Beat-making has no barriers: enter Beat Butcha’s own Production Specs.
Beat Butcha is a hip hop music producer from the UK who has worked with the likes of G-Unit, Mobb Deep, Danny Brown, Currensy, Jadakiss, Mac Miller, Jehst, Plan B and Fred The Godson, including the others. He is part, along with Doe Pesci, Jay Bombaye Tha Jerm, of the collective SOI (Spread of Infection) known mainly for the production and sound engineering work for Lloyd Banks.
He is also quite known for his “dusty” kits and drum libraries, and, recently, for assisting Daringer in co-producing the first collective album from the Griselda imprint, WWCD.
First commercial beat sold/placed:
Umm depends on what we are defining as commercial…If we’re talking in terms of commercially available release, then my first official release was in 2001 with a UK group called Paragon, the track was called ‘Queen Like No Other‘. That was the second beat I ever sold, I had been making beats for 2 years.
American placement-wise it was either ‘We Aint Playin‘ by Havoc or ‘Show ‘Em What Crazy Is‘ ft. Tech 9ne on the Canibus & Keith Murray EP. Never got paid for neither of them, but at the time I was just happy for the exposure & the Hav joint was just a leak, so I didn’t sweat that too much.
How long did it take you to finally produce something that you were proud of:
It took me about 6 months after starting to make beats before I was proud of some of my beats, in terms of songs probably about 2 years into making joints (I started in ’99). But these days I’d say I can really only bump songs I did from 2006 onwards. I’m definitely not feeling everything I’ve released hahaha…
Favourite production set-up:
My current production set-up/process is based around Ableton & Audition, using various VSTs, Keyboards (Fantom/Juno-60/Mc-202/MicroKorg etc), a Guitar (Les Paul), Bass (60s Style Precision), MPC 2500 & Maschine. I used to primarily use Audition/Cool Edit as my sequencer but just recently started building a new studio and moved to Ableton, it’s quick to put down ideas. I like to drink rum and jam my shit out… So yeah my favourite production set-up is probably a bottle of RUM and a room full of instruments hahaha…
Best digging advice from someone ever:
The best advice I could give anyone who’s new to digging would be, research musicians playing on your favourite records, look at labels, read the credits on the records and look for more records with those names on there. I’m not really sure anyone gave me advice on digging, to be honest, people may have put me up on a break or an artist but not really advice.
In the early days, I spent a lot of time in an untapped record shop near my mum’s house, where there really weren’t any other people digging for samples. A lot of my record knowledge was learned there, they had a record player and everything was relatively cheap, so I used to spend hours in there and buy a ton of shit every time I was sat there.
When I was coming up a lot of the older heads who had knowledge around me, were pretty guarded about their knowledge of breaks and shit, so I had to be creative finding the knowledge I needed.
I used to go to www.the-breaks.com if there was a specific sample source I wanted to know & then I’d go to that shop and look for the record if I wanted a copy of it. But mostly I was just sifting through any old record looking for something that grabbed me, I was really into French records those days.
But yeah I’m really not much of a digger these days, to be honest, I know it’s frowned upon but I’m just being honest I use the Internet, and I’m usually either digging for inspiration/something dope to listen to or drums.
I’m big on ill basslines, emotional wah’d out psychedelic soul vibes, big on the more jazzy side of the Canterbury scene, and Japanese & Italian soundtracks too. That kind of sounds inspires me, dramatic soulful dirt…
I do still sample here and there but my approach to making joints is different from how it used to be, I like building stuff with textures in mind and jam on beats, rather than picking out a sample & have a premeditated idea of what I’m going to do with it.
Producer, in the last 3 months, that made you say: “Oh, shit, I have to go back to the lab!”:
I was recently in LA, like a month ago, my homie Tha Jerm (from SOI) played me a lot of heat, also Nascent & Cardiak played me some new shit that really inspired me when I saw them.
Met a dude called Knxwledge out there too, who played me a lot of really dope shit, that had me gagging to hit the lab. Also, my homie V.Don sent me some crazy next level shit recently…All of them made me wanna go make some joints.
Your worst production mistake ever made:
Worst production mistake, shit I don’t wanna say I don’t mistake but I don’t think anything was that bad that I regret it lol. I got beats I regret selling to some people and opportunities I regret not taking but actual production mistakes meh not really…
One essential mixing tip:
Fuck the rules, trust your feeling…
