All My Biggest Career Wins Didn’t Come from the Genre that I Love Most
It’s a cold night in Manhattan and I’m on the job. I just finished taking a 15 minute break and now I’m walking to the back of the stock room to avoid customers. It’s the holiday season and every one I help is constantly asking for some sort of discount. A bit odd to me for someone to be asking for such a thing at a prestigious store located around even more prestigious retail stores. I’m making my way to the break room since the crowd has almost died down to nil until I hear “Yo hands (Hänz), I wrote a song to one of your beats.” I stop and turn to see a brim hat, shades, a red fleece, and a man holding a beats pill next to one of the shelves. “Really!?” I said shocked. A week ago I sent him some beats that I thought were “throw aways” because he asked me to produce on his dancehall album. I’ve never made dancehall before and the beats I sent previously I thought for sure were going to get chosen. They didn’t, and to be honest I had no intent on sending anymore. Since he asked I figured I send him some that I felt would be so far left of what he was asking for that he’d stop. It did the opposite apparently. I walked over to the artist that you would later know as Trigga Don who wanted my attention as he gave a quick audition of one of the tracks. He plays the beat, sings over it, does one verse and leaves me perplexed. “Huh, that actually works for what you’re looking for,” I said. “Yeeeeah man, all you have to do is change the drums a little and you’ve got a dancehall beat.” That’s crazy I thought, but how do I make dancehall beats? That question would later be the catalyst to me actually having success as a producer.
Back on the westside of Houston I was once told that I had a “neighborhood” sound by a local rapper. That wasn’t something I took as a compliment. I deemed myself a trap and RnB producer and to hear someone say that my sound was more local than local rubbed me the wrong way. I knew I wanted to sound better but for some reason the beats and demos I made just didn’t capture the attention of rap artists in the Houston market. At the time, most wanted to sound like either Kirko Bangz, Drake, or Kendrick Lamar. No one I ran into wanted to have their own sound with the exception of one artist who had migrated from Bridgeport, Connecticut. So moving to New York City to be with my then fiancee, now wife, made me wonder if I would find a place I could fit in. The funny thing about making the move is that afterwards an artist from Houston stated in an interview once that “you weren’t a real one” if you felt the need to leave Houston to make a name for yourself. A slew of artists and producers, along with myself, made our way out to Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta. Apparently, quite a few artists back home felt a way about so many leaving town to pursue more ample opportunities. So here I was in a studio in Long Island City producing a record for an artist in a genre I didn’t know much about. I had heard plenty of dancehall records at night clubs in Manhattan but I was no master at it. It wasn’t until an A&R, Andre Wilson, broke down the basic elements of what makes a dancehall record that I finally got it. After that, I was off to the races and we completed Trigga Don’s first album “Trigganometry” where I some how produced 4 of the 7 tracks. Not bad for someone that’s never made a record in that genre before.
Now I would never say that I don’t produce Hip Hop. It has and will always be one of my favorite genres, if not the most favorite. I still buy drum kits and study producers like Cardo, Southside, and Cardiak. However, if I were to be honest, and you took a look at my resume you would notice all the biggest wins on there don’t really mention Hip Hop. From working on a VPAL album, becoming the official music producer for All Def Digital, to getting hired as an A&R for a Euro Pop label none of my those are embedded in Hip Hop. This is in no way to disrespect the genre but my path into music didn’t start out that way. The first album I ever fell in love with was Limp Bizkit’s “Significant Other.” From there I would find other nu-metal bands like Linkin Park, Korn, and Adema. Somehow I got into Jazz which would lead me to R&B. Then I went on a binge of nothing but Kylie Minogue for six months before finally hearing Nas’ “Ether” on the radio in Detroit and would later get caught up in the pandemonium. Eventually, I would land in Hip Hop diving into artists such as Jay-Z, Mobb Deep, and Busta Rhymes. It may have already been written for me to be the producer you go to for other genres and not the most likely. It’s something I ponder from time to time and one I discuss with my team. Who knows where this path may lead us in 2022 and beyond, but one thing I know for sure, is that I’m going to keep pursuing projects outside my norm. I no longer want to put up the fight to get rappers to choose my beats. If my path leads me to spoken word, reggae, or even EDM so be it. I’ll enjoy it simply because I know that’s where I’m supposed to be. I’ll always have a hard drive full a beats, but for now I’m focusing on how to expand my pallet. Will it be challenging? Yes, but for me that’s where the gold has always been.
My accomplishments are buried underneath my most challenging pursuits. It may be the reason why this has never felt….easy.
