And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 128: Kenny Beats

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Today’s guest is one of the most in-demand rap producers of the decade. He’s produced entire projects and hundreds of thundering, wildly different beats for critically-acclaimed rappers like Rico Nasty, Vince Staples, Freddie Gibbs, Denzel Curry, Key!, 03 Greedo, JPEGMAFIA, and Ski Mask the Slump God. Today, the 29-year-old’s signature tag (“Woah, Kenny!”) is virtually inescapable. Born and raised in Connecticut, today’s guest inherited his eclectic ear from his father, whose tastes ranged from Sheryl Crow to Dr. Dre. He played drums and guitar throughout his childhood and began making beats in high school, imitating idols like Timbaland and Pharrell. While studying music business at Berklee College of Music, he interned for renowned rap label Cinematic Music Group and began placing beats with rappers like Schoolboy Q (“Party”), Smoke DZA, and Ab-Soul (“Hunnid Stax”). During his senior year, he moved to Los Angeles and made a brief but successful foray into EDM. Once he’d accrued enough funds DJing around the world, Kenny returned to rap and opened The Cave, one of the most vital studios in contemporary rap. He is also a member of D.O.T.S. (Don’t Overthink Shit). A tight-knit and ever-evolving creative team, D.O.T.S. assists artists with every aspect of their careers, whether that’s beats and music videos or merch and art direction. They are creative midwives, helping musicians birth all their gestating ideas. And The Writer Is… Kenny Beats!Artwork: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. www.com. Welcome to And The Writer Is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. Today's critically acclaimed, relentlessly motivated high-end-demand

entrepreneurial producer's writer is innovating access to recording knowledge by volunteering information to his hundreds of thousands of followers. In a notoriously secretive industry, he's teaching while practicing the art of record making. He'll show you on YouTube, he'll show you on Instagram, he'll show you on Twitch, because there are no genre barriers for this metal head turned DJ turned hip-hop producer, who has worked with everyone from NBA young boy to Ed Shearren to the next up, Vince Staples. from Greenwich, Connecticut, through Berkeley, and coming to us from The Cave,

aka the name of his studio, we have, Whoa, Kenny! And the writer is Kenneth Charles Bloom III, aka Kenny Beats. The full formal introduction. Thank you, Ross. Thanks for having you.

So, yeah, Kenneth Charles Bloom the Third. So there are a lot of you. Yeah, there's, There's two before me. I'm the only one making music, though, so not too much competition. Fair enough. Are your parents' musicians? Not at all. My dad's an audiophile. He has an unbelievable amount of music in his collection. CDs, tapes, minidisc, vinyl, but it doesn't play anything. Did what kind of music, you know, obviously you said he has all that vinyl.

What kind of music would he play in the house? He would really lean between like Tex-Mex country Western and like soul. Those were the two biggest categories for my dad. But my dad would listen to the thong song and then listen to Willie Nelson. So I really went anywhere. That's a weird mix. It is. I feel like that's a remix that you could do.

Did your mom listen to music? She does, but very casually in a very mom kind of way. Like the only concert I ever went to with my mom was Col. play. You know what I mean? She's not super tapped in, but like, she has sort of like Fleetwood Mac moments or certain things she loves, you know? Yeah, of course. Is she riding on

a skateboard while drinking cranberry juice? I don't really know where she's at today. She could be. All right, so you know, from the beginning, when did you first get an instrument? What is your first instrument? Guitar. I think guitar stuff

about nine years old. Did you get electric, acoustic? I actually got both. I got a telacoustic, which was like the new vendor thing at the time. It had a pickup on it, but it was like a semi-hollow thing. It's the first guitar I forgot. I got it, Manny's in New York City on my ninth birthday. Did you spend a lot of time in the city?

A lot. Yeah, I grew up in Connecticut. So I basically spent any free time I could from the time I was like 15 on trying to go to the city. And then once I was 17 on, all my time I spent at studios and interning in New York. When you were, you know, when you got that guitar, did you immediately start, you know, were you listening to, were you trying to play Willie Nelson or a thong song? Like, what were you listening to? Since day one, I felt like that part of my life at home playing instruments and the part of my life, like listening to popular music with my friends were completely separate. I had like my dad's best friend teaching me Eric Clapton, cream.

Alman Brothers stuff and then I'd go to school and talk about like J-Quan or like whatever is on the radio. You know what I mean? And like I think my friends never knew I was playing guitar until way, way later. It was like two different worlds kind of. When did people start noticing that you could play instruments? I don't think anyone knew until I went to college. I went to Berkeley for music, like early decision. So even through high school while you're playing and all that stuff, no one knew you could do

music? I mean, they knew about me producing. So I started doing Kenny Beats. I had a Kenny Beets MySpace from 15 on. So kids kind of knew I made beats, but I'm six foot seven. When you're in high school, it's like, why are you not playing basketball? Like anything else I talked about, my high school wasn't super musical. There was like three other guitar players. So I never got any clout points or any cool points for knowing my two five ones. You know what I mean? On my guitar, like really the beats were the things that my friends all thought were cool. Why didn't you play basketball? I played till senior year and then I quit

because I was like, I'm trying to go to school for music, not be like a D3, you know what I mean? Like power forward. So I just gave it up. And everyone thought I was so dumb. Like my friends got at me so hard and we're like, dude, like, you're six, seven, like you were born to do this. And I just never wanted to do it.

Did you, do you still keep in touch with those guys? A lot of them, yeah, I do. When did they realize that you made the right choice? I did a song for Kendrick when I was like 19. And I remember my Facebook was real popping after that, not as much hate. It's weird how that happens. It's like once they can show their friends what you've done, then that's when you make it. All day, exactly.

So you go, you said you got early action into Berkeley. but you're doing productions at home and you have this MySpace. What is, what was the point of having your MySpace? What were you trying to, were you trying to build a following as a producer? Were you trying to sell Beats? I mean, what's the point of having a MySpace for a producer? At that time, it was networking. I got Twitter the year.

Twitter really got popular. And I got it in 2009 to journal my first internship. I was like, people on Twitter would love to see me break down what it's like to be an intern. And this is 2009. So I had a Myspace pre that. And it was really like my first networking tool. I was with Hit Boy last week who's had an amazing run this year. And I was telling him like, I remember sending you beats at 16 on MySpace.

And now we're hanging out at, you know what I mean, Chalice, like talking about him being up for producer of the year and all this stuff. Like that was the first way I reached people I still know today. You know, there was no Instagram DM. there wasn't these same kind of channels we have now. And even when Twitter started, the biggest people on Twitter were having 100,000 followers, 150,000 followers. So if you were like me and you were a snake and you'd find out who managed to

and blah, blah, blah, the manager only had 5,000 followers. So your shot of getting that message across was way higher than it is now. And I think that was a huge part of how I got all those early internships and some of those early placements was being in the DMs on MySpace and early Twitter, you know, really. Where was your first internship? My first internship was RCA Records and J Records kind of back and forth. I went to school K through 12 with Tom Corson's daughter.

And I didn't know who Tom Corson was or other than like my friend's parent. And when I was a senior in high school, his daughter was like, hey, you should intern for my dad. And I was like, oh, what's your dad do? And she's like, oh, he works at a label. come to find out Tom doesn't necessarily work at a label he kind of is the big dog and even back then that was true so they set me up this internship uh I was answering phones for Keith Naftily first with Peter Edge right down the hallway then they moved me over to be an intern for an assistant named John Eman and he was answering phones for Larry Jackson so the lineage is so

crazy because Larry Jackson now runs you know what I mean like beats or runs Apple and John even went on to sign Lana Del Rey, now he manages ASAP Rocky. I was the intern at this time and all these people went on to, they're still killing it, all of them in the industry. And I was known to be like the intern Tom Corson brought in. So everyone would give me a little bit extra tip, maybe take me for lunch, whatever, because I somehow went to public school with his daughter and that's, that was my end. So I did that first internship at RCA and J. And it was a very typical label internship. And then my second internship was for Johnny Shipes, which was no school credit, no money, no nothing. He had just started managing big crit. It just stopped working with Nipsey Hustle.

And so my first year interning, half of it was at the label, super structured, super coffee runs, listening to demos, all that kind of stuff. And then my other half was like being stranded in the city without the right routing number to go drop off some money and stuck trying to call this guy on three phones who managed rappers and I kind of got both sides of the coin all at once at 17, 18 years old. You were doing this while being in high school? Yes. How? It was like the last six months of high school whenever you have to do an internship to get out of my high school.

And that's I started doing RCA and J. And then Johnny Shipes, I got him to follow me on Twitter. I read that summer when I was transitioning to go to college. And then that summer I started working for Johnny. And I was like, yo, I just interned for J, RCA, Dada, and I was already using my first resume point within weeks of doing it. I mean, just to give an idea of who some of these people are for those who don't know, Tom Corson now is the co-head of Warner Records with Aaron Bayshuck and Peter Edge now runs RCA. Of course, Nathley is head of A&R at RCA. So these are like no small names that you just, you know, that you've got to start to see.

