When’s the Last Time You Worked with an Artist with only 15 Followers?
It’s easy to work with an artist who’s popularity has garnered the attention of the masses and even some major labels. If you’re producing this artist then more than likely your inbox is full of demos from songwriters, beats, and general inquiries about working together. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call another top tier producer and you two, or three, can work on your artist’s next smash single. You have all the resources in the world to make a successful project. However, are you willing to do the same with an artist that no one has ever heard of?
Most of the new artists that you see me work with or speak about I discovered before they even had a thousand followers. It’s normal for me to go on soundcloud and let the player run until something catches my ear. This has been a common practice for me since the Myspace days as I used to let people’s Myspace player run in the background while I studied. Every now and then I would find an artist and become a fan. I didn’t know Nipsey Hussle would blow up like he did when I found “Bullets Ain’t Got No Names Vol. 1.” The same can be said for Tyler, the Creator and Wiz Khalifa back in 2008. I just thought they were dope artists. If I was making beats back then I would’ve probably reached out to them and who knows where I would be today. I would like to see other producers take this same approach instead of waiting for an artist to get to a certain level of success before reaching out. There’s a bigger slice of the pie if you find that artist when they’re in obscurity and create the music that propels them to the top. It’s the one thing this business has been missing for a while on the indie side. We need more producer/artist duo’s, not people wanting to jump on the bandwagon.
I know doing this requires patience and foresight that a lot of people don’t have. I can only imagine how fun it would be to work with someone like Kendrick Lamar back in 2006 when we was still a hype man for Jay Rock. During that time a producer may feel as though Jay Rock would be the artist they would need to get their beats to totally forgetting about Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q, let alone K.Dot. This is one of the many reasons why I stress producers should focus on working with artists that they like instead of sitting around waiting for the next Drake when they could’ve been working with him during his “Room for Improvement” days. Imagine being one of the producers on both Comeback Season and So Far Gone.
It’s not a gamble, it’s just great music.
