maybe not, but it's in each case to learn about them. Did you have to go to the places I haven't been to a lot of the places I've wanted to, but a lot of times. I'd been to these places before I learned more about it, because I'd traveled as a DJ for years. I've been to forty something states playing shows, but then came back into hip hop and working with all these different artists a lot of the time in LA and it was kind of like getting schooled about these places that yeah, I've been there. Oh yeah, I know about this neighborhood and this restaurant and so forth and so on. But did I ever apply any of that knowledge of what I'd even seen in my life to the music. No, not before someone was right in front of me and was saying to me, like, now this is how we do it, like it's sposed that's supposed to be what's wrong to you, that's right to us, And now like that's paramount for me. So it still wouldn't be what you make wouldn't really follow a templated you'd use this information as it's like a menu of things to pick from because you don't want to make the same record someone else made. Never but it's basically a lot of the time the job. I feel like if the producer in the studio should be just to give the vocabulary to the artist so they can get out their idea better. You're trying to show them, Okay, maybe you want to try this vocal effect, or you want to try this instrument, or you wanta try this variation of this instrument. For me, it was giving me a vocabulary to understand what they're doing, you know what I mean, because a lot of times I'm always helping you know what I mean, And like, this is the artist helping me to just come into their world. Even if we don't use that lesson today, a decision I make or a sound choice or whatever is going to be just informed by the conversation of oh, like you make music from Memphis, you know I mean, I'd work on a lot of rap. So, like we were saying with the Bounce music, shouting out, where you're from, who you are, what you stand for is a quintessential like cornerstone of a lot of the artists I work with. Where they're from is who they are, And my mind, I'm like, Okay, would an ode to where you come from as far as the tempo or a sample or the sound choice set it off when you play this live in your hometown, I think it would. And like those are the moments where this becomes a tool where you're like, oh my god, where the DJ mentality brought into production really helps. You're always thinking about what's going to rock the club. But isn't that what you would say when you used to talk about the first records on deaf Jam is that the rap records that were coming out didn't reflect how it felt when you went to a rap show. You would hear all this scratching and all this mic work and all these things, and like that's what brought those songs to life. I think with people now, like whenever that breakbeat or triggerman sample or old vocal thing or something from your childhood or that place that makes you think of somewhere comes into a new song now with an updated type of beat or drum sound or tempo or whatever it is, it already like sets such a strong platform and foundation for like this song to reach a lot of people and make them feel a lot you know what I mean, because it's it's routed and like, oh, this is an experience a lot of these producers that created these waves and these sounds, whether it was what they were playing or they're sampling or whatever. I think they're shocked now that a lot of times on hip hop, the music serves like a bed behind these huge drums, and it's not these samples right in the front of these big melodies or keyboards things. It's like there's kids who were so influenced by crunk music and by three six Maffi and by all these things that now it's like the drums and the swing of the drums and the sounds of the drums are the biggest thing in so many records, and you end up with artists like Splurge and ten K and kids from Texas who just rap on eight o eights Do you want to play? Sure? Splurge is from Arlington. These kids just wrap on just drumps. Yeah, get that shit to my mom. He'll deal with the fashion that she came from town. I came from the mood. She took some time. I really to drink like a little bits, to go to the pen like a prison. Is so good. He's in every single label, meeting everything he could be in, telling them no melodies, no hooks. It's so good. His mixtape was called no Melody, the name of the tape, Like they are the most quintessential example of like just getting at how you live, making what sounds good to your friends where they are. And I think it was it's with Spurs, like he's to the point now where if he doesn't just hear something big and hard and instinctual and powerful that everybody in the room goes, he doesn't even want it. And that's what I was saying about the good and bad parts of that. And hip hop is like it informs people in a certain respect of like, Okay, we know this is gonna work at the club, and we know that this is gonna go off in this region. Kids from around here are going to rock with how this song is moving because it just feeds into what we all know and what we all collectively like the zeitgeist of this area. Like it's crazy when you see artists who are very much from somewhere and act like it and look like it and have the same slang and accent or whatever, but their music just sounds like somewhere else very specifically, even like kids like Shoreline Mafia who are from LA and very big in LA. People always talk about how bay their music is, and yet it's within a state, but it's two