Pushkin. Hey y'all, Today we're bringing you part two of Rick Rubin's conversation with producer Kenny Beats. On last week's episode, Kenny broke down how regional sounds in hip hop have spread across the US and connected disparate cities Since his first conversation with Rick, Kenny Starr has continued to rise. In the past couple of years. He's produced songs with Ed Sheer In, The Baby and Staples. He's also taken several trips to the UK and produced over thirty songs with the British artists like f Ga, Twigs and Slow Tie. Today, Kenny explains how, for the first time in the history of hip hop, an American subgenre made its way across the Pond to the UK, only to come back to the United States and an updated form that is now influencing American rappers. Kenny and Rick also talk about why they don't care to understand English rappers slang, and how a group of German classical musicians are co producing some of the biggest hip hop records today. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondtin. Here's Rick Rubin and Kenny Beats. How are you feeling, man, I'm good A long time, No see, everything been good, been good, staying hidden, working hard. Let's talk a little bit about UK hip hop. Yeah, one of my favorite topics. What do you see going on? Well, I think something happened since the last time we talked about this subject that has never happened in the history of hip hop And correct me if I'm wrong. But the UK we're influencing the US in such a way this year that we had never seen an RP pop smoke. But one of the newest hottest artists in the world is making beats that he looked up on YouTube under UK drill or UK trap beats or UK grime. He was looking for beats that sounded like stuff from over there so he could bring something to New York that was completely different. But the weirdest thing about this is that drill, what's going on right now in the UK, like in the streets unarguably what they refer to that sound as that comes from Chicago. So there's this weird lineage of like the Chief Kief era, the Young Chop era, the Chicago era that like happened in like twenty twelve, even before Kanye got on don't like with Chief keief that whole time was such an influential area production wise, like time production wise with like Lex Luger and all these people programming stuff very different and to see the UK kind of take Chicago, make it their sound, and then it come back to New York and break artists with that sound. Like I did a record this year for Fabi, who is like one of pop smoked bigger collaborators, another Brooklyn drill artists, great guy, and it's like I'm doing beats inspired by UK producers that were inspired by American producers. But the UK influenced this year has been undeniable, and I think that's the first time in history that's happened in hip hop ever. Yeah, I always felt like it was going to happen. I thought it was going to happen, even going back to death Jam days, just because of the history of the Blues in the United States and then the excitement of the British invasion where they would listen to American sounds and because of the distance they had a romantic image of it. Yeah, and they took it to an extreme that anyone who was doing it like any of the real bluesmen would hear what led Zeppelin did and think it was garish. You know, it was like it was too much totally. But because of the distance, they could take something that might not be cool for the people who invent it and take it to some new extreme that seems too far out for the people who have a clear vision of what its starting point is and take it to a new extreme. So the fact that that's finally happening in hip hop as an exciting things, just it gives us potential for things to grow in a deeper, faster way. It opens American hip hop and just American artists is saying, we don't know, let's take influence from somewhere else. It opens up an unlimited world instead of saying we started this, we run this. Here's how we dictate the pace once we say we're open to these ideas and these other sounds and types of production and tempos or whatever it might be. Yeah, it makes better music for everyone, and it creates some of my favorite bands and music and other genres too. That same concept of like there's this whole thaie funk thing that happened in the seventies and eighties, and I'm not up on it enough to explain the artists and this and that. But what I understand is the meters and this whole funk movement or whatever that happened in America influence people in Asia. They started making all these records years later that, like you're saying, are exaggerated versions of all this funk stuff that was going on here. And then now, one of my favorite bands these days, it's a band called Krungbin And you ask them what their influences are their band from Houston, Texas. They say, well, we listen to old Thaie funk music amazing. But those Thai funk records were then trying to make American funk records from twenty years earlier, and it all becomes almost untraceable unless you're really trying to do your research, you know. Yeah, but it just goes through the filter of the new person making it. The influence doesn't always show so clearly in the in the new creator. Yeah, let's talk more about drill music. Would you say, twenty twelve issues where where it got rolling? Yeah, I'm not the I can't. I can