Related Articles
The Future of Music Interview is a Q&A in which our favorite artists and producers share their vision of what’s next, weighing in on everything from AI to emerging scenes to the artists inspiring them the most.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of the five-year run hip-hop producer Michael Len Williams II began in 2012. His inescapable beat tag — a sultry coo of his professional moniker, Mike Will Made-It — punctuated Future’s breakout single “Turn on the Lights,” the early 2 Chainz and Drake collab “No Lie,” Juicy J’s strip-club anthem “Bandz a Make Her Dance,” Rihanna’s hit “Pour It Up,” Miley Cyrus’ controversial forays into rap, and countless other major records. By the time of his groundbreaking work on Beyoncé’s “Formation” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” and “DNA,” he didn’t even need the tag: He’d already earned the superproducer title that continues to define him today.
“It’s crazy, when I first met Jimmy Iovine, I had 13 songs on the radio and shit,” Williams says over Zoom from a vehicle somewhere in Atlanta, the city where he got his startproducing for Gucci Mane as a teen. When he met Iovine, the storied music exec, at a Floyd Mayweather fight, Williams recalls that they heard his music everywhere, from the halls of the fight’s arena to its intermissions. “He was telling me, ‘Man, yo … you just keep giving away all the hits,’” Williams says. “‘You should start your own record label and put out hits.’” Williams went on to found Ear Drumma Records as an Interscope imprint in 2013, releasing music by his protégés Rae Sremmurd; today he continues to oversee a broader production operation, including other producers, via his company, Ear Drummers Entertainment.
While Williams’ musical interests cross genres — he’s a fan of Arctic Monkeys, Lauryn Hill, and the Smiths, for example — his hallmark may be the distinct drum programming he’s laid on some of rap’s most exciting songs. You can draw the lines between the way those drums boom and tumble across his best-known tracks. Most recently, he’s reunited with his old collaborator Miley Cyrus to work on her much more pop-rock-leaning Endless Summer.
Williams is confident about his ability to create unique sounds in an era when big stars have their voices and styles mimicked by new technology. “You can’t create an AI me,” he proclaims. That’s not all he had to say on what AI could do, where Atlanta is going, and how producers become icons.
Today, hip-hop producers like you and Metro Boomin have become mainstream stars yourselves, in a way that feels different from how that might have happened in the past. What’s your perspective on the producer’s evolution from the background to center stage? Where do you think it will go in the future?
There was a time where the DJs break the records, the DJs get the party going, the DJs have the battles. Hell, it was even the DJs that were mixing records together and having people rap on it. You know what I’m saying? Then, it switched over to the artist —the artists being the executives or finding the producers. Back then, you had great producers, but behind the scenes. You had somebody like Quincy Jones doing major shit — if-you-know-you-know type of vibe.
I see it like the product supply chain, where it’s like: raw-material supplier, manufacturer, distributor, then retail and consumer. I’m looking at it like, “OK, this is all a product from a beat.” As a producer, you deal with the raw materials, and you are the supplier, and you are the manufacturer. You’re manufacturing this product to be able to be distributed and go to retail.
Where we’re at with music, people want to know more about the producer. More people are interested in how beats are made; how the song is put together. It’s just like food. If the food’s not put together well, it’s not going to taste good. When [music is] not being put together well, it’s not going to sound good. Some people have more experience than others, and some people have better taste than others. I feel like that’s where the magnifying glass starts coming out on, “Damn, how is this produced? Who put it together?”
An artist might not just be an artist —he might not just be using his vocal and his lyrics. This artist might have known, “I need this writer, I need this person to play the keys. I need this person to play the drums. I’m going to need this person to mix it.” At that point, that artist is a hell of a producer and might not even know it.
Why do you think people are more interested in the nooks and crannies of how something is made these days?
I feel like that’s just where the consumer is nowadays, period. Even when you talk about consumer food, people want to know the farms that they come from. How organic, how animals are raised. Everybody wants to feel like they discovered something or they know all the ingredients.
When we were younger, we used to just look at it like, “Man, this motherfucker is a star. It’s Michael Jackson. This person just landed with a UFO or some shit.’” All we knew is what we saw on TV.
