Jewel Droppin’: Bangout, Pt. 2
Drawing Inspiration from Other Beatmakers is Pivotal
| Bangout interviewed by Amir Said (Sa’id) |
Bangout: The first thing… Fuck with the drums, learn how to sequence drums! That’s what I want my kids to do. Put your heart and your soul into your drums, that’s your rhythm right there.
Sa’id: Do you have preset drum patterns or do you always start drum patterns from scratch?
Bangout: I literally start from scratch every single beat. But I got my program that I always load up, my Bangout kit. It’s got all of my favorite kicks, all my favorite snares, all of my favorite claps and hats. I load it up every time.
Sa’id: How do you approach arrangement? Do you look at arrangement as sort of a typical Hip Hop producer or more like Gamble & Huff?
Bangout: I can tell you how I arrange shit… I make the whole fuckin’ beat, I’ll fill the beat up as big as… like I’ll make the hook first! The hook is all the sounds in at once. Then after that, I start breakin’ the beat down. Then I start finding out what part is the verse or what part will be right before the hook come in, what part could be the bridge…
Sa’id: Most people don’t start with the hook. You fill it up, then start breaking it down. Usually, most beatmakers start with 2 bars, 4 bars, copy, then they build it up. They get to certain segments, then they build the hook part up. Not too many dudes can do it the other way, let alone try doing it the other way… Making beats is a “moment” thing. You go on immediate feeling, you know what I mean. So if you invest a lot of time in filling it up right off the bat, by the time that you get an ill groove you may be burnt out from that beat. So that leads me to my next thing. You must kick off beats real fast! Do you have a time frame that you try to deal with?
Bangout: I can kick off a beat in 5 minutes, and it’ll be a fuckin’ smoker. But I take my time to get there, to the actual beat. Every sound gotta be there for a reason. I’m not caught up with how fast I can make a beat. Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day on a beat! And as far as erasing beats, sometimes I’ll have something in mind that I’ll want to get out. And I’ll go to the beat machine, and I’ll try as hard as I can to get that shit out. And I’ll listen to it for a while, then I’ll be like: ‘You know what, I ain’t gonna commit to this, ‘cuz this ain’t it. It’s almost there, but that’s not it. And I’m not going to be able to get that sound in my mind, if I keep listening to this.’ Cut the machine off!
Sa’id: Sometimes you measure a man sometimes by what he can give up, not how much he can try to get. I’ve been tryin’ to tell dudes that it’s better to sacrifice 10 joints that could be good for 1 joint that’s an absolute flame! That one flame is going to be the last thing in your mind, and your mind mentally is going to tell you to make something at least as good as that. A lot of producers, they got it twisted. They concentrate on quantity, not quality.
Bangout: I be seeing niggas produce, and they’ll take anything. And I be like: ‘That’s why you ain’t got no placements right now’. I got mad beats that niggas would never hear, ‘cuz the thought is not complete. That’s why I erase so much shit at times.
Sa’id: When you’re doing your joints, since you start off with the hook, do you start off with 8 bars or do you start off with 2 or 4?
Bangout: I start off with one bar, my nigga…
Sa’id: That’s what I do… In the third edition I talk about getting one bar, one main groove…
Bangout: Exactly!
Sa’id: But the way that sequencing is being taught, by certain people, it’s so strict…
Bangout: Yo, I’ve seen niggas do beats and literally do the whole drum pattern for the whole 4 minutes, come back and play the keyboard for the whole 4 minutes, come back and play the bass line for the whole 4 minutes. Now that shit is amazing to me [Pause] but it was whack! [Big laughs] It was amazing, but it was very whack!