completely different scenes and sounds, And I mean New York is really kind of an outlier too. I feel like even today, like I think New York, a lot of young, hot New York artists hate the fact that when people talk about New York beats, they think of Boom Bat nine, they think of Wu Tang type rhythms and beats and you know what I mean, they think of Alchemists beats, they of mob Deep. But if you look at the newest, biggest songs from there, if you look at all six Nines music, it's the same. It's in the nineties, it's all ninety ninety five. If you look at Bobby Schmirda, his biggest song ever, hot Boy Like, it was literally boom Bat DJ premier New York City rap music tempo, it's the it's these kinds of things you're hearing now and and drill music and in the New Atlanta musicles of the New York. Yeah, let's play like a classic one n This is the first thing you played that sounds like it's rooted in a breakbeat feel totally. And but that's that's classic New York. I think when people think New York, that's what they think of. And then you look at like the biggest artist in New York now like Gummo actually wasn't even in the nineties as far BPM rights, but a lot of six nines music works in the same tempos. They never pop you fully by Whatsout, My nap Out, Mom got outs Out, We got so about my Nigga's really game ban same day. It's so fast. It sounds like a descendant of Crunk though totally, But this is New York rap now. Interesting. Bobby Schmirda, do you remember when you first heard Crunk? Yeah, I was like eight. Did it blow your mind? Because it destroyed me when I heard I loved it. I remember hearing like Young Bloods and Ying Yang Twins and hearing Little John's production first and just being like in awe of how simple and hard it was. Yeah, and just being like like, remember the whisper song by Getting Twins, Doom Doom Doom Doom Doom. I'm like, oh you find it? Yeah, you doing my Little Mamma Lemon Whisper. Yeah, you think about it. This was a hit so cool, and they're not too far away from what Splurge is doing now. It's an eight to eight and a snap, splurgees then eight to eighty. Hey, let me hear it. Hut you super distorted and like super new with the sound choice, but it's still just drums and it's focused on the flow. And now they call it ASMR. But I feel like with like the Whisper song, Hey, all that extra mouth noise and everything here is what makes it so interesting on such a simple beat. And with Splurge they record it in the middle of a room with all his friends and you hear all this room noise and extra stuff. And he also wraps really quiet and really in front of the mic, similar in Palette you know what. And songs like the Motto by Drake, like huge hit with Little Wayne, I'm a fucking man, y'all get it? Do you? Type of money a body I can like a million, just like the Whisper song though a three note eight to eight baseline, claps, snares, hats, that's Bay tempo. It's very Bay Area in the bounce of it. But it's like it shows like in Texas, in Texas and in Atlanta and in the Bay Area. Necessarily like the same sound choice, you know what, I mean? Three or four ideas with the bounce of that respective city, yes, the tempo of that respective city. Yes, it's it's that instinctual and elemental. It's like we can talk about how certain instruments work better in certain parts of the country, or certain people respond to horns more in New Orleans and Atlanta than where they were spond to pianos and strings in the Midwest. Like, I think the tempo and the bounce. The bounce and the swing of the records are like the two things that really make the biggest difference in every part of the country. Because if you can get it down to just a base sound in a clap or something in the two four but just changed one hundred bpm over here, different the kick hits a little different in the pattern one hundred thirty bpm over here and then one fifty over here. It's like it's really about how people feel and how it moves them, and maybe the drugs of the city or where people party in that respective city or how they party or whatever has something to do with that. But at the same time, as like there's we've already seen just in this conversation, how many things trace back to how many other things the cities that believe in the music and in the hip hop and see it as a business. Are the ones where the sound finally takes press and it's not always where it originated. Yeah, I've heard people talk about that with Memphis. But if people in Memphis had the belief in the business of hip hop that they did in Atlanta, crunk music would have started in Memphis first, or certain other let's say, just any kind of niche trend thing could have popped off in the city where they created it rather than somewhere like the Bay or a guy like DJ Mustard sees, Oh, this has the potential to be. That's what That's what the great artists have always done, though the great artists have recognized them the local scenes where something's being made that's really cool, but it's really only for their and they can take the DNA of that and make it into something that becomes national totally. And it's always or global And that's always been It's always been that way. It's always been even in rock and roll. You know, it's always been like hearing something and then amplifying it in a new way and it gets you know, it's like with Led Zeppelin and the Blues you know, like like that it had to cross it had to cross the Atlantic to get that blown up, because anyone, any self respecting blues artist wouldn't play music that was It'd be like