I could see why that would become addicting when you can sort of see how these, you know, how the thing, how the machine works on the inside. Do you think any of that insight actually helps you now when you're dealing with A&R people and record labels? A hundred percent. I think even more so than stuff I learned being a music business, major in a in a like a music school you know what I mean I've since had conversations with every single one of those people like I think I don't think Tom and I have spoken the last couple years but besides that like I had a call with Keith recently I was at a show with peter edge right before quarantine john even came by my studio a couple weeks ago and we all talk about like you guys have known me

since I was 17 years old I'm 29 I'm still in it somehow in some other capacity and like those dudes all gave me advice that I can specifically say I've used in my career it benefited from and now they're calling me about working with certain artists or whatever it may be and i can tell them to my face like hey john thanks for giving me that little extra insight that day as an intern because you know what i mean you you stop being an assistant very soon after that and i and what i am today and i think a lot of that attributes to it yeah it's it's an unbelievable amount of good luck to have been at that building at that time even just as an intern Yeah, shout out to John. That guy's great.

You go to Berkeley for what? Why even go to school? There was no way in hell I was doing anything if I didn't go to school. My mom, since I was born, you're going to go to college. You're going to graduate college. I had to do it for my mom, period. There was no way around it. It was not be a part of my family anymore or go to college.

So I knew I was going to go to music. school. I got to Berkeley. I auditioned for guitar. I got in for guitar, but I kind of always knew I was going to go for production or business or something of the sort. And on my first day at Berkeley, I realized I was the worst guitar player there. And that kind of set my path straight from day once of not trying to be this amazing instrumentalist or be this specific shredder at any one thing. It was like, oh, I'm going to facilitate shredders. That's what I'm going to be. no that's really you know the curse of somebody who's really skilled really educated at an instrument is the inability to be simple you know there's a some of the best writers i know can barely spell can't really sing they don't have any skill set like that

that would that would get you even into berkeley and you know you find that the people who can recognize who the talented are often more successful than the ones who are actually talented. I mean, someone I think is a great example of that, who I had a run in with many years ago in my career, is J-Cash. You know, like, Jay-Cash is the first person to tell you, I suck,

I can't sing, I don't do anything good, I somehow end up writing a lot of these really big songs. And it's because J-Cash kind of sees this different part of the matrix when you walk into that Swede-centric pop room from being from Virginia Beach being a fan of so much rap stuff and this and that that he might see a simpler way to say something, more colloquial way to say something, a slang term that might fit those three corny words together

in a different way. And that is unbelievably valuable as his career has shown. But yeah, there's not a specific thing to what he does. And I met Jay Cash. He was the first person's house I went to my first trip to L.A., actually, which is another weird run in. But I got invited to Jay Cash's house and he was interested in the stuff I was making as a DJ. I was making like almost EDM-ish type music at one point, and J-Cash hit me up because of that. And for him to have the foresight to see, like, my little instrumental shit maybe working out in years from now

as actual records, I think is exactly what you're talking about. He kind of has this unbelievable A&R eye more than he has perfect pitch or a great tone to his voice, you know? You started doing the DJing stuff while at Berkeley, right? Correct. I started getting my first couple of placements while I was there, And I would get a shitty contract and $2,500. And two weeks later, my life would be exactly the same minus like one or two people hitting me up.

And I started realizing like, if I get out of school and I'm going to have to survive as a producer the way I am right now, there's no way it's going to work. I'm going to end up having to go work at some label or some thing. So my friend had already dropped out of Berkeley as they all do and went to L.A., hit me and said, yo, I've been going to these shows. And these kids are basically just playing beats like you're making all instrumental. and it's going nuts. And that was R.L. Grime, that was Bauer. That was that first iteration of kind of like rapy kind of dance music stuff. And so within a week of putting up a sound cloud of my instrumental dance kind of stuff,

I was on the phone with Jeff Fawn. I was getting flown out to L.A. I was doing all these different things that I'd never done before via my rap production career or even having worked with Schoolboy Q, Kendrick, Mac Miller, all these different people at that age, there was really no value in me as a producer. I was such a replaceable beat in an email. Me becoming an artist and doing the DJ thing was the first time I experienced all that shit I always wanted to experience, you know, as far as people really hitting me up and being after

me and my music. How did people find your SoundCloud? I mean, people put up music all the time and it's not necessarily that it goes viral in the matter of a week. I mean, there has to be some hustle attached to it. I put out this music, right? Well, I think at that time period, I'll be the first one to tell you, like, it was such a bubble and such a hyped up scene.

If you were dropping something decent within that couple months in 2012, 2013 that fit the scope, you were going to end up on the mad decent blog. You were going to end up on ear milk. You were going to end up on hypeum or hype machine or whatever the fuck. Like, those things were very attainable. If you went and made a Rihanna remix with a big 808 and put it up on SoundCloud during those couple months, it felt that easy. honestly and I'll attribute this to APG's ear. I'll be honest about them. Like Miles Beard, Ben Madhahi,

Jeff Vaughn had reached out to me within a week of having a SoundCloud. That's the truth. I had a sound cloud for one week as this new DJ pseudonym and I was getting hit up by them saying, hey, we work with APG, work with Atlantic Records, we'd love to have a meeting if you're ever in LA, really love what you're doing. I think we'd like to put you in some artists. I was in a session with DJ Frankie, you know what I mean, maybe a week later. I mean, that's one of the things that you mentioned a couple people in the industry already in this conversation that are some of the best at looking at new talent and not needing it to be co-signed by every other label or publisher or producer in the business to work with. So, for example, if you end up sending your music to most people in the business, most of them want to know who else you're talking to, you know, or, they want to have heard your name through, you know, channels of people who already

heard it from whoever the tastemaker is. But you're certainly, you certainly were discovered partly, I'm sure, you know, you being aggressive and getting it out there and them being willing to listen with positive ears to what's next. And, you know, do you have that same kind of ear? Like when people send you beats, can you tell when somebody has talent? There's a kid recently who popped out of my Discord. I have a Discord, which is basically a server, a chat server that is nonstop all the time. We have the second biggest discord in music, actually, my, like Kenny Beets Discord. This kid named DVR from Scotland popped out a couple weeks ago, heard his music, played it on stream, thought it was really good. He's been sent about

six, seven deals now. Everybody, every big label you could mention, you know what I mean? I'm pretty sure he's signing with my same management company. He's going crazy. I think I definitely, I definitely feel like I hear amazing shit all the time and I'm put on to amazing shit all the time, whether it's from a weird niche place or it's somebody young or it's whatever. All I do is take sessions and hang out with musicians and producers and this and that. And I want to know everyone's favorite shit. The difference for me is that info is only valuable to me in the sense that I want to go work with that person. I have no publishing company.

I have no intention of signing anybody. I've never done that. And when I went and took my initial admin situation, I mean, it's kind of like that one moment for producers when you get that publishing deal, when you get that first deal, they say, okay,

well now, would you like to start your own situation? Would you like to start a label? Would you like to start signing kids? Like, we just brought you in. We believe in your talent. Is there anyone you think we could bring in as well? When I came to that crossroads,

everybody I look up to and everybody I respect gave me the same advice except for Benny Blanco. And I'll tell you what everybody told me. And that was, you have a moment right now, Kenny, like, there's a lot of momentum. You're doing a lot of songs for people, get a lot of eyes on you and a big following. You should start signing kids right now. You should start putting people on. You should start, you know what I mean? Developing this roster of people you think are really talented.

And when I talk to Benny about it, Benny said, make yourself hot first. I love that way more. Whether everyone else is right and me and Benny are on an island, when Benny told me that, and obviously we know this is someone from past and the writer is episodes who can stand on their own two feet as far as a producer. Like Benny is someone who came from the biggest reign in pop music maybe ever with Max and Luke and all of that and just developed his own situation,

had huge hits, had all these, continuing to have these big records. He has Justin Bieber's song right now. he's a co-artist on it. Like, Penny did it his way, and he took his time with it. And when I finally sign one of these kids,

I think is amazing. When I hear this talent that I think is the next one, which I do hear all the time, when I want to finally help that kid and make it a part of my situation, I want to make sure they go. The second I point a finger at them, they go.

