The Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York just concluded, but not before boasting a number of one-of-a-kind events in the realm of hip hop, dance music, jazz, and beyond. One of the festival's events was a roundtable discussion with three of modern music's most influential producers: Zaytoven, Sonny Digital, and Metro Boomin.
The three producers sat down with Red Bull Music Academy to discuss a variety of topics that include the label "trap" music, their musical origins, Atlanta, sampling, and more. The hour and a half discussion is dense, and we don't expect anyone to have time to watch the whole thing, so we've gone ahead and broke down the ten things we found especially interesting over the course of the discussion.
Zaytoven is a hardware guy
While many producers use Ableton or other computer programs, Zaytoven says, “to this day I still use hardware,” before going on to mention his affection for the MPC 2000xl. We go on to learn that Sonny Digital uses Fruity Loops, and found it difficult to collaborate with Zaytoven at first due to the difference of medium.
Church plays a pivotal role in Zaytoven’s life
“I’m a church musician, so like when I leave here tomorrow I have to be up at church at the organ,” Zay says about his ability to play the keys. He goes on to say, “That’s what got me into music period from a young child: my dad’s a preacher, my mom is a choir director.” Zaytoven goes on to discuss the juxtaposition of making trap music Monday through Friday and playing music for the lord on Sunday.
Sonny Digital doesn’t really remember how he got into playing music
“I started when I was young…I just kinda started doing it as a hobby,” Sonny Digital begins. “It wasn’t an MPC…it was something similar…it was something that put out the sounds of kicks and claps and stuff…I don’t know what it was though.”
When asked about how he got the MPC, Sonny said, “It wasn’t mine…I don’t really remember how it got there…but it was there.” D'oh well...
Metro Boomin grew up in St. Louis, and Nelly inspired him to become a musician
“Nelly was droppin’ a whole lot of crazy stuff,” Metro Boomin begins as he discusses his musical origins, going on to say, “Nelly dropped Country Grammar and I knew I wanted to be in music.”
Metro Boomin moved to Atlanta to go to college
“I’d often come to Atlanta in high school…and just work in the studio and just go in with people I met (on)line,” Metro says of his beginnings in ATL.
He goes on to saying, about “Karate Chop” by Future, “This one was real significant to my Morehouse experience because it came out when I was still in school…some people started to get the clue when a couple songs came out and they wouldn’t see me that much, then I stopped going all together.”
Future is a beast…
“Really with Future we just go to the studio, load up beats and he just attacks ‘em. We put them in a folder or whatever, and he just starts at the bottom and just does ‘em all…or if I’m not with him, like Sonny said, e-mail, e-mail…”
“Future he always gonna try whatever…he’s not scared of anything. He records and makes so much music, it’s ridiculous how much. You might hear shit…and think ‘oh this is what he’s on right now,’ but one of those could’ve been from two years ago.”
Sonny and Metro met online
“Well, first Metro, he used to be online like heavy though, he used to hit me a lot…I ain’t gon’ lie,” Sonny said to some laughter by the crowd.
“I was botherin’ him…a lot,” Metro followed with. The two even collaborated on a couple beats before they even met.
There’s a lot of love between these three
After Zay goes on about how he trusts Metro and Sonny completely, the moderator asks about
“Man we don’t worry about none of that shit. These are my brothers man, everything always down the middle, always….you put one kick you getting’ 50%, fuck this,” Metro Boomin said.
Sonny Digital chimes in with, “We don’t have no time to go back and forth.”
What is trap music to Zaytoven?
“It’s really just hustlin’ music to me…I think the music that we make to go along with it is just the soundtrack for somebody hustling real hard.” Zay goes on to say, “It had a real, dirty, edgy feel to it,” before finally saying, “trap is its own genre of music now. It’s amazing that people have really dug so deep into the trap music that we made that was so ugly and dirty…it’s almost dance music now. You got trap EDM.”
They have a unique perspective on sampling
Sonny Digital said that occasionally they’ll have Zaytoven replay a part that they would otherwise want to sample, as to “take them out of the equation right quick.” Metro chimes in with, “Not even downplaying sampling…but it’s not as from scratch as what we be doin’."
Sonny goes on to say, “Having the knowledge and knowing how to sample is good though.” Then goes onto say that they treat Zay’s stems as samples sometimes. Metro ends the chat with, “I just sample my friends.”