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Two longtime music pros (Sensei & Fatboi) go deep on what makes music great. A podcast for music producers, artists, and fans.
Fatboi is a Multi-platinum, Grammy nominated, award winning producer whose credits include: Camoflauge, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy, Rocko, Shawty Redd, Flo Rida, Bow Wow, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Juvenile, Yung Joc, Gorilla Zoe, OJ Da Juiceman, 8Ball & MJG, Jeremih, 2 Chainz, Nicki Minaj, Bobby V, Ludacris and Yo Gotti, Monica, Zay Smith, TK Kravitz, Future.
Sensei Hollywood (a.k.a. Dan Marshall) formerly an instructor and chair of the Audio Production program at the Art Institute of Atlanta, is an accomplished musician, producer, engineer who's performed on and engineered multi--platinum records with Big Boi, Outkast, Killer Mike, Chamillionaire, Carlos Santana, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Ron Isley, Lil Wayne, Trillville, Monica, and more...
Dan Marshall (01:15)
I don't really go for that Harry Potter stuff except there was one line that was, just because it's all in your head doesn't mean it's not real. Which I thought was pretty deep.
Fatboi (01:17)
No, no.
And my life's mission was to always, if I can just get it out of here, out here, you know, cause if I can think that shit, know, nine times out of 10, I can do it. You know, as long as it's in the realm of somewhat of reality. You know what I mean?
Dan Marshall (01:29)
Ha ha ha ha.
Well.
Yeah, and well, as a good segue,
because like talking about your life's mission, you ⁓ participated in this film about trap music and the birth thereof and all the history of I guess. want to talk to me about that, man? How'd that go? And what's that about and all that stuff?
Fatboi (01:59)
Did. Yes.
So it's a documentary, as you mentioned, the birth of trap music. ⁓ And ⁓ it was a baby of Drummer Boy, an idea that he had been kicking around and kicking around. And I think all of us had thought about it, but Drummer was the first one to actually execute. He put boots on the ground and...
Dan Marshall (02:33)
Yeah, yeah.
Fatboi (02:34)
and did some things. the sound, he started with the producers, you know, and the guys that are typically known as the ⁓ forefathers ⁓ of the trap sound, the four horsemen, there's actually a fifth because T.I. and DJ Toon coined the phrase trap music.
Dan Marshall (02:50)
Four Horsemen.
Hmm.
Fatboi (03:01)
So it's DJ Toon, myself, Shawty Red, Drummer Boy, and Zaytoven. So now they called us the Four Horsemen because this was the G, the Gucci, you know, the emergence of Gucci and Gucci's Four Horsemen.
Dan Marshall (03:10)
Okay.
Mm.
Fatboi (03:24)
per the New York Times, and I think we might've been like the first urban producers or rap producers in the New York Times, but that's what we were coined as, know, Gucci's Four Horsemen. yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But ⁓ we weren't mad at it. We kinda embraced that Four Horsemen moniker, you know, because two...
Dan Marshall (03:38)
They always gotta have an angle for those kind of right up sort of. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty solid.
Course usually
it's the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So maybe there was a little a little something there a little dig there from the New York Times, but you
Fatboi (03:52)
something like that, you know, so.
Yeah. So, so, you
know, and from there, man, he, we did, we, initially started doing a sizzle reel for it with the, with the five, with the five producers and the sizzle reel went well and somewhere in between, drummer boy went to ⁓ TI.
and took the baby, the T.I. and T.I. liked the, he liked the idea of it. And, ⁓ you know, he had thought about it, ⁓ but he never did any, he never moved on it. Drummer Boy had already started, it was in place, it was rolling already. And, ⁓ you know, T.I. just, yeah, I'm all in. So now it's, ⁓
Dan Marshall (04:42)
Right, right, right.
Fatboi (04:49)
Grand Hustle ⁓ Productions got involved with it. know, TI's ⁓ film production company. So this thing is growing and it's taken off. And what I attended ⁓ at the Atlanta Film Festival was basically, ⁓ it was a screening, but it basically was the first episode of an eight part series, which is what it's... ⁓
Dan Marshall (05:13)
Okay, yeah.
Fatboi (05:17)
turning into, it's gonna be an eight part series on the birth of trap and the heavy hitters, everybody that was involved in the growing of this thing, man, they're all involved. KP, TI's ANR KP, Coach ⁓ K. ⁓
manager of GZ and Gucci. He left GZ and went over to Gucci and both careers under Coach K just thrive. ⁓ P from QC, ⁓ Young Dro, of course TI. And man, it's just man, in watching the... ⁓
Dan Marshall (05:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fatboi (06:03)
the first episode, man, it brought back all of those memories from that time. You know, when you're in it.
