Ricky Racks is still new to the game, though he's made a big impact with a few of his recent productions, most notably "Best Friend," the only single taken off Young Thug's already beloved Slime Season mixtape series. It's often said about many Thug tracks, but "Best Friend" really doesn't sound like anything else out there.
"Best Friend" is one of five official songs Ricky has produced, or had a hand in producing, for Thug. He works in close company with certain members of Thug's circle, including Wheezy, a longtime friend, with whom he made Slime Season 2's "I'll Tell You What" and Barter 6's "Knocked Off," a song that encapsulates the strange emotional pull of Thug's charisma -- proposing to his girlfriend and musing on his propensity to kill without remorse, all in one inspired burst.
Slime Season's "Overdosin" rides a slow but menacing bassline, and it feels especially powerful because of the sound Ricky inserts on the off-beat, a hollow noise, like the soft banging of a tin can. He often incorporates such unfamiliar sounds into his beats to make them stand out, like the squelching, alien bass heard on "Oh Lord," an SS2 collaboration with TM88.
"Ninety percent of trap producers, or producers in hip-hop -- if you listen to the drums, they're all using the same drums," explains Ricky. "So just by switching the drum sounds, my beat is already gonna feel different." And by drum sounds, he really means any sound -- musical or not -- that can be worked into the percussive structure of a beat.
"I've been building my sound library for probably six, seven years, so you ain't gonna have too many sounds I ain't got. I collect sounds real heavy, and make my own sounds, too," he says, pointing to a strategy that's of obvious appeal to Young Thug, indicative of why Ricky has been able to join the team of one of Atlanta's hottest artists despite moving to the city just a few years ago.
"I look at like this: If somebody asked me to give a beat to Waka, right. I know Waka got Southside, he got TM88, he's got all his go-to producers -- so why would I give him something he already has access to?" In such a fiercely competitive climate, he has learned to take the rapper's point of view and ask himself why might a certain artist want a Ricky Racks production, and not one from the countless other young talents in Atlanta.
"So that's how I go about producing. And with Thug, there ain't no boundaries, man. I can send him a beat in reverse, and he'll find a way to rap to it," Ricky laughs.
Coming up in N.C. & Moving to Atlanta
Ricky Racks has lived in Atlanta for almost three years now, but he hails from several hours to the northeast, in Greenville, North Carolina, a town of about 90,000. He was raised around music -- his father teaches guitar lessons -- and he started playing the drums when he was a little kid.
Before moving to Atlanta, Ricky had been making beats for a few years, and he'd become something of a fixture in North Carolina. After a couple years of working with dlocal talent, guys like Chris Millz and Young Cypher (his cousin), Ricky scored two relatively high-profile placements on Project Pat's Cheez N Dope, released in January 2013 and hosted by DJ Scream.
They're both great records, especially "Drank and That Strong," on which Ricky shows off the clever sampling of a lost '70s soul gem, Willie Roundtree's "Another World." Though Ricky would move eventually away from sampling, in favor of creating his own sounds, the beat is impressive enough to predict his future success. He's since become known for street-ready bangers, of which the focus isn't necessarily how "hard" they sound, but how different they are from other street records.
The out-of-town placement prompted Ricky to start considering moving elsewhere himself, and he ended up deciding upon the epicenter of the southern music industry: Atlanta. It was a risky move, especially considering he had already established a good living for himself in Carolina. "I was making money. I was making great money," recalls Ricky, "but I knew I wanted to do something bigger. And I knew this was where it was at."
Upon relocating, using what few industry connections he had, he was able to get some time at Patchwerk Studios, and from then on, slowly but surely, he began acquainting himself with the right people. Not the industry folks who might sign him to a deal, but those who, like him, were working hard to push new sounds in an oversaturated music scene.
That includes the previously mentioned producers, like Wheezy and various members of 808 Mafia, and also the behind-the-scenes cats like engineer Alex Tumay, whose mastering work on most of Thug's recent projects has been widely praised. "I really gravitated toward the engineers and the managers because the engineers are the ones who press play on the records. A lot of my friends are engineers, and that was really my blessing in disguise when it came to getting placements."