Ross needs to have a session with them immediately. This person needs a session with them immediately, da-da-da. Like, that's what I need. The second I pull the trigger. I don't think I'm there yet. well that'll be easy because you'll just call me and we'll just sign them together there we go that does bring up something though you being also an artist though i mean like you said

making yourself hot and it is a lot of branding and whatnot you know you've been an artist as you know you're a feature on on so many of the songs you do um obviously that's somewhat by design do you feel that puts more pressure on you or is that just more, you know, does that make it more fun? I mean, why, it's not like a producer right now is always behind the scenes. Why are you in front of the scenes? Whenever I came back to just doing Kenny production stuff, I had done this one project at the cave, which is my shitty little studio for no cost at all. And it was for this rapper Hoodridge Pablo Juan. We did a whole album. I produced the whole thing. I mixed the whole thing. I mastered the whole thing. I mastered the whole did every single bit of production on it. And when we did the deal for the album,

which was the first deal I was doing as Kenny coming back to producing for artists, my manager, Mike, was also my best friend for many years before we worked together. Mike was like, oh, you're fucked. He's like, you really hold no value here. They can go replace these beats in 10 seconds with a million other kids who want to work with Pablo. You're not going to have anything to say when it comes to the creative or the branding or anything that goes on with this project once it hits the world. And on top of that, the amount of master you're getting on this,

the pub they're going to give you on this, it's all awful and there's not really much you can fight for because they can replace you in two seconds, you know? And when we realized that it was not like a deterrent to me, it didn't make me want to go, oh, I'm not going to do this anymore. I need to figure out a new angle. I had to figure out value in a different way. And for me, at this moment in my career,

and I'd probably say this for the last three years, I'd rather take my tag on DSPs on streaming platforms than an extra 10, 20, 30 grand any day of the week. I'd rather have that tag. And the reason is, whenever you look at my Spotify this month, I think this month I'm rocking, what, four or five million monthly listeners.

Say I'm putting out a song with a new artist who has a lot of momentum, doing their thing, whatever. They probably have, unless they're top of the pops every single big Spotify player, this will probably have a couple million monthly listeners. When they see how many Kenny Beetz has on this side of it, they go,

if we put Kenny's name on this song, five million more people are going to stream this song that month. It becomes a position of power where these labels want to include me in the video, the release, this and that. But the one thing I really, really stand firmly behind is never being in front of an artist and never releasing a Kenny Beetz featuring song.

Because just personally, in my eyes, when I see blah, blah, blah, blah, featuring Ty Dahlsine, a producer forward single, I assume if that was Ty's best record, it'd be the leading single for his album. It immediately gives me this weird feeling of, why did the producer get that record? Why is it a producer featuring whatever? If it was the featuring artists, best thing they had, why wouldn't that just be on their album? So in my eyes, putting my name in front of an artist takes away from how you hear the music.

But at the same token, I'd rather get my name somewhere on that artwork, somewhere on the DSPs posted next to that artist's name, whenever it comes up, then any advance you could give me or any back-end amount of money or royalty, because like you're saying, now I get treated like an artist in these rooms. And it comes to a point where if you want to start releasing music as an artist, which I don't necessarily want to,

but you'll get a way bigger share of the song. You'll get a way bigger share of the ownership. And I think fighting towards that, rather than fighting towards having Drake-level beat fees, makes more sense to me as far as longevity. Why is it that producers have that ability, but songwriters tend to not? I can't tell you, Ross. I can't tell you because my involvement in your involvement or a songwriter's involvement is really no different,

especially like knowing someone like you who sees the engineering side, sees the vocal production side, sees the songwriting side, sees the regular old production side. Like we're doing the same jobs, really, at the end of the day. And I think any great songwriter or great producer or great engineer does a piece of all three and has to and or be ready to. So that doesn't make sense to me. I don't know why you couldn't have pick up the phone be Travis Scott, young thug, quavo Stara. I don't know why those things don't exist. You know what I mean?

Like for me, for them to put my corny, lanky, like white-ass, in their video, you know what I mean, for no reason to give me all that love and all that promo when I really want to just be behind the scenes. Like, they could do that for any songwriter they wanted to if they had the relationship or they felt the need to and I don't know why they don't. Honestly, Ariana putting her songwriters so prevalently in some of her videos and them all surrounding her and this. And that's one of the only people I've seen do it. Yeah, there's this weird thing. In country music, it's so different because they, I've been in situations where a really big artist has come up and actually said,

thank you for letting me have the opportunity to cut this song. And it's like shockingly big names. And in pop music, it's just not that. It's just like so many people, I mean, I got a wall right here and half of those people do interviews about what inspired them to write a song. that was a, you know, a pitch song that they took. And in country music, they'll actually say, you know, they'll say, well, this song means this to me. It was actually written by these other guys, but the reason why I cut it was because

it meant this to me. Or, you know, you co-write them with them and they're like, I actually wrote this with my friend, whoever, whoever, whoever. And not that we do it for that, but it doesn't hurt to get, you know, a little bit of love. I think, I hope that that that paradigm kind of shifts, you know, because I've been a huge beneficiary of artists just giving me that extra bit of love or that extra post on their Instagram the day we're working or whatever it might be. And it's led to an unbelievable more amount of opportunities for me because people kind of see like, oh, they rock with me maybe more than the average person they're working with because they're posting about me or they're going back and forth with me on their social media.

songwriters are normally even closer with the artist than the producer are so I can't see why that wouldn't be the same thing I really don't know the answer. You have, you know, usually I go through a discography and it's pretty crazy. It's, you know, it's sort of like,

you know, once you get into about 2018, everything blows up. You know, it goes from, you know, a few cuts here or there. Obviously, you're hustling the whole time, but why what's the moment that makes everybody want a Kenny Beach record? I don't know.

I can't answer that question. I don't feel like that's how people feel. I just think there were, to 2008 I put out about 100 songs. I sorry, 2018, excuse me, 2018, I put out about 100 songs. And I would go from working with five people in California to five people in the DMV to five people in Memphis to a bunch of people in Texas to blah, blah, blah. It was so many different niche scenes. And I was working with a bunch of producers

and a bunch of artists from every single one. And it was kind of this feverish, ego-driven need to prove how big of a fan I am of all these different sub-genres because I am this imposter in black music. I just came from a stint of making dance music. I don't have any credits or any specific things to show. I need to come in and prove to ever.

every single one of these people in each one of these scenes, whether they're a producer, artist, label team, blah, blah, blah. I'm the biggest fan. I'll do the most work. I don't give a shit about the money. And how do we make more music? And my attitude really hasn't changed. Like when I go to therapy, now I talk about the need to not work,

whereas years ago I would go to therapy and talk about how I wish my work meant more and all these kinds of things, you know. But it's really shifted in my, my brain only in the way that I really want to make sure that anybody who does have an experience with me or works with me gets 100% of what they came for. And that is just, you know what I mean? Like me building out their world. It's not a specific beat. It's not a specific tag or anything from me that I'm going to give them or a drum vibe or whatever it is. It's just I'm going to work the hardest to make what you're trying to do come true. And I think you can see that from the

people I work with because they're just so different. Are you a workaholic now? I am. I feel like I coasted for so much of my life. So many of the years we're talking about with these cool names in them and these one-off stories or placements or whatever, I was coasting. I feel like till 25, 26 and I'm 29 right now, I was coasting. I've done music my whole life. But did I ever spend 12, 14, 16 hours in the studio?

Never. Did I ever spend a whole month nonstop making music every day? Never. I always carve time out for me and I always carve time out to hang with people and all these different things. But then I'd sit there and be sad that I haven't made enough music or I haven't ever had a hit or I haven't, you know what I mean, done anything, but all I do is music. What do I have to show for it? And I had this moment in Australia when I was touring, fortunate to be playing shows, fortunate to be making money doing music. But I had this moment of, man, if I get hit by a car tomorrow, I'm leaving. behind buildups, drops, and a couple little rap songs. That's what I leave behind at 26. If I go out tomorrow and it panicked me to depression, it panicked me to an unbelievable, not healthy extent. But what I started doing around that time, 2016, 2017, I started going to the studio and doing all of my homework and studying like a valedictorian instead of paying attention in class

and getting C's and Bs. I really studied. I really did my homework for the first time in my life in around 2017. And once I actually started putting the time in, I actually started getting results. And I had this thing my whole life of, I know what I can do. I know what records I can make. I know I'm better than this person, but I couldn't prove that shit on my computer. So I said, let me prove how good I think I am in my head.

And you can see it in whatever Wikipedia discography you're looking for. From that moment, it was just non-fucking stop. And don't think that because I started getting 50, 60, 70 records that my team and everyone around me was like, oh, man, Kenny, you're gunning it. Like, we love this new, bro. Every single one of those records was $1,000, horrible points, horrible deals, crazy teams, weird, fucked up rap situations. My lawyer, my business manager, my manager are looking at me like, Kenny, we just did 50 contracts. You're about to make like 25 grand. Like, what the fuck are you doing here?

This is a lot of work you're doing, but this isn't adding up to anything. Then at the end of the year, when it turned into Vince Staples albums and Ed Shearing songs, and my lawyers at the Grammy Party, like, oh, well, you know, it's prolific. But they didn't get it at first. You know, it was this thing I knew I had to prove. And I had to prove it to myself before anybody else. So why are you trying to slow down now when you said you talk to your therapist? Like, what do you say to that?