speak even more on the UK side of it than the Chicago side of it. But yeah, definitely, like it was early like Gi Herbo, Chief Keith, all this Chicago stuff that was influencing the UK that came back around and influenced every body here. But like, let me let me think of a good record to play. Is it as popular in Chicago as it was then? No, it's not. It's a sound that kind of um came and went. It was like it's a very specific, a kind of high hat pattern to drill shit. It's just very specific kind of bounce with the drums. It's like it's got this. It's a whole different kind of swing and the accentuation is like it, only it almost leans more to like the Afro Cuban thing and something than it does to like a two four rock thing that I think trap is like the hardest rock drums turned into break beat drums turned into blah blah blah, you know, and now we get trapped and now we have these huge ada weights. But the drill has these different kind of poly rhythms and little play play a good play a good example of classic drill Chicago drill, Chicago drill um. You know, a couple of niggas does down the RAF for a homicide when his drama tab run up on the nigga what the lumbus flatl leave his love was all trauma tasks one fifty. Yeah, I'm really with it. I drop his task and they forget it what I mean? Yeah, it's really interesting how the percuss shouldn't pattern have a ab pattern of the percussion part feel like they're both halves are leaning in a different direction. So it doesn't seem like anyone would ever play it that way. No, And you have this two four thing. There is a snap or a clap or a snare. Normally that is one two three four. It's on those normal rhythms where you expect the clap, but the what dictates the rhythm is that that's much more what you're gonna dance to or move to or rap two or write too, I think. And that's what has been mangled and changed and turned into a million other things over the last few years. But it's really this movement that happened in Chicago first, and it obviously influenced even the radio here to the point where Kanye and Push a T And all of good music are getting on a Chief Keef song and blah blah. It's this local niche thing that got bigger and bigger and bigger. But I think the UK to this day are such fans of what we do, and they pay so much homage and have so much homework done before they even speak on the UK stuff, and we don't do that vice versa. We don't give them the same respect to talk about like their legends and the grime legends and you know what I mean, people like Dizzy and Kano and like all these type of people that have so much respect there that we just see as like oh UK thing instead of all these different iterations of what it's been. But when they saw what we were doing here with drill. You hear Giherbo talking about drilling in the song, you know what I mean, it's a it's a concept. They took that and they ran with it. And now we're in twenty twenty eight years later, and it turned around. It came back to us and we have artists here googling tight beats of UK producers to get their sound, and then they're covering the radio and then Travis Scott's getting on their songs here. It's insane, and it goes back to house music coming from Chicago and turning into EDM in the UK. Essentially, yeah, that intercontinental when it goes back and forth, there's so much room for growth, like you get to hear you get to hear it through new ears when it comes back, you know, definitely. And I think my almost misconception when I first got there was this is something that you guys are doing that when I come here and get in the studio with artists, I shouldn't try to make drill beats or play drill beats or you know what I mean, get in on this UK thing. Because my first trips to the UK, working with a lot of artists, I didn't want them to think that I'm coming over here while you guys are having your first influential moment and trying to be a part of that to make myself seem more authentic to the root of it. It was more like, oh no, I just recognize how talented these artists are, and I want to see what they do on not drill stuff, you know what I mean. And I released songs this year with Slow Tie, with sl with h with Heavy One, with so many different UK I was stormzy and then I also have released songs with Ed Sheeran and James Vincent McMorrow and all the Twigs and the whole other side of the UK. But when I went over there, it was much more about let me show you guys what I can do, not let me co out you're scene. But then I started playing drill beats once in a while and they'd lose it and it was like, oh, you guys are not the one who were gatekeeping whatsoever. It might be us a little bit. But when I say us, I say that lightly because I'm not from Chicago and I'm not part of the originators. But America, as you know what I mean, just like this, this hip hop institution were kind of being accepting and it's showing in the radio and it's showing an influence in the production, and that's a beautiful thing to me. Yeah. I had a conversation the other day with Scarface from the Ghetto Boys, and he was we were talking about when when I first heard the Ghetto Boys, they were really the first Southern rap group that I heard, you know, we heard New York was really everything for a long time. Then he started hearing some music coming from the West Coast