One man who emerged as a mentor for Ricky is the now-incarcerated PeeWee Roscoe, who's currently serving a controversial 20-year sentence for allegedly firing gunshots at Lil Wayne's tourbus. PeeWee, whom Thug refers to as "the human goat," did the work of an A&R, without any official title, for both YSL and Rich Gang, and he was one of the primary creative minds behind T.I.'s Bankroll Mafia.
"As far as like showing me things in this game and really giving me that confidence, he really played a big part in it. He got me in them rooms with the big artists. I'll never forget PeeWee."
PeeWee was able to help Ricky land a spot on one of the first Bankroll Mafia posse cuts, "Freeze Up," and a few months later -- also due to his rapport with Wheezy and Tumay -- he was able to get a few beats sent Thugger's way.
Though most of Ricky's peers are native to Atlanta and have been active in the scene for the better part of a decade, he hasn't noticed much prejudice toward his newcomer status now that he's affiliated with some of the right people: "If the music is good, one thing about Atlanta is: These artists ain't gonna turn down no beats."
Young Thug's "Best Friend"
Had Thug and Birdman decided to push "Knocked Off" like they did with other Barter 6 tracks, it could've easily been a hit, but so it goes with a prolific artist like Young Thug. Ricky's crowning moment as producer came a little over two years after he had moved to Atlanta, though he heard "Best Friend" at the same time as the rest of the world, in a wonderfully bizarre music video that dropped two days before Slime Season.
Upon seeing the video, which featured synchronized forest dancing and Thug giving himself fellatio, Ricky's first reaction was, "That man is a genius." And he, like the rest of us, immediately thought, "This shit might really go." Indeed, the song has now become Thug's biggest single since "Lifestyle," currently sitting at No. 17 on Billboard's hip-hop chart.
After the producer tags, a quick intro from Thug ("fuck you, your mama, and everything else"), and a shout-out to PeeWee Roscoe, Thug begins one of the most unorthodox, and spontaneous, hooks in recent memory. "That's my best friend, that's my best friend," he repeats, as the beat is jolted by a momentary -- but piercing -- scream, a signature in Ricky's toolkit.
The scream comes amid a dreamy, hypnotic harp melody, causing Thug's words to hover with suspense. And soon, prefaced by the scream, comes the post-hook drop, something Thug is a master of, as evidenced on songs like "Check." This time, Thug wails out tip-of-the-tongue punchlines in sync with booming drum palpitations, spaced out enough to let the melody linger in the background.
"Best Friend" is an immersive blend of mixed emotions, and Ricky explained that his intention with the beat was to "combine the two worlds" of Young Thug. There's the pleasant side -- Thug's ability to ride a careful melody, as showcased on his more uplifting material, such as on his recent surprise tape, I'm Up, but "Best Friend" also has the effect of bugged-out club bangers like "Stoner" and "2 Cups Stuffed."
"It was such a pretty melody, I didn't want it to be super soft, either," Ricky said of the beat. "So I kind of added all those effects to still make it feel, you know, like it's a hard beat, instead of something so happy."
Ricky thinks he might have some placements on Thug's two upcoming projects -- Slime Season 3 and Hi-Tunes, the long-awaited debut album, but he'll likely find out as he did with "Best Friend."
While he waits on his next hit single, he's keeping busy by building up his own production company, Audio Cartel, assisting in the rise of frequent collaborator Zach Farlow, and spreading his sound back up into Carolina, linking with buzzing talents like Clap Curry. He's got an upcoming tape with a lesser-known L.A. artist called Chief Origami -- with the added psychedelic influence, it's sounding like his most far-out material yet.
"I don't feel like a big producer, man. A lot of people are still trying to figure me out," said Ricky, suggesting his sound is just beginning to take shape in the city he now calls home. And he's likely content to keep it that way for now, while he builds up his sound library and expands his range. Many bigwigs, though, like Thug, have noticed he brings something different, and as a new face in a city overflowing with talent, that's exactly the adjective he wants to be ascribed to his music.