Moving into the future, what will producers have to do to differentiate themselves? Will they need to come up with a signature style, for example?
It comes with time and the hours that you put in. I know what it’s like when you first come into the game and you’re just trying to figure out how to even work this damn equipment. Then you’re trying to figure out, “OK, how do I make something off of this equipment that people are going to hear and appreciate — that an artist would want to do a song to?” And then if an artist wants to hear and do a song to it, then it’s like, “Why wasn’t this song as big as I wanted it to be?” Or, “Why was this song bigger than I even imagined?” Then, it’s going back to the drawing board and doing the next joint. The more joints that you do, the more beats that you make, the more songs that you produce, the more swag you get; the more comfortable you get.
The more time that you put in, the more work you put in, the more you’re going to start trying different things. As a producer, you should be able to do everything that it takes to make a song. You should be able to make a beat, engineer, write, all that, the whole process that it takes.
One of my young guys, he’s a producer and he’s younger than me. He played some beats. I’m like, “Bro, what year were you born? Why these beats sound like somebody’s throwaways from ’05?” That’s the only way I could cut through to him and get his attention. I’m telling him, “Hey, yo, the reason why it sounds like that is because you’re just making a beat right now. Literally. You gotta put your own identity on it.” That’s something that I had to learn over time.
You were saying AI software can’t be you or Metro. Can you say more about that? What do you think people are using AI for now? What do you think are the limits of it?
Man, I want to learn how to use the AI stuff. You got two different types of creatives. You got innovators and you got duplicators. Somebody like me, a producer like Metro, like them producers that cut through and people identify with — Kanye, Pharrell — are innovators. We’re used to people duplicating what it is that we do. It’s going to be AI stuff that’s able to duplicate how I was coming in whatever years. But I know there’s no AI company that’s even thinking like how I’m thinking right now.
Have you been able to explore AI enough to have an idea of what you might want to use it for?All we’re doing is stacking melody and rhythm on top of each other. There’s a million ways to do that. It’s just evolution. Some people used to be on beat machines. I started off on beat machines, and I used to work with a community of producers that fuck with beat machines. People used to look down on people that use Fruity Loops [a.k.a. FL Studio, a popular music-production software]: “That ain’t real, man. You ain’t really producing.” Then, the sound switches to software, and now, as soon as a person brings an MPC or a beat machine back out, it’s like, “Oh, man, I don’t want that shit. That shit washed up.” But it’s like, nah — that shit still creates melody. Still got drums on it. It can still do rhythm.
I started showing my team how to combine the two. I had to learn software. All these shits are weapons — or cars. You might have a two-seater car, you might have a pickup truck. This pickup truck might make more sense when you trying to move all this furniture. This two-seater might make more sense when you trying to just swerve through traffic and get to where we need to get to fast.
Just like I was late on the software, I was late on the AI. But fucked around and made “Humble” off of Fruity Loops. That’s when I felt like I mastered it. I made “Black Beatles” off of Fruity Loops.
I want to get into more on what the AI stuff does. It sounds like you’re collaborating with a whole other person that’s limitless.Maybe you could use AI for mixing. Once you get the AI to understand the frequency or the sound that you’re trying to put out, or the way that you mix your records, maybe you don’t have to go back and forth for the engineer every time. AI could probably hit it right on the money way sooner.
I don’t know everything about AI. I haven’t done all my research, but just from what I know, it’s almost like a laptop. It’s only got the information that we download to it. You got to be innovative, moving forward to survive with this music. The game has a lot of carbon copies. It’s been a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.
That makes me think of the role of the sample in hip-hop. Some people think that artists are leaning too hard on nostalgic samples and making music that does feel like a copy of something that exists. Other people love to discover and announce certain samples that the artist or producer may not have announced on their work, often thought of as “sample snitching.” What do you think is the future of sampling in hip-hop?
Everybody uses the sample differently. I might take a sample, chop it up and make a whole new beat out of it. Where some people might just say, “Yo, this was a hit, man. Let’s go re-sing they joint. This new generation don’t know nothing about it, but this is what I grew up listening to.” It’s like a cover.