Like, is it or is that now the conversation you said you have with your therapist? The conversation I have in my therapist is how do I enjoy time off from working in music actually? Because right now when I step away from it, I have this panic of there's something I could be doing and move the needle today. I'm getting complacent. I'm finally in a position where I can pay my fucking rent and help my family out. And I'm going to go take Sunday and fucking sit around and out. I can't do it because of this never-ending fear of what was going on before. for when no one cared of when I didn't have enough money of all these different things and

it's like people will shake me and be like Kenny like look at how much shit you did this week like take Sunday off you know and I and then I will and I'll be staring at the TV thinking about where my eye lock is and how I can you know like I need to learn how to truly balance I sit with Rick Rubin I sit with Rick Rubin barefoot at Shangriot he's telling he told me I'm not ready to meditate yet like I got I got a little bit of work before I can balance because these last couple years, I was just like, man, if I don't start proving this to myself what I'm capable of, what else am I doing here? And now that's natural. Now, being in the studio for 16 hours a day is natural. I don't feel weird about coming here at 7 a.m. and going to

bed at midnight and just having taken two breaks. It feels normal. And that's not normal. You know, it's not. A friend of mine who's Dr. Eric Bean, who if people want to follow him, A guy I went to college with, he does sports psychology and works with surgeons and Navy SEALs and all these things. And he's, he really stressed with me for a while about actively taking time off, actively taking a day off. Just like if you're an athlete that that, you know, you take a day off. You don't work out every day. You take that one day off to let your muscles recoup. But it doesn't mean that when you're in that mode, you don't want to be like, I can work.

I can work every day. Yeah. Of course I can work every day. But turning off, I think the moment for me was like, and this is your interview, not mine. But, you know, it's, I try to take weekends off. I know that that's like a loose thing. But the idea is just that I want to work on Saturday. But if I force myself to not work on weekends, then that means that I can't wait to go in on Monday.

True. And then I hustle like crazy from Monday to Friday because I have a finite time to work rather than, you know, when I would do double sessions and add in weekends. I found that to be like, I don't know the difference between Saturdays and Wednesdays. And that gets really complicated in having, you know. I think that's a personal life. I do. I have a girl. I have a dog.

I have plenty of friends. I employ a lot of my friends. Like I keep them around me all the time, you know. I really do, but I think I'm just slowly, after these years of like finally putting in the work for the first time, just starting to get used to what it feels like, again, to be comfortable and be chill with where I'm at now, because I didn't feel like that for so long. But you know who gave me the best advice on this topic? Wasn't Rick, it wasn't who you would think it would be.

Gucci Man gave me the best advice of anyone on getting out of the studio. And I was with Gucci in Miami. We did a couple of songs on his last album. And Gucci cuts the studio at anywhere like noon to two. And at 8 p.m., this man leaves the studio like a school bell. When 8 p.m. hits, it doesn't matter if it's not bounced for today. It doesn't matter if there's one ad lib left. It does not matter.

He leaves at 8 p.m. every day from the studio. And he goes to the studio on a very specific regiment. But what Gucci told me was the amount of years I spent in rooms with no. windows full of smoke or in prison for me to spend all day every day sitting in here making music whether i make a million hits that make a million dollars each it's going to take so much time off my life just sitting in here and go and listen to these beats and doing this that like where am i really enjoying my life where am i really enjoying all this work that i've done he's like i've done this for 20 years nonstop it's time for me to spend a piece of my day every day outside he said whether

It's rain hidden no matter what. I spend a portion every day outside because I spent so many years in rooms with no windows. And Gucci Man's released 100 albums. I don't care if you're in a room with Max Martin. I don't care if you're in a room with Adele. I don't care who it is that we look up to. Gucci is prolific. He's released an unbelievable amount of music.

There could be 50,000 Gucci Man songs, you know? And like, he's the one telling me, Kenny, go breathe. So when he tells me, I fucking really believe it. And I have ever since, thank you. I mean, there's no question that an empty studio, an empty studio sitting there is, we were actually trying to pop Juan Zelle about this. An empty studio is really scary. It has all this potential. You can create an asset in there and you're just not.

But on the other hand, you know, I live in L.A. I don't know. Are you in L.A. right now? I am. Yeah, yeah. You know, like there's this little area over off cold water where you can go and look at turtles outside. And every once in a while, I go and I leave here and I say to my wife,

I'm like, hey, let's go drive over and look at the turtles. And we go and we look at turtles and ducks are on the turtles. And you're like, man, you know what? Hell yeah, they're ducks and turtles. And it's not, you look at a bunch of turtles and you're not thinking about, like, how high this song is charting. is this coming out? Why isn't this person emailed me?

Are they mad? Are they happy? Totally. You're not thinking about any of that. You're just living outside of the bubble. You know, it's like, that's a really good advice from Gucci.

There you go. You know, and then obviously, like you were saying, you put in all that hustle, 100 songs or whatever in 2018. 2019, you start having Gucci,

FK Twigs. and obviously, you know, like Rico nasty, but Ed Shearin's at such a different level than everybody. Yeah. How did you get connected to Ed? I was in Japan with Scrillix, working on music with Sunny. And that's actually where the FK.

Twig song with Future came out of. It came out of working in Japan that week. And then also the song with Ed and Stormzy. and since actually making that record Fred Gibson has become like my super homie who was the third person who worked on that record me Fred and Sonny did that Ed Shearine record together but um I was in the studio every day with like ski mask the slump god or I was in studio with Vince Staples every day or like all these kind of like really talented young rapper artist dudes and Sunny hit me and was like yo I'm finishing a bunch of records for myself for other people this and that I I'd love to just like play shit for you, listen to shit. And we were in just such a similar mode at the time. I was playing him stuff. He was playing me stuff.

And we were like, yo, we should just both work on whatever the other one's working on. And it's scrylicks, man. Like it's, you know, I've known him for years in different capacities, but this is a genre bending huge artists who has changed music in one way or another a couple times. You know, and Sunny has everything from big Bieber songs to big festival songs. And whenever he starts saying you want to work on stuff, you never know. It might just be he's working on a Bieber thing. He's working on an Ed thing.

So we were in the studio. We were working on some other song. And he's like, you know what? I'm supposed to take a stab at this Ed thing. I've got some of it done. But like I could just use a hand. Like what do you think? Do you hear anything?

He gave it to me. I went and flipped it. I probably worked on it 20 minutes, 20, 30 minutes, sent it back. I had actually done too much. I took the main sound and like replayed it. this and then I sit there back and they're like oh no we like we like some of this and they took back my pieces

I'm sure Fred did his thing and then I flew to London a couple weeks later not really maybe a month later two months later wasn't really thinking about it and I'm sitting at Nando's and my manager and we're about to go have a meeting at Capitol and we're just sitting there eating whatever

and my manager goes do we have the number one song in London and I was like what and I just look up from my half chicken and he goes, we have the number one song in London right now. And I'd been in London for less than 12 hours. Taking me back to London was number one for eight weeks. That was like the first week.

And so I went to all my meetings that day, having the number one record in the country. Everyone was really nice to me at the meetings. It's so hard to time this shit up. You can try. You can try to plan trips. You can, you know, this happens when you're doing your kind of travel. and your kind of work ethic too, is that you've an abundance of music out there. So these situations will continue to happen to you because of the quality and quantity that you're putting out.

But those things, you cannot plan that. It's just something you can enjoy. But I will tell you, you can use it to your advantage. And what I will say is that whenever that happened, you can see from looking at what I do, Ross. And I'm sure you know, you and I have a mutual friend and Jared. And Jared and I have done a lot of work together. Like whenever I go to on these trips and I go to these label meetings, I'm not the guy who's talking about, hey, who's your top shelf roster that I can get in with? I'm always working with the young, weird, cool person.

That's much more of my roster and what I'm doing every week in my sessions. I'm not as much in the writing camps for the Rihanna record as I am trying to go work with twigs. You know, I'm always doing these kind of other things. So when the Ed thing happened and then I ask about getting in a certain rap session, I'm in that session. You know, when I just did the Ed Shearing Stormsy song and I go, yo, can you guys please link me up with Digdat, SL, H, any one of these young rappers who I really like in London, those sessions happen much faster because they see what I'm doing over here.

And then I've released about, like, 20 songs with UK artists this year, something like that. I did, I additional produced a whole album for idols, just James Vincent McMorrell's single, a song with Baccar, four songs with SL, did H's last single, did a song with slow tie, a whole bunch of stuff. So really that Ed thing, and a couple trips to London led to about 30 records coming out during quarantine that I did in another country because last year I laid all this groundwork and now we're sitting here like no one can even go to London

you know what I mean and I have all these drill songs coming out with rappers over there and people are like what the fuck like you know it's synchronicity amazing about the positive of being in quarantine is that you can work with anyone anywhere in the world and they get used to

working with you because you know you're in a studio all day so they know where you are so working in love It's like I feel like you can work in, you really can work in Nashville, Atlanta. Anywhere you are, it doesn't matter because we're all on the computer.