ridiculous. Yeah, but that's what made it international was that it like h And also sometimes it's interesting too that sometimes the misunderstanding of something that you like forces you to make something that you think you're making something like what you heard, and then it comes out completely different just because you're you're hearing it different or you don't know how to make that stuff and you're just trying to guess it at the end of the third thing, Yeah, which is also great, Like a lot of great stuff happens that way. It was like kind of aiming for one thing and getting something completely different. We'll be right back with Kenny Beats after a quick break. We're back with Rick and Kenny Beats. I think seeing this part of the matrix is one of my biggest strengths in any room with people making music, because especially if I'm in like a very stuffy room with a lot of top shelf people who are doing very big things and trying to preemptively figure out what's gonna work really well for their fan base or whatever. When you come in a room like that and you play like a kid like Tissa Korean for example, who's actually now on the new Chance the Rapper single, but like Tissa months ago was just making funny music but dancing in it again from Texas just drums, twenty year old kid who's really popping the there right now invented a bunch of dance crazes and stuff. If I play a Tissa Korean video in a room I'm in with all these really stressed out, really popping people, instantly it just lightens up the vibe because now not like, oh, what's the perfect chord change, it's like, oh, this kid's funny, Like oh this song is just some big eight O waights and this kid's rapping super crazy and they're all dancing wild in the video. Instantly everyone's watching the screen and now it's like, oh, this gets funny. I imagine we did something like this. Imagine we tried that tempo I met and it's a joke at first, yeah, and it's like, oh, well, like this is an extreme example because Tissa's so off the wall. But Chance saw this kid somewhere and was like, I just love his energy. Let me harness it, let me see what works about his music that I could apply. And the first single from Chances long awaited album is featuring Tissa Korean and they dropped it on Triller the dance app before streaming services because Tissa's so popping in that world that every little young kid dances to his songs. But you see how like being aware of these cool, small regional things like almost help reinspire the people who are the best at it. But this is coming from such a place of just like honesty, and like we literally want an artist I'm working with right now records all his songs in the garage band on his Apple microphone on his computer and use all garage band loops play something. I'm sure his Bubba Savage Old Bubba is twelve years old from Courtland, av in the Bronx. Little Oozi's working with him, a Boogie's working with him. All these huge artists are a fan of him because he just says whatever he wants. But when you put on the Buba video in the serious session, kids go, is that a twelve year old kid rapping about I'll make you disappear? Like magic? You're like, you know, and then instantly they start doing You're dealing, We start laughing, it starts being funny. And then like I was a female the day, a lot of her music is very cute, and she heard that piano loop and she's like, oh my god, I love this. And then I pulled up a bunch of xylophones. We started working with xylophones, and we made a real song, you know. And so like that's why I focus so hard on these things, because these this is what it's inspiring me. It's not getting in the room with like the biggest genius ever of all time and then showing me how to make a record to reach a billion people. It's what's happening in this small, small corner of the country that makes those people from that part of the country erupt in a different way than the fans of the biggest artists ever. Like when something's for you from you, by you, you know what I mean, where you grew up, Like a party in the Bay with all Bay artists with two hundred people in a basement is an uncomparable energy to me. And like people who play big shows, there's always the conversation of like would you rather play for twenty thousand people or two hundred of your best fans in the world in this one room, and like it's clearly going to be better than with the two hundred people. I mean, for sure, I think the ladder is always it And that's how I look at this. It's like I never choose an artist I'm working with because if they're young and popping, or because they have a certain wave anywhere. I just like what I like and like giving context to people is my number one goal. Is like just helping someone understand why this is so cool where it is and why I latched onto it even though I'm not from there, it might not fully get it. When you can have an artist like Gez and Cardi b an Asap Rocky put out a song like No Limit and then kids figure out that that slab of my knob and all of a sudden they're listening to three six Mafia, It's like, that's so cool to me, you know, I love that because it's just raps are to become one of the biggest genres in the world, you know what I mean. Like from the time that you started def jam all the way to right now, It's like, I don't know if anyone ever saw this like it's nobody did. It's insane nobody, But I think it's so much, so many waves of it, just like feeling like it was going away, like over and over again. It's it's it's because of what we're talking about. Though. I