There’s a cat out in LA who’s one of the biggest internet DJ’s by the name of DJ Ill Will, he had put out on his Twitter, “Who did the ‘Willy Wonka’ beat? I would love to put Wayne and Gudda on it.” My boy KP from hit DJ Ill Will up, “Yo, I know the cat that did the beat,” and he was like, “Get that track for me.” KP had hit me up and I sent it to him immediately and he gave it to Ill Will, who gave it to Gudda, who got Wayne on it I think like the same night. Meek had made a video for it and it made it on Worldstar Hip-Hop. As far as the other songs, me and Meek Mill did a song called “Willy Wonka,” and it was buzzing around here in Philly. It’s more than the music, that’s my homie on another level. Then Meek Mill had got locked up so he was gone for like 8 or 9 months and I never met Meek until he got out, then we went into the studio for about 2 months straight just doing songs everyday! We were in the studio from like 12-9 everyday. He had just dropped a mixtape called Flamers 1 and it was real heavy in the streets of Philly this is when he just started buzzing so I hit him up that the mixtape was dope and I had little snippets of beats on my MySpace page, and Meek Mill hit me back like “Yo send me some tracks,” so I sent him three beats and they all made it on his next mixtape called Flamers 2, which was his biggest mixtape to date. With Meek Mill, I met up with him through MySpace. Also, did you actually work in person in the studio with them or were these tracks done via email, etc? Talk about the relationship/chemistry with people you have worked with on multiple ocassions: Meek Mill, Tyga, Chris Brown.

For one: it was a real strong song for his comeback, and then second: he was rapping on it, and then third: the track was just crazy. I had produced several songs for Soulja Boy and I did some stuff for Lil’ Wayne and Fabolous, but the biggest track was Chris Brown’s “Holla at Me.” That was like the biggest track I had done. I think that’s the most important part of the track nowadays! I got little kids saying it nowadays!ĭescribe your big breakout beat in your opinion. I was just listening to it one night and said to myself I should make this into a tag and put it in front of my beats so everyone would know I did the track. What I did was I got my niece in the studio, I recorded her just rapping or something and it just came out organically. When I was doing songs with cats they weren’t shouting me out so nobody would know who did the beat. How did you come up with your signature tag? When my partner Meek Mill came out it kind of changed the game in the Tri-State area. Around that time in Philly, they had a NY-type sound when Jay-Z was running the game with State Property, Beanie Sigel, and all of them. I had moved to Atlanta when I was 19 and I went to college in Buckhead I kind of grasped their sound - the down south 808’s - and I brought it back home. After awhile I started making original music, and as I got older I started to get into the clubs and started to see the atmosphere of how the music makes the people move so I started to make a lot of club music and that’s where I got most of my buzz from, making music for the club and the radio. I get a lot of influence from Swizz Beatz to Mannie Fresh and The Neptunes. I started to shy away from the sampling and do strictly original beats. That helped me develop my style that I have now. I was strictly doing sample music -70’s R&B, old rock ‘n’ roll, etc. When I first started, I was sampling-based.

How did you go about crafting your sound? Was there anybody you patterned yourself after? Then we started making little mixtapes and giving them out when I was in high school, and that’s when I really started taking this seriously. My pop had given me this program, FL Studio, which is on the PC, and I started making beats on there and then I just got hooked. I really didn’t get into it until I was 12-years old. He had a home studio in the crib and he used to have us cut demos, rap and sing I cut my first demo when I was like 4 years old. He was into music heavy at a young age as well. He used to have a band back in the day so he had a musical background. Jahlil: My pop - he’s a producer and a certified engineer. VIBE: Give us some background on what sparked your interest in producing.

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