Speaking of new artists and you mentioned Jared, Dominic Fike, I think I said Ian Dore earlier, what I really meant was Dominic Fike. So whenever we go back and I redo the intro, or I don't, that's why. Dominic Fike, you had, you know, you're obviously so intertwined in breaking this

guy's career. Phone numbers being a big one with our friend Jared Sharf, who's co-producer Jared, co-producer Jared, yes. You know, why Dominic? He's amazing, but I feel like that guy's one of those next up guys in the same level as, you know, as Vince Staples, these guys that it's sort of inevitable. Why Dominic? Why did phone numbers work? One of my questions, and this is a question I've asked people on the label side, I'm just curious from your side, phone numbers, which has hundreds of millions of streams, why doesn't that become a radio single? And what does it take to break someone like Dominic who's as talented as he is? A couple questions in there. Okay, let me start with how it happened. I was at a studio

in New York. Someone played three nights, which is that song that everyone knows by Dom, which is the song really that Dom got signed by. And halfway through three nights, literally halfway through the song, I DMed him, like, if you ever want to work, you ever need free studio time, whatever, let me know. Within 30 minutes of sending that DM, people gave me to break down on Dominic, which was he just signed quite a big deal. There was quite a big bidding war. Every big pop producer in the world right now is looking at this kid trying to make some cool new smash. They think he could be a cross between posting this and da-da-da. And everyone's telling me all this big wig shit about what's on the hype about Dominic Fike. I just heard one song and I DM the kid because I thought

the song was dope and I didn't realize all this backside and stressful competition so after everyone told me what the deal was with him I was like all right whatever like that kid's probably you know what I mean in a room with Benny right now working on his next smash for the radio like you're saying so Dom ended up

DMing me back and was like yo I love Vince Staples let's get in so it's funny that you just brought Vince up but I had recently done an album with Vince called FM Dom listens to a lot of rap shit and I think if I had been whatever big pop producer or big person who does like bedroom pop stuff or whatever and I was hitting Dom he would have felt this pressure of oh this dude's trying to come in and make another three nights with me whereas I think he saw Kenny beats DMM and was like this is a rap producer who just probably wants to like smoke weed and kick it or whatever like there's not as much stress to that as like Columbia putting me in a writing camp so when Dom came by we smoked a bunch of weed we just talked shit like we didn't really it wasn't that serious we wrote phone

numbers and the outro to his album the first day I met him. Both songs. The outro to his album, by the way, which is Mitch by Tom Elmhurst, which was a beautiful surprise. But the song's called Florida. We wrote both those songs the first day I met Dom. And somewhere along the session, it was about a 10 hour, 12 hour session. His manager and one of his main co-producers, engineers, crews came by. And they go, he did this all today. I was like, what do you mean? because there's certain people, you know how it is. Some people make three songs a day. So Dom had done all the phone numbers basically in this other song.

They were like, he did all of this. And I was like, yeah, what? Is that like, is that weird? I didn't realize that Dom had zero finished songs. Zero. So Don had nothing but a million starting finished ideas. And a lot of them are finished songs that are out now. But at the time, like, he was just going from ID to ID and wasn't stoked.

So the fact that I got him to lock in for that long and finish a song was an anomaly. That song came out. It did its thing. A couple months later, we're performing it on Jimmy Fallon together. You know, like, it was a really wild moment. But because there was no pressure, that's why the song happened. That's why it's as good as it is. That's why Dom was comfortable to make it. That's why he finished the song that day.

I didn't know about his deal. I didn't know about the hype. I didn't know about all this shit. And I think he could feel in that room that if he left, he didn't do shit that day. I didn't care. And if we just smoked, it was cool. I don't think any of his sessions felt like that at the time. The first day I met Omar Apollo, we made Hit Me Up, which is his number,

number one song on Spotify featuring Dominic. First day I met Deb Never, we made Stone Cold, which is her biggest song. It's this thing about my shitty studio and me being a dude who's not in their world and having no agenda, no expectations that they come in there and they're like, I can't really just fucking do my thing and no one care. Kenny doesn't even have a hit or care what a hit is. So like, let's just do our thing. And then it's worked for me time and time and time again.

And when I moved to a new spot and left that studio, I was like, oh, those moments with Dom, this kind of unsuspecting thing is never going to feel the same when I get out of my shitty rehearsal space because what scared a lot of these artists I worked with away was this clandestine, gorgeous room with these powerful people and these hitmakers. It needed to be shitty.

I needed to be this other person to make those kinds of things work. That song is the, you know, phone numbers in particular was the first time that I had been introduced to what you do, obviously because of Jared. But it's really interesting to have watched into transition a little bit right now

from seeing what you're doing as a producer and then pretty quickly after that because that happened last year, we're now in quarantine. And the way you've embraced being in quarantine is very similar to how you embrace SoundCloud. You know, you haven't slowed down, you've used it as an opportunity

rather than a reason why. you can't travel to London. Instead, you're becoming a staple in Twitch and a staple in, you know, multiple, I listed a few, but there are so many different ways that you're getting the word out of how to produce, which you don't have to do. I suppose there's some, you know, there's some money that you can get from Twitch and some of these things, but why are you so dedicated to teaching? I'm an imposter in my industry. I'm a white guy who makes black music. You know what I mean?

I feel unbelievably fortunate to be given a shot, to be able to do anything, to be able to pay my bills doing music. It didn't feel possible for so long. I'm definitely a late bloomer, no matter how you look at it. Like, I know you have a kind of similar story, Ross, like you started writing around like 29 when you left your band, you know,

like I'm 29 years old. Like I was doing this since I was 15 years old. And now for whatever reason, it's working for me. And all those past mistakes and failures and fuckups and miss network opportunities have collided to become this current year of my life where I can walk into most rooms with most people I want to work with. And that's all I ever wanted, you know?

So when someone asked me, you know, Kenny, was it always like this? You know, Kenny, like, how do you do this production thing? Yo, Kenny did it? I'm like, the least I can fucking do is tell you guys what I'm doing or tell you guys what I used on this song or tell you about when I was shitty or tell you about when I didn't feel good enough or tell you about when someone, I signed a shit-ass contract because I wasn't smart enough to know better.

Like, I talk about these things very openly because no one talked about them for me and I'm not scared of sharing the sauce. But, man, that's not the least. you could do, the least you could do is nothing and most people do nothing. You and I are in an industry where most people feel like it's like it's being a magician. Nobody talks about trade secrets. And then here we are out there constantly trying to explain people how to write songs. Why create competitors? Can I ask you a question? Sure. Are you scared that if you divulge how you write songs, what you think about when you write songs,

the way you've learned to write songs that you're not ever going to have more good songs or you're never going to improve. Oh. It's interesting to say that only because I will say this, that what makes this kind of podcast exciting is that you knew the podcast before we met. You know?

Very well, yeah. And that makes me think that what we're doing is helpful. And it's creating people who do their thing. What I do, I think, is really unique in that I'm really disciplined in what I see as music theory, and yet I choose words that no one else will choose, which makes my songs quirkier and a little bit different than what everybody else does. And I don't know how you can, like, it would take me just as long to teach everybody exactly what I do. And I think that's my point is like, you can explain that. You can give them that theory statement of what you do. But even in walking someone through it, they can never do what you do.

And like, I'm not necessarily saying that about myself. You can't do what I do. But what I'm saying is... No, but that's true. I just stay of student mind. And I heard something one time where someone said, once you say, I don't know, you open yourself up to infinite wisdom. Like, once you say, I know how to do this, I know how to engineer, I know how to whatever. No one's ever going to show you another plugin or teach you another, you know what I mean?

command and Ableton or whatever. So with me, every single day of my life, and I mean every day, I have a conversation or spend some time with someone I think is smarter than me. Period. I'm the dumbest person in the room as much as I possibly can be. And so next week I'm going to be working on my drum recording the week after that. I might be doing a lot of shit with hardware since the week after that I'm really interested in vocal production. I'm always trying to teach myself new skills so I can cover more blind spots. So what is it for me to like, teach someone my blind spot from, you know what I mean, two years ago. You know what I mean?