think that's why rap has become as big as it's become is because it's just like it transports you. Whatever artists you're listening to, it transports you to where they're from and how they grew up. And even if now they're gigantic, whenever they started their first music as always the truest, most authentic storytelling you can find in music. For me right now, you know, I love to hear the stories of all these different places and for me to try to help add to those stories without really doing my due diligence, yes, I think that would be misguided and I think I'd be hurting more than i'd be helping. It's crazy. Any theories on why, um, why Miami based music was so particular there, like when everyone in the country was was going slow, Yeah, they were always fast. It was always cocaine. I don't know. I don't know, it just always was fast. I'm not a Miami guy. Like going from New York and listening going to a hip hop club in New York to a hip hop club in Miami, every song would be there. You would not one of the same songs would play in the two cities. Yeah, I mean, does it has to do with the street life, has to do with how fast paced Miami is and how much money there is there and how new the development was going out. That's like, I just think that Citi's I've always not liked Miami because it's all lambos and beautiful girls in gowns and all this money and all this stuff. It's like the music must have lended itself to the scene in some type of way where people realize the faster we go, the more reaction we're getting out of people. But a lot of stuff that went on in Miami base slowed down. Is juke or is Bounce or is Baltimore Club or is whatever? It's same breaks, same as sample play, a juke feel. It's very two live crew in the sound choice and in the sample choice, and then you listen to two live crew, But that still sounded more like discoy, like more from the floor or on the floor. Mummy bass was not really like that, but the tempo was like it was just fast. Yeah, come on, yeah, she's all rooted in the planet rob Yeah, for sure it is. But again it's drum machines. You know. What I mean is no breaks. It's like a very electronic thing in the scope of hip hop. Yeah. I had discussion with a friend the other day who was talking about that. In today's world, the sound is considered part of the writing. So in other words, if you were if you were called in as a producer and you changed the snaw a sound from the existing snad without changing the pattern, if you just replaced the existing snare sound in the track with a different sound, that you would be a writer of the song. Is that the case from what I understand? Yes, would never name names, But I had a good friend of mine who was signed to a very big producer, and his contract with that producer was if you drop a song completely produced and written and everything by you and the people involved, he gets fifteen percent of it, just as you being signed to him, and if he adds one thing to that beat or anything at all, he touches it. In programs on it, he's taking eighty percent of the song. And what he would do was just basically just like take the midi of a high hat pattern and change the high hat sound and then all of a sudden he's involved and now he owns all of your share. That is wild. Yeah, try to keep my friends from signing any of those kind of contracts. But it is, it is like that these days because sound choice is so paramount. When you think about a song like Grinding, you know by Farrell a long time ago, but literally it's just drums, you know what I mean, Like like a lot of stuff we talked about today, it's really like just this big instinctual kind of rhythm. And so if someone changes yo yo, if someone changes that clap, that's twenty percent of the beat. It is what it is. It's like the example I was saying before about like samples this Farrell. This that little a that Farrell used to use all the time. It's from the Triton keyboard, the most popular keyboard in hip hop, and like the early two thousands, it's just a sound on the Triton. So it's Yamaha. It's not owned by Farrell. Even though we've heard it in clip songs, Snoop Dogg songs, ANYRD songs, Rihanna songs, all types of gigantic Neptunes production because it was just a key piece of perk for them that they use all that time, percussion. Like to me, I got it. I got my hands on it a while ago, and when someone asked me, like, like I remember working on a Vince Staple's album, he would say, like, I want something that feels kind of neptunesy, but I don't want to like take from it or I don't want to use the same patterns. And I was like, man, like, if I could just get the A from some of the Farrell stuff, it immediately puts you back to Neptunes, back to Timbo era. And so I found it, and then I found out it was from a keyboard, and I'm like, Okay, Ferrell doesn't own this, and I can't get in trouble for sampling this, but it's a Farrell sound, you know what I mean as far as I'm concerned, or like, even when you go back and listen to like the chant that's in that's in like every Mustard beat, every Juicy J thing, like every it's it doesn't even trace back to a break. It traced back to like, uh, what was it? Like? It's like house beats and loops, like Volume three, like the I think the original is Yellow Yellow y Ell. Is it a song? No, it's a group from England, like an electronic group from the eighties, but they had the sound. It's just it's just the chant. I can't remember what song it is, so I can't. I can't tell you. It's been a while, hold on the mustard. But but you hear it and