and it sounded different, and in New York we didn't really like it. And then Ghetto Boys was pretty early in the you know, not from the East Coast and not from the West coast. The only the only maybe thing before that might have been Luke. And I think a luke more as a party, more of a party thing than like real rap. You know, I don't think of it as like, I don't know, I don't, I don't. They never took it seriously as rap music. I thought of it more as like rock the party, yeah, whereas Getta Boys was more like, you know, hardcore rap wasn't deaf jam initially rocked the party. Wasn't that the origin? Or was it just make it feel like what's going on outside? It was more like, yeah, make it feel like what the club feels like. But it wasn't necessarily rocking the party because it wasn't really a The early hip hop scene wasn't really necessarily a dance scene. It's true. Yeah, like Public Enemy is not like rocking the part, Yeah, that's true. No, And most people didn't dance, you know, like they'd be breakdancing, but that wasn't so connected to the music. It happened during the music, but it wasn't necessarily to the beat, you know, it was a different It was just a different thing. It was simultaneous more than inspired by the music. But Luke and Miami and Booty Bass and Two Live Crew, everything was about make people shake what they have, make people go fucking crazy in the club. And you know, like Benny Blanco's like one of the first things that he did that went super crazy was this project was Spank Rock that was sampling a shit ton of Two Live Crew. He's one of the biggest pop producers in the world right now. You know, like this happens in so many areas, but with ghetto boys. Look at that where that lineage ended up. Mike Dean was helping engineer some of those records and working on some of that stuff, and now he's working under the Travis you know what I mean, biggest records in the world. All the stuff you're hearing now, it's like there's so many things that we're paying homage to without even knowing, and that's myself included in it. But I think that's the beauty in it. And oh my god, I saw something the other day, Rick, I almost had to text you because I was freaking out. I felt so old, and I felt so like I'd had my finger off the pulse for a second. Killed me. I was on Twitter and Timberland was the number one trending topic on Twitter. Shout out to Tim, and I go, oh, they're probably just giving him his flowers. There's this thing every once in a while where just a producer and artist comes up, or someone has a birthday, and everyone talks about all the songs they love that made them feel so great. Timbo was the number one trending thing, and I went to go see what was trending. Was it his birthday? Was it about a song? Was an Aliyah thing? Missy thing? People were saying exposed, Timberland stole these old Indian records for all his biggest songs, big Pimpin. And then they show the Indian song it came from, or the Bollywood sample or whatever it might be. Then they show an Aliah record and they show this, and TikTok was going nuts saying no dalent and you're exposed and we found this out and da da da and blah blah blah, and it's like, are you guys losing it? Am I losing it like some of my favorite records of all times are loops of old samples like let Alone, adding something like Timbo. That's what hip hop is. Hip hop is taking from existing things and montaging them together to make something new. And that's something that you've never heard before. It's always been that's what DJ culture is. DJ culture starts with records. Kids were freaking out about just the idea of sampling, just the concept like showing an alias song and then showing the sample like they like they had discovered some you know, a great whale of like a secret. But it was It was so crazy to me because like I'm having this moment right now of of sampling so much again and getting back into it. A lot of it came last year randomly and then Dooms passing RPMF Doom has really just thrown me back into it. So to see that I'm going the opposite way and sampling more and people on the internet were taking it like that, it really threw me for a loop for a second. I had to get off to it. Or for him that's crazy, Well, just it really is just a misunderstanding or um or. Times change. Time's definitely change, but like it's it's weird for me to see on the side of it, where I'm producing records now that sample these guys who've been through hell clearing samples or even with the recognition of people calling you out for taking a record or whatever it is, when people are getting paid behind the scenes and everything is fully worked out. Like I literally, like I saw people tore down James Blake. James Blake tried to sweet if you want to know what Timbo did to the sample, tried dancing to the original. You think people and in these countries couldn't dance to these samples before timbol it. It's like, Okay, we understood, we know, we know, we know that, and I know James probably would have reworded it if he could have, But like, it was just crazy to see how people were perceiving that when that's like the root of why I love doing what I do, and when I sample these guys, when I've sampled Farrell, when I've sampled Timbo, when I've sampled these huge records that they've done for artists I'm working with. Rico Nasty