Like, it's, I just, I just, it seems obvious to me. And once I started doing it on Twitch and I do, I do these beat battles weekly, which is a big part of the Twitch. Like we give away a couple thousand dollars. That's one of my things that I wanted to talk about. Well, we'll talk about battle, I'm sure. But like, the whole point is when I got on Twitch and I started talking about shit, I would realize when I break down phone numbers by Dominic Fike,

whenever I make a beat in front of them, that's the best beat I've made all month. whenever I give them a secret plug-in, the attention span would be this much, the followers would be this much, the amount of people who cared would be this much. When I talked about getting fucked over when I was younger, when I talked about dumb things I did in sessions that made me look like an idiot,

twice as many people would tune in, twice as many kids would ask me questions, twice as many people would stay in my Instagram live instead of dipping in and out. And I started to realize, whoa, you can see anything else about production you want except the bullshit. Like no one's ever going to tell you about the bullshit from their perspective.

It's always vague. It's always this could happen. I fuck myself over. I made dumb decisions. I didn't work hard enough. I did it. And I say that to kids and they go, damn.

You know, like last night I spent two hours with a young producer who is a really close friend of my team, basically. It's someone's little brother. And they've been going through it. They played a bunch of festivals. They've done a bunch of shows and stuff.

And he's just like, yo, I'm sick of doing this music I'm making. I want to make this other music. I feel like shit, I hate myself, blah, blah, blah. I was like, bro, just come over. And we spent just two hours last night, literally just, I loaded up his hard drive with sounds and drums and all types of stuff.

And then we just talked for two hours. And I told him, I was you three years ago, you know? And that kid hit me today and was like, bro, like, I'm ready to go. Like, he's 21. He's going to be rich by 25. Like, I'm not worried about him. But that, I feel that moment so heavy still, just a couple years ago. Every single one of my employees, my teammates, my friends, we all have these hoodies

that say last January that we all made for each other. Because I would do all these interviews in 2018, and I would say last January, I had $1,000 in my bank account. That was true. In 2017, I had a bunch of business issues. I had to handle all these old manager commissions,

ager commissions. I paid taxes for the first time. My dad was very, very sick. I was covering all these expenses. I was fucked and I had $1,000 in my pocket. And a year later, I was a fucking millionaire on billboard

with all these different things going on, you know? And it was one year of going, hard for the first time ever. And when I tell that to kids, they go, bro, in a year I can change my fucking life. This isn't a mystery anymore. Like, you know?

There's no substitution for that. And that's the impossible thing to, you can lead by example, but you better want it. You really want to, you really want to succeed. You genuinely have to be the one. I have to be in this studio writing a song

every day. This is one of the, I'm, you know, I'm older than you are, but you still have to go, if you want it, you have to hustle because nobody does it for you. And nobody wants to hear your music. That's like some advice that I got early on is no one, no one's waiting for your music. There are huge artists who release music all the time that are flops because no one's waiting for their music either. Nobody wants any music.

They only want undeniable hits. And they don't even know they want it yet. So you have to give it to them in a way that is absolutely bulletproof. If you think that you're going to send a song that has mistakes that some A&R guy is going to, like, I remember this early on too. When you're younger, you send out all these songs to A&R guys and artists and you assume that they are going to hear the potential in that song. And that they will go and hire the guy at the label or whoever does like lyric fixes or who does

like drum fixes or you think like there's like all these little like music gnomes at labels that that these a and our guys are oh man that that that is in that there is some seed way deep down there i'm going to go and bring the best writers to finish this record nobody will do that it's so shocking everybody sends half done 70% songs and and then hope that that you can you know it takes you with an open mind as you personally as an open mind to listen to it and hear that potential and then develop that person to you know not give 70% done songs a hundred percent i think i felt that way until i heard a demo at a label keith naftily i told him this story this year he played me a demo when i was 17 and he said this is what she sent into the label i think it was jordan sparks he

said this is what she sent into the label and then this is what her single was and I think there was like barely a mix change like her demo was that good and then you start to realize like people aren't going to hear the potential in it unless it's fucking there like it has to be there and I'm not there yet I mean you can send a guitar vocal that's spectacular but make sure the writing is tight totally I was with I was with Jeremy Zucker yesterday who I'd know recently on the podcast Jeremy's biggest song is him in a guitar by far. Like you know what I mean? Then it's got hundreds of millions of streams

and it's him and a guitar. That's the best, like, it's still an era where I do think that, especially when you have, you know, I'm a C minus producer, but I can write songs, you know, that are pretty close where I feel like the compositions

tight enough to then send to my co-writers who are producers and finish out records together. Like there's ways to do it without sending it to Keith Napley on finish. Yeah, for sure. Keith, all of a sudden, Keith gets like a good placement.

He's great. Keith is like one of the most excited. When he loves the song, it's like, it's so infectious. I know, he's the man. Okay. Explain what the beat battle is, because it's so big right now, but explain what this is that you're doing.

Honestly, it's about to get fucked how much bigger it's getting. This is what the beat battle is. So I went on Twitch my first week. I was making a beat. I started flipping this sample. The whole chat, a couple thousand kids. Give us the sample.

Give us the sample. I gave it to them. We randomly picked some of the beats that kids flipped out of the same sample I was flipping. It was unreal. It was like some kids sounded like fucking disclosure. Some kids sounded like Ketranata. Some kids sounded like the gnarliest rap shit. It was all over the place.

And maybe a day after that, still my first week of Twitch, I was listening to this one song that I liked for six, eight months, and I was like, man, I've been trying to find this snare for eight months. And I told the Twitch chat, they had the snare in about 45 seconds. Someone sent it back and was like, Kenny, this is the snare. I realized real fast how many producers were in this community, how many of them were kind of rearing for an opportunity to do something other than watch the stream. And we started making the beat battle weekly.

It was like, okay, I'll give you all a sample, top of the week. Whoever wins, I'll shout them out, my social media, I'll tweet about them. Then this thing happened where there was a meme of this young kid hanging his iPhone from his bunk bed and singing into it. And it was a really popular meme. I found out who the kid was. And Phineas, myself, a few other people got together and donated a whole bunch of gear to this young kid. And like probably 10 grand worth of fucking gear to this kid's house.

When a lot of brands saw that go on, they go, how else can we send Ray some gifts? How else can I? And I was like, Ray has 30 pairs of headphones. now. I don't think we can send Ray any more microphones. Like, let's do, let's continue this. Let's keep giving stuff away. It's COVID. You know what I mean? Like, why wouldn't we do this for more people? So I already had the beat battles going. This one thing happened with this giveaway. And Roland, sure, Antares, like, waves, slate digital, any cool plugging company you could think of. We're giving away soothe two now. We're giving away the empirical labs, distress. All these new companies

started hitting me like how can we give shit away how can we give you it away and so now we're up to about eight gifts every monday we give away eight gifts the first gift is always hardware you could win a sure mic you could win a rolling drum machine you could win something huge and then the second gifts like last week's the second place was all access pass to every slate digital plug in third place is sooth fourth place is auto tune like and we've been doing this for 38 weeks now um all of quarantine and i've never given it up i moved my sessions every Monday to the second the battle ends, I won't miss it. Because every single week, there is a 21-year-old from Tunisia, a 14-year-old from Turkey,

a 16-year-old from Australia winning the battle. And trust me, me shipping these gifts costs more than the gifts every time. But these kids are getting a shot once a week to get big shine. We get the homepage of Twitch on Monday. So we are the homepage of Twitch.com. When you go to Twitch.com, it's us. There's a kid from the middle of nowhere who's going to make a big show. beat and get right there not only win a couple hundred dollars maybe thousand dollars worth of

shit but the week you win you have to do a breakdown so i need to see how you made your beat we watch that on stream and everybody has to go sub to you so i sub i show on screen me subbing to your youtube everybody in the chat goes and sub so i refresh the video at the end of the breakdown now by now you've won you have a gift at your house you got a couple hundred or a thousand new subs everybody's checking for all the new shit you're releasing and there's 40 new producers like this and they all have their own streams now their own following is their own whatever and we're about to do the master battle i can't give we haven't officially announced yet they know it's coming but everyone who's won first place is entering back in and this first place prize like ross i'm

gonna tell you off air but it's legitimately fucking crazy and it's like i'm not hyping this i don't have any stake in this i make zero dollars you know what i mean from doing this this master battle it's not even going to be on my page, I don't think, but it's a big prize. It's a change your life level prize. And these kids already deserve the world, but anyone who's won can get into it. So we have one battle left this coming week. So whoever wins that battle, they're the last entry to the master battle. And then Mixed by Ali is probably going to judge it.

And it's going to be very, very intense. We've had Phineas and Billy Judge. We've had Mike Dean Judge. We've had Benny Judge. We've had an insane amount of people. you're not only getting all that other shit, but like Mike Dean's listening to your beat and talk about it.

It's fucking nuts, you know? And it just, it came from them. It wasn't me designing this cool thing. Oh, I love producers so much. Like, I'm the man. It's not that. They said,

give me the fucking sample. And these companies said, give these gifts away. And I'm just like the liaison in the middle, but I take it dead serious. And I will cancel my session, my interview, whatever on a Monday if it gets in the way of the beat battle.