everything from California and everything from Detroit and a lot of old Southern stuff. You hear the chant on the off beat and Little John beats and stuff like that, and it's like, man, that's a classic sound in hip hop. But you get worried. You're like, man, I've heard it in so much stuff. If I sample in my own trouble and sometimes it's like hard to find the lineage of these sounds. And now that so much of these beats is made up in the sound choice, you got to be careful. Like the main standpoint is I don't want this song to not come out because this is a kick that they can trace back to a record that I might be sample or like an eight O eight that might be stolen, and then due to the user license agreement from the website, I bought the eight to eight from this is technically not my copyright. Like there's all kinds of weird little things like that sounds are the name of the game now it's not really records, but like the metadata and all these sounds exists, and I don't know, Like for me, I like really pride myself on hoarding sounds and just having terabytes and terabytes and hard drives and hard drives of just sounds, and the more I can learn about like the lineage of them, easier it is for me to use them and apply them. We'll be back with Kenny Beats after a quick break. We're back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Kenny Beats. Do you ever see there being an evolution lyrically in hip hop of it not being not all being so similar in content? I don't find it to be really no. The amount of stuff, the amount of people I work with, it's every day. If I have, say, have two sessions a day for a whole week, I probably got five six perspectives that don't understand each other. Yeah, for sure. And like I've rat like nowadays, it's even harder now because I'd never base something on a personality or like anything other than the music. I'm like, if I love this music, I want to help this person to work on it. And then I start working with them and I realized, like, oh, your past is trouble. Then you're like industry business stuff is all messed up and this and that, And I don't always do my research, but a lot of times, like whoever I get in with, I need to figure out how to understand their perspective quickly. And if I only had two or three perspectives or contents or like things that I had to be weary of when I got with an artist, my job would be way easier. And it's not easy because someone from New Orleans comes in and everything I just learned last week from a New York artist does not apply here. Can you always understand all the slang like the local slang at first? But I ask, I don't pretend to, Yes, that's the biggest thing. Don't ever either use a term you're not comfortable with or even try to like pretend you understand it. Ask if you there's no time, or you say to someone what does that mean? They're gonna go oh? He said, what does that mean? Like that, no one's ever gonna do that. They're gonna go oh, bro. It means this, yeah, like if you try to or from where I'm from, how would you know that? Yeah? Of course? And Atlanta. The biggest term right now is cap or no cap, and it means like you're lying, like a cap is lying, I mean, And basically if someone says like no cap, it means like I'm not lying. I would never walk into a room and be like, yo, I swear I sent the files no cap. It doesn't sound right coming out of my mouth. It's not for me. I'm not from Atlanta, but I grew up in New York, and trust me, Like my friends say hi to each other, they say you're. They don't say yo, they literally yo you're. And it's just a New York thing. It's like there's different slang from different places, and if you're not from that place, unless you're around those people all the time, Like, don't even pretend you understand what it means. I was in a studio one time with a really really like a producer. I'm a big fan of from Atlanta, and he just goes bro, do you know what Jay's are like? When someone said when he said Jay's in that song, you know he's talking about and I was thinking in my head, I was like, here's he talking about police officers? Maybe he said Jay's at the door was the line, and I was like, Jay, what is that He's talking about? A junkie? Oh, I didn't know that. My first reaction was a police officer. I clearly was the exact opposite. I thought they were saying, cops at my door. I gotta get out of their type shit. He was talking, there's junkies there. I'm serving drugs to junkies, you know what I mean? The whole at the lex three lines before and after it gets switched out on the context because I wasn't aware of a one letter slang term. Yeah, the songs from my favorite artist in Detroit that got me into them, that made me start listening to him. I didn't even understand them until I worked with the artists. Yeah, and I loved I loved these songs. Yeah, I know every word, but I don't know everyone's talking about sometimes, you know, general stuff everybody gets and that's I think the common denominator of the money stuff. And you know what that's like though, when when you're a little kid and you hear music, you don't really know what the words mean, but you still love it. If you don't know all those words, you know in in everything, you don't know all the words, you don't know what they're talking about. My favorite band was Kiss when I was a toddler. All I listened to his Kiss songs. It's just the music spoke to me. It wasn't the words. You know, how did you get How did you end up getting into Kiss in the nineties, that's a funny time to get into Kiss. My dad's an audio