Do you remember the exact moment when the transition from MC to producer took place?
“I mean, soon after. When I started rhyming it was probably around high school, freshman year, around like ’98. Being around a lot of people who were MCing around that time – you know, kids in the school and all that – you just have a go and see if you can do it. I had a few older cousins who had equipment and stuff at the crib so once I got around them and kinda watched them make beats using all the samplers and all that, I tried it out myself and that’s when the production side of my brain kicked in. ‘Oh, I can make it do this? I can grab this record and put it into this machine and manipulate it?’ That whole process blew my mind.”
Hip-hop isn’t as scene-heavy as it used to be but Detroit seems like it still has a scene. Would you agree?
“Yeah, I think that the music community in Detroit is pretty small, we all run into one another at some point living in the city. I don’t know how it is in other cities but in Detroit there’s a certain respect level that’s there. Everybody respects what the next artist is doing, especially as everybody is always trying to create at a high level. And that’s just a Detroit mentality in terms of always feeling like the underdog in the whole big scheme of things. Living in the city, it’s not New York, it’s not L.A., it’s not Hollywood, it’s not really out there.
“You feel like as a music artist you’ve gotta go 10 times harder as a lyricist or as a producer or as a musician, so I think that’s the reason you get a lot of great artists coming out of Detroit because there’s not really a lot of distractions so all you can do is lock yourself in a room and go at it. We’ve got that attitude that we’ve gotta win and show that we’re just as good.”
On the production side of things, what’s your creative weapon of choice?
“Definitely the 3000! The MPC 3000. I mainly use that, Pro Tools, and of course a whole bunch of records too.”
What’s the key to mastering all of those things?
“Locking yourself in a room for years and never coming outside, that’s the key to it. That’s all I do. If I’m not on the road and I’m at home, most of the time I’m working on beats and working on production, even if it’s not for an album. A lot of the time I’m just practicing, figuring out new ways to program and just produce differently and take it to the next level.”