I feel like it’s all about taste level, man. Some people can survive and just eat Hot Pockets, microwaveable food. Then, some people [eat] whole foods, like potatoes, not a bunch of processed shit that could be made in a minute. Everybody got their own way of cooking up and cheffing. Everybody got their own ingredients. I feel like the stuff where people just straight up … It’s one thing to pay homage. But come on, bro. This is a straight duplicate. It’s like some bubblegum shit. This is not even better than the original.
The people who own the masters to the original is like, “Man, shit, we don’t give a fuck. Put it out there. Y’all going to pay us. Run it up again.” It’s just straight business. It’s carbon-copy shit.
People have called Atlanta the mecca of hip-hop for years now. Do you see Atlanta’s status evolving? What does it look like moving forward?
Atlanta being the mecca of hip-hop is still fairly new. It wasn’t always like that, because it was New York at first. Atlanta, man, we’ve lost a lot of hip-hop artists over the last couple of years. But one thing about Atlanta; it always has times where there’s a resurgence of new talent; a new wave. I remember 2009, 2010, it was a lot of people from the underground, like Gucci [Mane] and Waka [Flocka Flame], and it was more local.
Atlanta was starting to spread, then it started going up. Gucci was going up, Waka was going up. Roscoe Dash, Rich Kidz, Travis Porter. You had different people that were just shooting off, and then next thing you know, boom, Pluto come around like 2011. Then 2012 started going crazy. 2 Chainz starts cutting over into the mainstream. I just feel like now, the city is wide open for new talent.
The thing is, it’s just a different city. What I try to do as a producer … I be trying to tell certain guys that I was moving around with Gucci when I was 16. If these guys are four or six years younger than me, they was 10 and 12. They weren’t able to see certain shit. I’m 34 now, so when I was six or seven, Freaknik shit was going on. I was too young. All that kind of stuff isn’t going on now. It’s all about giving them that knowledge, giving them certain things to listen to, understanding where we came from.
When I try to find an artist that stands out from the city, I just try to let them know, “Man, hey, speak from your heart, speak from your soul, and know that we come from a cool-ass town. But express yourself and let people know your experiences and what you done seen. Pop your shit.”
It sounds like when you’re working with up-and-coming artists from the city, you try to make sure they have a background on what Atlanta hip-hop has been over its past.
Exactly. And why I feel like they’re special. “Oh, man, you stand out to me because your voice sounds like …” You know what I’m saying? What’s kind of weak is, I might have heard five songs right now about murder. I ain’t hear no songs about your daughter. You know what I’m saying? Your peoples, your hood, your people that love you. I done heard five songs about an enemy or an opp, and I ain’t heard nothing about the folks that love you. So everybody hates you? Giving them just a different perspective, so then they won’t get caught up in, “This is what folks want to hear.”
Who are some unique, younger folks that you’ve worked with recently from Atlanta?
I like T3, he’s from Chicago, but he was raised in Atlanta. I like him on an R&B wave.
I like International Jefe. He’s from the east side. He’s hard as a motherfucker. He got a dope-ass voice. I understand that he lost a couple of people coming up. I tell him, “I understand why murder on your mind. I understand why you speak about this and that and the third, but at the same time, I know it’s so much more dynamic. Boy, you done been to the feds and you done been to college. You got a beautiful little girl you just had. You from Edgewood. Projects. You done made it this far to be right here in the studio with me, somebody that’s a respected producer, talking about doing a record deal with you.” I love Jefe, I love T3.
I got this artist that I’m working with, she’s a female artist from Atlanta named Lex. She got dope vocals and that vibed-out type music, like Amy Winehouse, Lana Del Rey, Gwen Stefani — those kind of vibes. I just feel like Atlanta, we ain’t really had nobody like that. When I had met her and I heard her vocals, I’m like, “We could do something new.” That’s how I was even feeling when I was working with Bankroll [Fresh, who died in 2016], when I was working with Trouble [who died last June], when I was working with Young Thug. That’s what I like about even 21 [Savage] or Lil Baby. They embody what’s going on.
It’s all types of different walks and different faces in Atlanta. It’s not too many places like Atlanta. This shit makes shit cool. We got a foothold and we got respect. From the production that we already put in, man, all we got to do is be different and find the right artists and then boom — we got to keep Atlanta alive.