said I want dirt off your shoulders, and I was like, Okay, we can do something like that, and she's like, no, I do that, And I was like, all right, I could say. I don't feel uncomfortable saying they were so fucking cool about clearing shit or about whatever like percentages or whatever back like back end bullshit there is. They were all so cool and I've dealt with that firsthand, so to see like what Frell has gone through with Marvin Gay or what Twitter is just going through, even in just perspective right now, Like it was wild to me because I wouldn't have got into half of the really interesting music or cultural things I know about if it wasn't via sampling, Like if people thought I was gonna be listening to sun Ra without Madlib, there's no way, you know what I mean. And it's like it's what's helped me understand so many cultures and so many things that I should be paying respect to and that I should be speaking on. And it's instead of the opposite, which people think, it's like you're trying to hide the stolen, you know what I mean, it's exactly the opposite. It's always paying tribute, and of course they're cool about when you do it, because that's what the culture is built on. It's like they built their culture on it, and they know if you understand how it works, that there's this pool of in the old days, like the Beatles would listen to Roy Orbison and then they would learn the guitar parts like Roy Orbison. Then they'd either speed it up or slow it down, and then they'd make it their own or a chuck Berry song, and then they would make it into their own song. That's what sampling is. It's now we'd do it without instruments. We sample and speed it up or slow it down, or loop it or chop it in a particular way, or combine several pieces together, or pick a very tiny little piece of a piece of music that's not representative of the other, of the entirety of the music at all. You know, most breaks are not representative of the thing that they're a break of at all. Yeah, it's like there's a saw and there happens to be this moment in the song that you find a way to flip and make into something new, but it has nothing to do with the original song. More often than not, I always found it so interesting, how how big that that Mountain break was Mississippi Queen, Because Mountain is like such a hard Southern rock group. It's such a like it's almost like a Leonard skinnerd level Southern you know what I mean. But Mississippi Queen is one of the most used like vocal samples and sample packs and like it when people say like, oh I want that, like that that he's this vocal scream thing. It's like a lot of that is from like these rock records in the fifties and sixties and stuff like The Break ended up being like the hardest rap thing you ever heard, you know. It's like that's that's what's beautiful about it to me, because that's what gave me so much of like my history and my background was finding shit through other shit, you know. The the guitar player from Mountain just passed away within the last couple of weeks, Leslie West sad sad to hear yet oh Man all Ip. I saw him live at the Ridgefield Playhouse with my dad at twelve years old. It's crazy. One of the greats, one of the greats. Yeah, really, we'll be back with Rick Ruben and Kenny Beats. After a quick break. We're back with Kenny Beats. So since Drill has moved on in Chicago. Has anything replaced it in Chicago. I think Chicago's kind of always set trends, But I don't know if I can say there's been a specific niche genre like drill to come from Chicago or really anywhere that's influenced the world and come back the way that has, like Chicago's evolved so much, and like Little Dirk is on the newest Drake single, you know what I mean, And like Little Dirk comes from exactly the air I'm talking about in the video shoots in the middle of some house in the middle of some part of Chicago that people don't want to go do. And that was like this cool thing on YouTube that turned into influencing the charts, that turned into now huge artists, huge legitimate artists, And like there's still someone every single year coming from Chicago that's influencing people in a major way. The last time I was like blown away by someone from Chicago was Valet. Valet was so unique and so singular and different to me. When he came out play us a great Valet track. Oh that's so easy, I'll do sisty at Syndey came back, I was getting some net from a net gave up rain bat pace. Don't ask me if his pocket the simplicity like how brash he is. But as much as Valat is influencing people on the way that a lot of artists, I will tell you, will not speak on how much they listened to his ship at the time he came out and how much it was influenced them. But like Juice World is Chicago, r I P. Juice. You know who's bigger than him on the charts? Like who in fluence more kids than that? You know, him and X and Peep and all this stuff, Like Chicago is part of every historical hip hop era that I can remember since I was really young in some way. But I feel like drill is one of those things that like will represent the Chicago hip hop sound the way like ninety bpm breaks represent hip hop, the way like a Battlecat swing can represent the West Coast. I think it's it's something that is singularly theirs. And it's crazy because so much of the other things I just mentioned happened