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A record that got a lot of attention was ?Base for Your Face?. How?d that come about?
I went online to 2 Dope Boyz and I saw a song that Lil B had with Tony Yayo. He was actually rhymin? on the joint! I hadn?t heard a lot of Lil B before that. I?d heard about him, but if I hear something that I don?t think is ?good? I don?t waste my time. He?d already hit me up over and over about working together and I’m like, “You can?t be serious.? I hit him again after I saw the Yayo joint and he was like, ?Man, I?m serious?. So we started talking on the phone and I find out he?s a super intelligent dude. Crazy intelligent guy. He?s talking about Quasimoto and a bunch of Madlib stuff. I?m like, “All the stuff you?re doing is really a joke, you?re not that bad.” So he said, “Send me a record and see what I can do.” The first thing I thought was Based God?Flavor Flav?base for your face! He sent it back and I sent it to Phonte the night afterwards. He jumped on it and I sent it to Jean. All three of us can?t be wrong. We?re way past the point in our careers where we do things just to get attention.
When we spoke to Big KRIT he said you gave him sound advice. What other young artists are you keeping up with?
I?ve just got a great relationship with Big KRIT on a mentor level. The same thing that cats did for me I do for Mac Miller and Kendrick Lamar. Those are cats I really, really like. They keep me inspired about the game. We talk from time to time about things and that?s more important to me. We may never work together, but that?s more important to me than anything.
Who played that mentor role for you?
Jazzy Jeff, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Dru Ha from Duckdown, and most recently David Banner. In this game you can be the same age wise, but years in the game is a lot different. I learned a lot from Ludacris when I was in the studio with him, I learned a lot from Jay-Z. Those guys can drop jewels that last a lifetime.
Of all the projects that you?ve done, does one stand out as a favorite?
?Is She the Reason? by Destiny?s Child. That?s something that was totally left field for me at the time and came out sounding exactly liked I hoped it would. That?s always my favorite.
How does working with an R&B act differ from working with an MC?
It really ain?t that different because I don?t make beats that are void of melody. The one thing that trained me with Little Brother was to make beats that Phonte could formulate a hook on whether he wanted to sing or rhyme. Working with Destiny?s Child was really no different from working with Phonte.
Is it possible for a producer in this day and age to be exclusive to an artist or a project?
It depends on the height of the producer. I think a producer can take a rapper and do his whole project, but it?s kind of hard when you?re coming up together for that entity to stay together. And I think that?s what happened with Little Brother. Phonte says all the time that we all grew into who we were supposed to be. Phonte wanted to do Foreign Exchange; he?s more eclectic in sound and his ear is more eclectic than all of us. I?m more of a hip-hop purist, so we kind of went (apart) even if we didn?t want to. In this day and time the dynamic is very hard.