file. My dad listens. If he's an audio file, he wouldn't be listening to kid No. Yeah, but I'm just saying he listens to everything. So across my childhood, like my dad would literally play me a Boz Skag song, and then play me a Commander Cody song, and then play me the Chronic and then a Cheryl Crow song will be in the radio and he would like it, and then he'd play me like a Grateful Dead or whatever it was. So stuff have come across my plate. And when I heard I Just want to rock and roll all night as a four year old, I was like, this is music. It's great, A great recognize my two favorite songs that year because I there's a videotape of me like talking about it. Are I just want to have fun shell Crow and all I want to do is rock and roll all night? By Kiss, I was in a very similar mind space. But yeah, like I don't know, like, but those are anthems, you know for sure. I think at four years old, like you, that's when you start to recognize a good anthem. Yeah, but at to say, like I grew up with my I played instruments a lot of my life, so I had to play music that lend itself to instruments. Played classic rock and played jam band stuff and fusion stuff and funk and soul because bands, yeah a little bit, But there wasn't that much of a scene for in Connecticut I had. I had a amount of friends in one hand, I coul account who really played music and did music in their free time. It was all sports. But uh, my dad was never ironic about liking hip hop or like liking what was on the radio and so like, I remember the Thong song. He just thought it had such great production, Like you would always talk about that. He would talk about the beat of the Thong song and not be funny because it's a song about like a kind of bathing suit or kind of underwear, and it's like the big ass song of the year. My dad was just like he just loved the song. And my dad would sing it un ironically and he'd be singing that dong dong dong dong, and You're like, this is so dumb. But I would see in his face he's like he would see me laughing at him and be like, you're just turning to me kind of like I'm not I'm not making fun of this song. I like this song. So I had an appreciation via him for the stuff that my friends were listening to and that I had around me all the time as being really good music. So even something that would be a novel to many people, that would be a novelty song, if it was well made, it would still be good it. It didn't have to be the cool song totally. Yeah. But like my dad was listening to West Coast hip hop and listening to a current things that were on the radio with me on top of showing me all this other music. And I grew up in Connecticut, so I had I was seamless. I was regionless as far as there was no music coming. There still isn't any music coming from where I grew up. New York was the closest thing I had, and when I was old enough, I spent all my time in New York. But I really grew up without a core regional. Really good though, because that way you're not pigeonholed into totally, you know, being brainwashed into one sound as being your sound. Yeah, so you really are free. It's so interesting how how the things like in the moment you probably as a kid would wish everybody played and there was a scene and there were clubs to play in, and how come, you know, people get to do that in other places and I don't get to do that. But it really formed who you are now, and maybe you wouldn't be the same producer you are today if it was if it wasn't for that. I think that's the first thing you and I ever talked about, was it. Yeah, Like when we first talked in your car, Like I remember just saying like I remember growing up and just wishing I had more money. You know, I had a bigger friend and had my friend's house and lived in a place where everybody did music and dad dada, and now I just turned twenty eight. Now, at twenty eight, I literally would never trade places with anybody. I'm so glad I don't have that that obstacle in my mind of like, oh, well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, or this is where I'm from. It's like my metal phase was just as long as my like Leonard skinnerd phase is just as long as my Dilla phase. You know what I mean? They all, That's what I'm saying. They shared equal parts in my mind, And like I think a lot of my friends at least now, who make a lot of music and have made music as they were kids, they always have this dichotomy of like, here's the music my dad showed me and my parents showed me and all this old stuff I was put onto, and then here's the music I listened to with my friends. And that's definitely true, because that's how you find out about a lot of stuff. But the music I listened to with my friends wasn't written off by my dad and like, oh, yeah, that's that's what's on the radio now. My dad would hear certain things and be like, jay Z's really way better than everybody else. Huh, you know what I mean, Like he would see he would understand enough to like really dive into totally. And I think that was many people as they get older, only they only like the music that they liked as a as a as a kid or a teenager. Yeah, that's sort of the rest of their lives. That's their music. So like that, My appreciation has always been that just for everything. Everything like what you like, you know, and it doesn't matter. You're not from a place that lends itself to anything, so you can like everything from everywhere. Yes, I never had the moment in my career and like my music making life, where I got popular doing a specific thing or a specific sound. It was