early on in hip hop, within the first ten twenty years, you know what I mean? That people found like this dictates the South. These kind of eight to weights and these kinds of drum patterns, and you know what I mean, what what three six Mafia did, from what Ghetto Boys did and from blah blah blah, and then the East Coast was like the sampling thing, you know what I mean. And then Chicago and like Detroit in that whole year, like you have Dilla and you have all these people right in this other area of the country that created so much stuff. But street shit in Chicago has never been represented and respected around the world the way I think drill was, because how often can you say a whole other country has most of their biggest hits in a genre because they were listening to us. It's crazy amazing. Now has grime moved on in the UK ors grimes still has it switched in my mind when I get in rooms and the concept of grime or just the topic of grime comes up, I've had like an AJ Tracy or a Skepta or certain people like stop the conversation in their tracks and make sure like everyone's putting their respect on those like Foe Fathers, you know what I mean, kind of like UK hip hop and what they did and how that led to everybody now who's having so much success. And on the other hand, I work with really young artists in the UK. I work with kids in high school, you know what I mean. And like h is someone we put out a record this year I really love and he never really listened to grime and never really was on like that and says like maybe he did at one point. I might be miss speaking, but he said, none of my friends listen to it now and no one's on that, and he said it out loud. And he's also a white kid who raps, so they're gonna get at him regardless, you know what I mean. And he spoke on Yeah, to be honest, me and my friends really not listening to grind. We have never really were on it like that. I just make the music I make. And because he's up such a successful drill artist and big rapper there, people were shocked by that. But Vinn Staple said, I don't really give a fuck about old hip hop, and people lost it, you know what I mean, And like, I think it's hard for people to understand that we're fucking old now or like you're old now or whoever it is is old now because these kids don't necessarily have to understand where to pay homage, or it doesn't mean that they won't at a point for sure, it doesn't. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter. It's like if somebody makes something new and great, I'm all for it. Yeah, exactly. So whenever they set people love to those questions, like you're a young person making a young sub genre and they go, well, how do you feel about all these four fathers that it's like if you were born in two thousand, you probably don't know about them, you know, And that's fine, because you are making great fucking music, and I'm sure at a certain point it's gonna be interesting for you to go back and look at that. And if it's not fucking who cares. Do you want a plain example of the UK drill that's going on now? Yes, I would love to, And then we'll compare that back to a grime track, just just for the difference in sound from the UK. Okay, let's do it. This is someone that I just put out some music with recently, we got some more stuff coming. Hetty One running shit in the UK. You can't tell me different, can't tell anyone different. Drake went over it did a video with him da year, he did a song with him this year. Drake's done stuff with skept that He's done stuff for an artist called Dave. He's come over there once in a while. But you can tell like Hetty's influence and really like how crazy different he is kind of in the drill scene, but how much he's kind of one of the frontrunners that people can understand in America and really latch onto. But here's a Hetty song called both Trust how many times until was the president? So I said, I'm the King of Joe Rob. I'm doing it everyone. I never went against Smokey. Let the gang bring it on tool. He said, I'm the king of drill. I'm the king. He said, that's great. You know what I'm gonna I'm gonna leak some unreleased Heady right now just because it's broken record and why and I because we can. Let's do it. Hold this is something something being Heady made recently spending up smokers. Oh yeah, Rod and I was ready for comback dot Drid just one signed that contract. So good, so good, Broken record exclusive, exclusive, exclusive, exclusive exclusive. We'll be back with more from Kenny Beats after a quick Break. We're back with Rick Rubin and Kenny Beats. On the first track, you played this guitar, and I want to talk about the use of guitar in current hip hop because it feels like it's pretty ubiquitous. We're hearing a lot of guitar and hip hop right now, hundred percent in my mind. And the first person who comes up when you say that, the first people who come up when you say that are Atlanta. And it's definitely like the term on Reddit or the term in the in the twitch chat or in the YouTube chat right now would be Gunna type beats. That's what people would say if you're using just like we heard those kind of real pretty acoustic, kind of strummed things or kind of almost beautiful Flamenco type or Brazilian type chords, but they're kind of just spaced out in the drums smack. That's something that Gunna