Producer
• DJ. F.I.S.T. - When I began producing, for some time, I’ve never considered myself as wanting to be a rapper, my comfort and my skill at the time was producing.
For about ten years, I produced and I was part of crews of rappers and I formed crews of my own. From time to time, I would have urges, and I would have my rappers to write for me. My performance on songs with my other rappers would be the weakest, so I would shy away from rapping.
In 1998, I had this one rapper that I produced tracks for, who had an interest in producing beats and he didn’t know how to engineer. Out of the majority of my rappers that I had worked with, his rap style and flows were what made him my favorite.
I would let him borrow my equipment, and he would upload his ideas and I would sequence, arrange, and mix them in exchange, he wrote for me, encouraged , and motivated me to start writing my own rhymes.
When I returned to music in 2012, I had no rap crew and could not see to build one. Having no one to rap over the material I was producing. I had to grab the pen, and embody being a rapper.
After some research, I had to think of how I could be that something different from everyone else. I wasn’t comfortable with my Decision at 1st, but now I’m very confident and skilled at writing and rapping.
• My style and sound - let’s talk about my sound, my sound was established with my decision of what would make me different. Before I became a rapper, I always produced beats that were considered hip-hop/rap
I used beats, bass, and prerecorded samples, and I used music components, not a computer.
When I produced using components, I had limitations, and it caused some of my ideas to be deficient, and incomplete. I didn’t have skills to play instruments, so I relied on samples. Using samples with a stand alone sampler, and an external sequencer has limitations that computers don’t have.
Once I began producing on a computer; it was over, it introduced me to sound kits, and samples.
I am a sample producer: every single sound in any of my beats, are sample loops. From the drums, bass, and the guitars, all samples. Having a computer gave me the tools to expand my sound to where my music sounds complete, and not deficient.
I wanted to create hip-hop tracks that didn’t sound like watts already out there.
I use hip-hop samples loops for my drums and baselines. I like to use loops that I’ve never heard anyone use, or would think to use. The next sample instrument that I use, allows me to fuse multiple genres together:”Guitars!”. I can use various layers of guitars to take the track across genres. The guitars, determine the genre. I use keyboards and synth samples, but guitars are more flexible and my goto.
It’s very rare that I produce a track without some type of guitar, outside the bass.
Using this formula, my music can venture into the various genres that range from: Dance, funk, jazz, r&b/soul, pop/rock, reggae, hip-hop/rap. With this range, I create hip-hop material designed to cross genres. When you listen to an instrumental track of mine; before the lyrics, the instrumental by itself does not sound like a track for rapping.
The track doesn’t sound like a hip-hop track, until I rap on it; which brings me to “F.I.S.T. The M.C.”