Because that 15 year old kid has been betting on that all week. And you got to, pay $5 to get on the Twitch and participate. That kid has been sitting there for three weeks with that $5 ready and is going to kill shit and become the next murder beats. If I give him a shot this week, I can't miss Mondays. You know, I can't miss it. How many?

Sorry. Oh, I lost your, I lost it. Yeah. I was saying how many people tune in weekly? Um, the most amount of people we've ever had in the room was 60,000. A normal good Monday is about 20,000 people in the room. normally in a normal day I only have like 2,000, 3,000 but we get the home page

on Monday so we can get up to 20k 60,000 and you've got five bucks a person that's generating $300,000 on one oh yeah but that's not that's not how many submissions we get though

those people those people aren't subscribe that's the other thing about my Twitch you can tune into my Twitch for free you can get all this game for me for free you do not have to pay me, I sent to come in my Twitch to vote on the beat battles, to watch every single beat I make, every lesson I give, every beat, it's completely free to watch. And I'm not sure how, where you are of Twitch culture, but like, subs are a fucking bonus and a great thing. And when someone subscribes to you

and they put that amount of efforts, pay you that five bucks or whatever, huge. But you don't shame your non-subs. And some people do in some of their Twitch channels. And they're like, oh, give this money and you'll get this or give me this money. And then you get the info. Fuck that. You can watch my Twitch every week for free. I'm never going to fucking shame you ever. You know what I mean? Come in, get all the knowledge, rip me, put it on YouTube. I don't give a fuck, man. It's really not about that. If it was about that, I'd do a Patreon and I would have a paywall. I don't want to feed this to you because I, you know,

but if you were to describe success, certainly if you were to describe it to 19-year-old you, there's no way you would say that it's what you're doing. but there's no question that this is how I would define success. Man. Is there anything else you need to do in life to be successful? What are your goals? What to you is successful?

Because it's crazy that you're able to, I think giving back and being in a position where you can actually help the next generation, have an easier time pursuing the same endeavors that you're doing. That is, to me, that's success. And you're doing that, but you're doing that so young. And here when other people are like, no, no, no, when people are like, oh, you should sign writers, that's one way to actually teach those and mentor those writers.

And some people are saying to you, no, no, don't do that. Just focus on yourself. And here you are. and you're doing way more than just here am I, you know, here's my publishing company or here's me. This is an incredible amount of time. Is there anything that is more successful to you? Do you have any other ambitions that, I mean, I'm sure you'll develop them, but what success to you? I was talking about this a couple days ago and I'm going to do it because I love this podcast,

but I kind of was saying to my manager, this is something I don't really like to say out loud or say to people, especially if I've ever motivated them or they really support me or whatever is, I only saw this far when I was younger. This is like I live right now in the first house I've ever lived in.

I live in apartments my entire life. I employ all my best friends. My family is covered. You know what I mean? My family is healthy. good to go. Their bills are covered. And I legitimately get to work with my favorite artists. And I don't just mean everybody you see me with on the internet. I get opportunities to sign those NDAs and go in the rooms. I have always dreamed of going in. And that's starting to happen in these

last two years. This is as far as I saw it. I saw me making records with people I really want to make records with taking care of the people around me. And you know what I mean? Being happy. ended up having a family one day. I never saw doing content. I never saw streaming. I never saw doing a beat battle. I never saw this thing turning into like a creative agency or a school or whatever the fuck it's going to turn into. I never saw any of these things. I just saw music, making music, making music with the greatest people ever. That's all I ever saw. And it's almost like these other things are either falling into my plate or becoming necessary evils to complete that main, goal and I really don't see any kind of goal-oriented thing in my future. It's just vision.

I just have vision. I just see what way I want to move with it and how I want to carry myself and what I want to stand for. And I just keep putting that feverish energy I put into beats. You know what you mean? A couple of years ago, which I still am, into all these other things. And my company is don't overthink shit. Dots is my company. We don't sell Kenny Beats t-shirts. we don't do Kenny Beatt's live shows. Don't overthoughts. Don't overthink shit. That's with the sign I have in my studio.

That's my whole overlying umbrella. Don't overthink shit is giving 2% of everything we make, period. 1% social, 1% economic. We do this charity called 1% for the planet. And then our 1% social is a constantly evolving charity. But the company I run gives back. All my friends are fucking amazing at their jobs and they're paid and their covered. Like, I really just want to keep standing for what I'm standing for. This Saturday,

we're doing a Halloween stream for yes, two jobs, which is a charity that gets jobs for black and kids from underprivileged neighborhoods who wouldn't otherwise be able to go to college, get internship in the music industry. It's for getting underprivileged kids jobs in the music industry. We're doing that on stream this week. We're donating everything we fucking make. We're continually trying to work for the artists who's fucked up deals we witness to get out of those situations, it's like, it's just standing for what you stand for rather than like, in three years I want to start this label. In three years I want to do this company. I don't see it like that. I just see it like the more fortunate I become with this support system and this

fan base, like the more I have them, I had to do the right thing in a way. And especially as like I said before, a white dude in black music, it's like I need to put the shine back on the right people. And you and I just did a panel for women in music an hour before this. Like I need to put the shine on the right people. Now that I got this platform, the success, like you're saying, let me put the shine on the next producers, the women, you know what I mean? All the people who are of color who are making

the real music that I get the benefit off of and all these other label people benefit off. I need to shine light on that shit. So that's how I'm moving. It's not a goal, it's a vision. Yeah, there's no question that the people who last longest in this business evolve their goals and they set new ones

and after they've achieved certain ones. They set new sites. They move. You know, sometimes they do something that's a 180 move or they look in other directions. We interviewed Amy Allen. I don't know which ones are coming out when, but she said something that is, it can't get out of my head. She was talking about how when she was a soccer player that she would just, you learn how to move through negative space and the music business is filled. It's a very young industry and there are a lot of people who want to do the same thing. So then do something different. It's like all those other people who are competing over the same followers at the same streams. It's like, great, you guys go

to that. I'm going to write that. And if this is a failure, that's fine. But if this succeeds, it's going to be the only one like it. You know? Anyway, let's go to this last segment because we can get into some of more of these things in this last segment, which is five for five, I'll name five things. You tell me the first thing that comes on the top of your head. And the first thing I have is the cave, which

I wrote this thinking that you might be doing it from the cave. And so I read the whole thing and then I realized you're not in the cave. No one's going to know. That's fair. But I need to let's start with let's start with the cave.

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is airport. It's by an airport. whenever I think that are by the airport it's not inviting whenever you see like the buildings near the airport

it's always kind of dodgy like it doesn't matter if I'm talking about any specific airport it's just never really like where you're buying your studio or your crib and when I got the cave

I remember thinking of it is this is all I can fucking afford and now when I walk in that room it is this is where I've made every song that matters in my whole life and that space is like holy to me. There'll be a point where I'm

have enough money, hopefully, where I can airlift it out of the rehearsal building and just put it in my lawn so I can stare at it forever. Like a, like it's a house in like Williamsburg or some shit. I want that shitty room to be somewhere I can go in and smell and think about for

the rest of my life because the cave is where I really figured out why I fucking make music. And it's a cheap-ass rehearsal studio in a room full of dad bands and it smells like shit and the lighting's awful. And there's shared bathroom. There's no parking. It's perfect.

I mean, that shit's inspiring. That's why I love that. Okay, so the next one is, you know, we started saying that you had listened to this podcast before. So you said you had listened a lot to the Benny and Mike Karen one. So let's go with Benny and Mike Karen as number two. I kind of see them as two sides of the coin.

My two favorite producers are Madlib and Rick Rubin. I like the dichotomy of the two. When you listen to The and the writer is episodes of Benny Blanco or Mike Karen. Mike Karen in his episode talks about the hierarchy of human needs and how he sees songs fitting in to this scope of the most amount of people in the world or whatever language is possible being able to sing those songs. If you write a song called I am a woman, 50% of the population can sing it. If you write a song called I Love Cigarettes, all the people who smoke cigarettes won't even sing that song. If you write a song about the air you breathe, anyone can sing that song. Love is actually pretty far down the list.