little Baby thug a lot of people in Atlanta, I think were the ones that people were looked to and they took from that recent trend. And I know within my friend group or with the producers I talked to, that's what you refer to when you hear that sounds like all it sounds like some gunna shit and that's Wheezy on the production there shout out to Wheezy. I feel like also, Frank Ocean really inspired some of that, even maybe even before that, I felt like Frank had a lot of guitar in his music when nobody did. Definitely, And I think Frank's raw. And this is one of the things that so many people are referring to when they say things that sound like Frank or feel like finger this. It's the fact that Frank can do so much with so little. But you put him in the same area in your brain where you put Tyler or someone like that because of the time he came out, in the era where you heard him. So it seems kind of like shocking for you to think, like, oh wow, like I have an artist of my time period who is down to do a ballad that I can really relate to, and this and that, And I think Frank holds that place in so many people's arts because his music is just that guitar and him, or just that piano and him, or just so to the point, have you noticed flute being popular huge? It's a ton of my beats. What is it? Why is it? I mean, I love the flute. I was so happy to hear it make its re emergence within the beat maker subculture. After Future did this song called mask Off, people kind of put an X on the flute because it was so prevalent and everybody was putting it in every beat at this one point in twenty seventeen two eighteen, there's this one Omnisphere patch that has been wasted on so many millions of songs now. But I will say one production thing that was very interesting about the use of flute and all these beats that you hear is there's these producers and Q Beats, and they're German. They don't come over to the States much. From what I understand, they don't want to be in the session. They're not trying to hang out with everybody with their unbelievable instrumentalists. And they work with a lot of unbelievable instrumentalists, and so many of the biggest, most amazing rap songs you heard in the last few years trace back to Frank Dukes and trace back to Q Beats, and these German producers and musicians are making these almost classical esque kind of little compositions and samples and things and setting them back, and they're using bassoons and flutes and cellos and strutting. Are they putting beats on it as well, or or people are sampling that and using it in conjunction with new beats. They're sending them as samples. And when I was when I was eighteen years old, I met Frank Dukes at a record fair. I was selling vinyl records for my girlfriend at the time's older brother. I met Qute Tip, I met Rock Marcy, and I met Frank Dukes. And Frank Dukes had recently been in this magazine's producer magazine that no longer is around. But they were talking about how he did all these beats for a fifty cent and this and that, and he told me, as a young kid, I'm starting to work with these bands, which at the time was bad, bad, not good, And I didn't know this, but I'm working with all these bands and all these musicians, and then I'm sending these compositions I make out to a lot of producers that I'm friends with it that I know, and they're flipping them like samples. And he told me this literally eleven years ago, and I think it's really what hip hop production is now for a lot of people is you get this sample, you get this thing from Spice, you get this thing from another producer, and then you flip it, you do drums on it, and or you make a sample, you send it someone, they flip it. And it's such the norm now that to see like these kids from Germany thinking let's go a little more classical, let's go super musical blah blah blah, and let's just send it to people like samples, and we'll let these people treat them like samples. That's a big influence on you hearing certain things like a flute or an accordion or some weird shit that becomes a trend in hip hop. It might be because like there's this circle of sample makers or producers at blah blah blah are kind of hearing this next wave and saying, oh, we're gonna lean heavy on acoustic and send that to every big rap producer right now. That's the honest truth of a lot of a lot of records getting made. And I have someone whose name will not be spoken, who is the most amazing flute player ever, And when I need a flute. I got a guy. Do you have any samples of what you might get from Germany? Oh? Yeah, I mean it's it's pretty like it. I was almost insane how much stuff Q beats have done. But there's a Q beats samples playlist. Hold on, let's see. But this is the same basically as in the old days of you know, create digging. It's the same. It's the same thing totally. Like here, here's a good, great example that I don't want to be so I believe goosebumps Travis Scott um Cardo and Q Beats. I get those goosebumps every time I need the time that to the side. I get those goosebumps every time when you're not around. Those strings make me feel like eleanor Rigby strings run through a broken cassette, run through a burnt out VCR or something. It has the harmony of classical things or of things that are like really almost out of reach for even me, and a lot of like