never like, Oh, it's this kid from New York with a working with all these New York artists and he's got that sound right now, so let's try to put him with some other artists and see if that fits with them. My whole life has always been whatever this project is or this person is, I'm that chameleon today and then tomorrow. I'm this Yes, That's why I've forced myself to learn about all the things that go on. But like a lot of my favorite producers and the biggest producers doing it today have found this lane, like thinking about take Keith. Take Keith is probably the biggest producer out of Memphis ever at this point last year, the amount of singles he had and the amount of number ones and everything like, He's doing everything from Drake to Travis to Beyonce, and he is the most Memphis beat maker you could ever be. It is the most three six Mafia influence you could ever be. And he's taken his sound to the nth degree. Is Beyonce forming her style and her current outlook on what her new music needs to be around this kid's drum patterns and tempos and what he's doing, Because what he's doing is such a cultural phenomenon right now. Can you play what would have been the tracks that the older tracks he made that inspired these people to want to work with you. This is the first one she called shoot by Blackboy JB, also from Memphis. Baswin in mo I hit the first role freaking bits on Go See Gone off the roll and without anything. Just listen to a three six Mafia beat right after that. I gotta say, even though in three six Mafia it's much more of a sample, more soulful vibe, that's always what their stuff was, you can tell that Take Heath was influenced by extremely on the beat quantize straight hat, straight kick patterns, sharp ass snares, and it's the music is very faint comparatively how big the drums are way more so now with Take Heath. But even in three six Mafia, it's much more about hearing that hat and that eight oh weight than it is about those strings or any of those samples or in a Dyla thing or a boom Bat thing, like you're gonna hear what's going on in the sample very upfront. But Take Keith is so routed and where he's from, founded artist, where he's from in Block Boy, that that song Shoot just became a phenomenon. There was a dance that went with it. That dance is now in Fortnite and in every video game, and it is a huge thing. It's whenever you like pound your arm forwards and kick your leg back at the same time, you see everybody always doing it, little kids do it all the time. That dance was founded by this artist, helped blow up the song Take Keith made one hundred percent of his beats. The next song that they did after that song Shoot, which I played, was block Boy and Drake and let me see just what it's at right now. Yeah, it's at two hundred and seventy nine million views on YouTube. The which Drake getting on the Take Keith and Blockboys song, and it's like it's the most regional thing in the world. It's specifically Memphis. All Takekeeth was working on was like artists from where he's from, and then all of a sudden, Drake gets on it. It puts eyes onto it in a different way. Then all of a sudden he's doing Travis Scott Records featuring Drake, which are amalgamations of three different beats which change how radio sounds. It's the first like number one single to ever be that weird with all those different songs, and it broke all these records, and it all evolved from what he was doing in Memphis based on old three six Mafia stuff to try to make everyone around him go, oh, that's hard. And now it's Beyonce. It's amazing, and there's a lot of stuff you can break, all these different types of rap music and all these niche shub genres into. But I think the main thing is going to be, like if you go back to the first iterations of all of it, Like we said before, they only had so many tools, so many drum machines and so many things you could get across, and really the feel and the bounce and the tempo and those things are what dictated now styles that are a vastly different and fully formed and evolved. And it always like, men, we ten of us got ten drum machines and ten parts of the country. We got to make ten different crowds rock. This one drum machine with this one pattern does not work in half these places. We got to figure out what works here. Yeah, And now, like I'm still trying to do that same thing, but I've just got a lot of history that I've got to pay respect to. Beautiful cool Man. Thanks to Kenny Beats for breaking down the origins of regional hip hop sounds for us. Be sure to check out next week's episode, where we'll hear all that Kenny has been up to since him and Rick Last back to see Kenny Beats in action. Check out the two seasons of his show The Cave that he has up on YouTube. But he sits down with artists and makes it beat specifically tailored to them on the spot. It's incredible. Also, be sure to check out a playlist of songs produced by Kenny Beats that we put together at broken Record podcast dot com. You can follow us on YouTube, YouTube dot com, slash broken Record Podcast, where we can find extended cuts of new and old episodes, and follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced Helpful Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee and our executive producer is Meio LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like a show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast staff. Our theme music based on the Beastie Boys Brass Monkey, is by today's guest, the uncomparable Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.