Thinking of songs in that formulaic, perfect sweet Max Martin kind of way is one thing. And you would think Benny would be like that because he comes from that. But Benny is the ultimate weirdo. And you can sit there and talk to Benny about Francis and the Lights as much as you can talk to him about Halsey. You know what I mean? And he's equally interested. And he's got his own little weird style. And he was a kid who did fucking rap drums in the,

like hard ass like trap beats or whatever it became you know Katie Perry whatever the fuck Bieber so I think Benny shows you can take whatever fucking route you want and still impress the formula people and then Mike shows the formula we went we kind of ghosted over

the experience of having Kendrick you know having any sort of relationship with Kendrick right and that was sort of like the first song that you had come out. Is that right? Well, I did a song. It was Kendrick and someone else. It was Kevin and this dude Smoke Dizzy. It was co-produced by me when I was very young. And this is when Kendrick had done, he was right before Section 80. So this is very early

Kendrick. But I had also done an Ab Sol and a schoolboy Q record all at that same time. All three of them are signed at TDE. So me and Kendrick have dapped up once. I'm not going to pretend like I have a relationship with him. But Ali from TDE, Dave Free, Abso, School Boy, Q, all these other guys have really supported. me since I was 18, 19 years old. And they were the first people ever to credit me on blogs, hit me up before the record came out, tell me it's coming out. I will say no one but TDE did that when I was younger.

They would just drop the record. I'd find out on the blog while I was in class. They actually called me and told me the songs were coming out. Yeah, I mean, I was bringing up Kendrick probably because, I mean, how many people have a Pulitzer Prize winner as one of their, you know as one of their credits I did the I did the I did the music for Malcolm Gladwell's

podcast with Rick Ruben yeah so I Malcolm Gladwell's got to have some kind of prize yeah he's definitely got a few of those in his pocket who else is gonna beat for Malcolm Gladwell that's the real question I love it I have listened to every single

I don't listen to as I listen to more podcasts than I do you know than I should admit and that's like, but I've listened to every single, I've listened to every single Malcolm Gladwell won. I think that guy's just on a whole other level. He's a legend. All right, dots.

Don't overthink shit. I was on a phone call with my manager. We were really stressed out because we were releasing this project with an artist. And to put it out on Spotify, they needed our label name, quote, unquote, which we didn't really have. We kept throwing names at each other. They sucked. And Mike was like, you know, just relax.

Like, don't overthink shit. Just tell me what the name. And I was like, maybe that's it. And then the acronym was dots. My team as a gift during one of my most stressful months of my life bought a giant neon sign that says don't overthink shit. They put it in the booth of the cave. It's literally iconic now. It's like whenever an artist gets to the studio, the first thing they do is go in there and take a picture in front of the dot sign.

So, yeah, it's become a monster. for all of us. All right. I'm going to do more than five just because I can. And we really, this would have been the fifth, but I'm going to do a couple more after this. But CLA vocals. Beef is the first thing that comes to mind.

So Alex Tumet mixes records for me. Mike Dean has mixed records for me. They are both really, really, really talented dudes I'm friends with and look up to. Alex one time told me, he's like, yo, when you send me vocals, just like send them. dry. Take everything off of them. Make sure you don't have CLA vocals on them. And I was like, what's wrong with CLA vocals?

He's just like, I don't really know what it does. He's like, so just take it off. I was like, okay, cool. I was on Twitch one day, just feeling saucy. And they were asking me about Alex Tumay. And I go, do you guys know he only uses CLA vocals? And for those of you listening who are not familiar with why this

is funny, CLA vocals is like a catch-all plug-in that does a lot of things pretty decent. but when you're a recording engineer, you need to know how to do all those things individually really well. So when someone sends you like the Fisher Price version of what they're about to do one by one, they're like, okay, take that shit off now. I'm going to handle it.

So I went on Twitter and said, Alex only uses CLA. That's all he puts on his mixes. Mike Dean saw that clip and didn't know I was being sarcastic. So Mike Dean thought Alex Tumay sucks at mixing and literally went into and goes online. Like, hey, Alex, you probably shouldn't put that in your mixes. So then when he did that, Jason Joshua saw that. And Jason Joshua saw that, thought that Mike Dean was talking shit about CLA, the person, Chris Lord Algae.

And so Jason Joshua put up a picture of him lifting some weights and said, CLA for life. See you at NAM. Yeah. And then this just spiraled out of control. My next door neighbor is Josh Goodwin, who is one of the best mix engineers in the game. I saw Josh one time just out in the street and he's like, hey man, what's going on with that CLA shit? And I was like, okay, this is

officially leaked into my neighborhood now. This is unacceptable. But I had a great call with waves this week. They fully get the joke. They love it. But it was just a Twitch joke that smiled out of control. It's CLA for life, for real, man. It's on everything for me. Okay. Your mom? Support.

my mom is not music friendly the way my dad is she doesn't get it she doesn't understand it when i had my picture on a my space she thought i was going to get kidnapped in two days she just doesn't has never really gotten everything about what goes on with music especially when she sees me with a lot of guns and a lot of drugs and a lot of rap stuff that i've done she didn't always get it but the thing about my mom is she was willing to support anything i was willing to work hard towards So if I just said, hey, mom, I'm going to go do this. Hey, mom, I want to do this. Hey, mom, can I have this?

She was never with it. We didn't have a lot of extra money. I always grew up in apartments getting just what I needed, you know? And so when I went to Berkeley, my mom was basically like, I'm going to help you with school, you know, but you need to really go hard if you're going to go hard, you know? And my mom has been someone who's really been kind of like the game plan person where my dad's been an explosive creativity person, you know? Well, your dad's the other one, so I'll let you continue on with that. My dad's my personality in a big way.

I'm very much like him. He doesn't do music in any kind of way, but he loves music, and he gets along with people really well. And I think my biggest strengths really are vocal production and getting along. I make beats. I can make you something hot in two seconds for sure. But my strengths are the fact that I can be in a room with this type of artist or this man or this person for another country or whatever.

and we can get along and we can be cool. And I think I've said it a lot of times before but kids don't realize you can't buy a personality on Splice. And it doesn't matter how good your beats are and how amazing your music is if you can't get along. And I really get that from my dad. You know what I mean? I would see my dad in situations with every type of person

and he just treated them exactly the same. And so I try to do the same thing for good or for bad. Well, thanks, man, for doing this. There you go. That's your first and the writer is. I get the feeling you'll be on this, like, be a regular over time. But, you know. I need it in person one.

I need it in person one, Ross. Come on. All right. You got it. I will make sure we spend some more time in person, too. But, you know, I'm proud. I know this isn't my place today, but I'm proud of you because I know that from, I know how hard it is to be a working musician and wanting to prioritize.

community and wanting to prioritize things other than music, it doesn't make you less of a workaholic when it comes to music, which even makes it harder to do. You know? And, but it's one of the only things in our business where you have to, you have to actionably do it. Like you were saying before, you had to just go and learn to write this. if you're going to do something like advocacy or you're going to do something, you know, in any way like that, you have to, you have to actively do it. You have to go out there and try to start teaching and try to start helping and try to start. Like, you have to take calls with all 10 of those people who are willing to give, you know, you've managers, but at some point they want to talk to you. You've had to pick up all those phone calls. You know, every time somebody wants to give away something, They want to talk to Kenny Beats to see what they can do to help out,

which means you just took another half hour and hour every single time. And so many people don't recognize the time commitment it takes just for you to set up the opportunity for these people to learn. And then, you know, to be so dedicated to that. I just can only see where, you know, when you talk about visionary moments, it's like you're going to be doing. this when you're 50. In one way or another, you're stuck in this now. And it's like, and it's only going to be whether or not, you know, you can't, you, you just can't turn it off.

Like it's, you're going to be giving away your time to people, you know. I know the, some advice was always like, you know, you don't even need this stuff anymore. It's like you, the advice is like, people are going. going to try to take all of your creative energy from you because you're so giving. And that time, what you're going to learn from, you know, I'm sure your therapist says the same thing. You know, it's like, you're just so generous. I'm really proud of you.

I'm excited to see what happens. I mean, you know, we'll reconvene this conversation in a year when we're all vaccinated. Man, I appreciate it. I mean, dude, like two years before I was. ever on Twitch, I'm in my car listening to the Benny shit, like juice. Before I even was new Benny, you know what I mean? Like I was in the car listening to this podcast. So it's the same for you, dude. And for you to be on the level you're on and ask these people to come on the show and have these conversations with them, I know now from doing my own content. And when someone pops up who

doesn't do a lot of interviews or isn't that accessible and they are comfortable, because they actually know this person, they actually say something you haven't heard before, it's life changing. It's really it really is you know if you'd have the biggest people in the game giving game every week man i'm about to pat myself on the back on this podcast because you've been doing it 10 times over but the only thing i will say to end it is like any one of these scenarios we talked about today whether it's you know what i mean working on your own music or letting that person sign the artist that you found or how you handle back end collaboration stuff or how you go about your career path if it's as weird as mine or whatever it is, if you leave every session, every room with people saying,

that's a good dude, they work really hard, they care about the music. You can do this to your 50, I assume. So I've definitely been a dumbass, I've definitely been an asshole, I definitely made bad decisions when I was younger. But ever since maybe four or five years ago, I decided to just leave every room, people still wanting to make music with you, and you'll be good. There you go. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is.

If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at and the writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is is is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsma, and published by Big Deal music. A special thanks to David Silverstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ron. going.