normal listeners when you're thinking about what am I gonna go sample or normal producers? What am I gonna go take from? I don't lean classical. That's just me. I didn't grow up really listening to jazz and classical, so those were things I've had to educate myself on. So for people who really do play that kind of music or make that music, or understand that harmony, when they send me a pack of things like that, it's like this world I wasn't able to tap into, and it makes me take it a whole different place than I'd be able to if I was making those strings myself. Yeah, so great, so great. It definitely sets up a mood to build from, and interestingly, as soon as the beat comes in, the mood really shifts. Like when you listen to the piece as it's in its non beat form, it gives you one mood, and then when the beat comes in, it really changes, and in a beautiful way. And that's Cardo, that's America, that's Texas, that's our drums, and like that's a song right there where people stole Cardo's drum flow for the next six months after that became the biggest record in the world, and then producers over here we're trying to steal those sounds from Q Beats. But it's that weird amalgamation, like these people from another world who make another kind of music. They're sending stuff to this hip hop producer and then he's so inspired that he inspires this artist that inspires his huge record. It's a it's a really cool thing. And that's like given a lot of people a shot who aren't necessarily the drum guy, the beat guy, blah blah blah, but play beautiful instruments and want to be involved in these records. And for me, the only thing with this new shift in the dynamic of like people accepting so many samples and flipping samples from other producers rather than records is it's the same with a record, and you got to make sure that things are cleared in the businesses right and beyond that, you gotta give him a copro. And people try to treat things sometimes when it's a sample like our old record, it's you're not co producing with like the thousand people who might have played strings in an orchestra that you took from. But now if it's somebody who sat there and they made this thing at their home studio or whatever, with the musicians that they know, and they sampled it to you and you use that and you flip it, I think copro is the best way to show someone like, man, I really respect this thing that you did in the fact that all of the harmony and all of the chords and all of the sounds and all these things are this person who's sending me stuff. And even though our producers over here who have the names or have everything might be able to just flip something really quick and have it go to be a big placement, you gotta make sure you give people that love because their producers too. They're not just samples the way we think of old samples. You know, they're your co producer. We were going to go backwards and talk about grime in relation to what's going on now in the UK, just for reference, because I feel like grime never really broke in the US. I think the closest grime came was Dizzy Rascal, and they consider it Dizzy Grime for sure, But he was someone over here who I think what the album is called, Boy in the Corner. That was something that I remember listening to it as a very very young kid and being like, what is this sound? What is this slang? What are these beats? Blah blah blah, And it's the only time I remember feeling way until like years and years later where I found like a skepto or I found someone else. But I think rather than all the drill stuff, we were talking about one of the people who's really influenced by like the energy of grime more so than the beats necessarily whatever, it is someone like slow Tie. And that's someone who I work with very closely and someone who I really love. But slow Tie is so foreign and weird. He's not even from London. He's from way outside, a couple of hours outside in Northampton. He's very unique. He gets on things that sound closer to talking heads than UK beats half the time, and there's no place to put him in the UK, So when he comes over here, there's just this little of a place to put him, and that makes it almost easier for him to kind of like acquiesce with the trends here and find his way in the States. Then someone who's so routed in a scene of drill, the UK scene this and that Tie is like a Dizzy Rascal. To me, Dizzy Rascal was just so weird and so different. I think that it worked anywhere because he couldn't really place him or his voice or anything, and grime much like Drill at the time. I think he had to kind of be a fan of the UK or dig deeper to understand how the subgenre works. What the the things that you have to stick to to make a grime record are I think in the in the US, it's like, who's this weird new artist from the UK and they don't think into the title? Do you want to play something from SOLTI? Oh, definitely. This was the original thing that put me on the slowtai a couple of years ago. I heard this. I was like, oh, I don't know who the fuck this is. I had a UK beat, but it was nothing like anything else. So long a back phone on and how much of the flow gets silly with it my spirit and really bad to the bone. Is a legend, such a cool voice, so fucking cool. But even what he said, like the class Count Dunce, like Dizzy Rascal was the boy in the corner. It's just the kind of Dennis the Menace persona. They don't really fit in almost anywhere, but they're the link for a lot of people to dig into the UK because they're such a weird old people go oh, I like this, and then you start to find find out like what the norm is there, and you're like, oh, this wasn't even the norm where they're from, but it led me to where they're from, you know. And that's true of Tie for a lot of people, and for Dizzey a lot of people. But Tie is not associated with something the way Dizzey's associated with grime. I don't think anyone calls Slow Tie a drill rapper. Who would you say is the premier drill rapper from the UK heady one? Yeah, I would say, I mean he's He's the one that people over here can immediately pick out and talk about and know the Drake song and can you know what I mean, say he had a song come out with FK Twigs, Just like he's very much in the conversation in the US now in a way that people who are having platinum on platinum on platinum records in the UK are not some of the time. And it really bothers me. And it's something that I've really like tried to use my platform for non stop over the last year, because I took about five trips to the UK in twenty nineteen and I was there even in February in twenty twenty, right before Lockdown and put out about thirty songs with UK artists in the last year, and so it's it's it's really a place I really care about and I think really has so much influential music. It's so many areas, but rap, especially right now, that's really exciting and it's good. It's good for the world for the UK hip hop seeming to blow up. I think the same thing. I think it leads us to the next one. I can't wait till like I can't I can't wait till. It's a language that none of us can speak that influences us the way that has. Because it's English, you know, we can still get in there. Even if there's a lot of slang terms about man on road and this and that and things that people don't understand mean the trap and mean this and that here, you can still kind of get the gist of it. When Slowti says, I'm like Christmas Wabi Scrooge, like, yeah, you're you're following it. But I think that's as far as it goes for a lot of people. I don't think a lot of people can really understand the deep slang terms and the deep things that go on in the UK, let alone a country with a different language. So I think once a group like P and L from France or like someone from Japan can come over here and have a record that people can really fuck with. It's like, think about what was that ninety nine man Blue Balloons? That ship was a huge hit in the States, not even in English. That's like, I think there's a world where the energy from someone even like a keyth ape, Like, there's so many people from across the world that could have that same effect. But the UK is a start. The UK is a good start. Yeah, And I honestly I don't want to understand the slang. That's what makes it feel like it's coming from somewhere else. If it's when I hear English English rappers using American slang, I feel like, why am I listening to this? It completely defeats the purpose if you do. Do you know what I'm saying, It's like I want it to be their music. I want their music a thousand percent. I think that's the truest thing ever. But but what's crazy is, like I was saying before, they have so much respect for what we do over here, and they're very very much too. In a lot of those guys. I was mentioning those drill rappers, like, I've had conversations with them about US hip hop and who they're listening to and the trends and this and that, but they still do their thing and they they are not trying to emulate it. Even if they are the biggest fans. Even if they could talk about how much they like some record, you don't hear that slang term popping up, you know. And that's something that US rappers are the most guilty of a US artists in general. It's like, if there's a popping song with someone from a specific part of the country and they use that slang term, trust me, you're gonna hear it in Florida and in New York and everywhere. Yeah, it's gone. It's like Jay Electronica had that bar about New York rappers calling us lame but day Jack and are slang, and that was like a Ghetto Boys era you were talking about. It's like New York at one point was like, well, we don't know what this is, we don't understand any of this, and then you end up taking the slang terms and a lot of the Bounce and this and that, like once Little John's on the radio. Trust me, there's some Kruk music getting made in Brooklyn. I promise you. Absolutely cool man. Thank you for doing this. Of course, thanks to Kenny Beats for taking a time out to talk with us again. Be sure to check out a playlists of songs mentioned in this episode at Broken record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcasts, where can find extended cuts of new and old episodes, and you can follow us on Twitter at broken Records. Broken Record is producers helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chason, and our executive producer is being a Bell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries, and if you'd like to show please remember to share a rate and review us on your podcast at the Music's By today's guests Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond, bas