You're in the forest so you can't see the trees. But now that you're able to, it's happened, it's in the history books, ⁓ we're where we are with the genre today and what it grew into. ⁓ Now you're seeing the forest and it's like, dang man, were, man.
Dan Marshall (06:14)
Right, right, right.
Fatboi (06:34)
And that stuff was, you know, back then that stuff was moving so fast, man. And you were just having so much fun doing what you were doing.
Dan Marshall (06:41)
Did you have like
a ESP kind of feeling like, something's buzzing here or whatever at the time?
Fatboi (06:48)
Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, it happened then too. Yeah. It, ⁓ I had the moment. I remember well at shorty Red's house and, I went outside in the garage. ⁓ and I looked up at the, ⁓ at the moon. was full moon that night and all the thoughts just, it all hit me. It's like, man, this we're doing something. I don't know what this is, but
Dan Marshall (06:50)
You're like, we're onto something now.
Fatboi (07:15)
thing is special. It's a movement. Something is, we're moving the needle. We're moving more than the needle. We're moving the stratosphere. We're moving the planet, you know, literally, cause them 808s was knocking, but you know, but yeah, yeah. I did have that moment, man. And I saw it all and everything that the visions that I was having, man, they happened.
Dan Marshall (07:30)
That'll move it,
Fatboi (07:42)
It actually happened.
Dan Marshall (07:43)
What defines trap music from other genres? What's the defining characteristics of trap music?
Fatboi (07:51)
Trap
music came out of the struggle. And I was one of those ⁓ struggling kids. You know, I came from, but as most people did, you you came from modest beginnings. And I came from a broken home. My parents separated when I was like four or five years old. So that whole story. ⁓
Mom moved back to Statesboro, Georgia, a rural town.
Dan Marshall (08:26)
Cough
It's
out in the sticks, of partway to the savanna, kind of, it's out there a little bit, yeah.
Fatboi (08:33)
All
of that, you know what saying? you know, ⁓ and it's culture shock growing up in San Francisco and then coming to, you know, Statesboro, you know, which is where my family is from. That's where we're based out of Statesboro, Georgia, mostly. But yeah, like, okay, I'm going to be here. And it's pretty much, ⁓ you know, the crack epidemic was a thing.
It was affecting the black community at alarming rates. The arrest of...
boom, know, all the, you know, the ⁓ prison sentences that was, you know, Joe Biden's, ⁓ the super predator without, that was Hillary Clinton with the super predator remark. ⁓ But the crime bill, you know, all of that, you know, this was, yeah, all of this. And even before then, you know, it started,
Dan Marshall (09:32)
impacted the community.
Fatboi (09:39)
in the 80s with Reagan, with the war on drugs and all that and Oliver North, that, that right there, the, you know, Oliver North and the gorillas. Yeah. So, so, so all that that's at the stage.
Dan Marshall (09:40)
It goes back to Reagan, That whole, yeah, the CIA connection with the crack. Yeah.
Yeah, Killer Mike did a whole thing on this. So, but that sets the stage. But what births trap out
of that?
Fatboi (09:59)
the crack epidemic,
the crack epidemic and the times that we were in, because even myself, there was a time ⁓ when what was going on in the world, wars and all this brewing up coming off of Reagan, Bush, Big Bush, and there were no jobs. I couldn't get a job anyway. I mean, I couldn't get a job at
Wendy's, like nobody was hiring and all international commerce was cut off because of what was going on in the world. And I was a, you know, I was a teen parent. So, you know, I was 19 when my daughter, when my daughter came along. So, and not being able to work.
You know, and I was, I was, I was, I was fighting it. I was fighting it. It's like, no, I don't think I should. Oh man. But I got this little girl over here and she don't take no foreign answer. So I took my, you know, I took my, uh, my little brother's, uh, his, uh, his, his, his radio system, I pawned it for $50 and I got into that because you know, the
times dictated where either you were going to eat or you weren't. And that pretty much is the, and the music, when we started making these, making these beats, if you just looked out your window, looked out the blinds, whatever was going on out there or personally the things that you were experiencing, we were putting that in the music and
Like the freeway Ricky Ross's that pretty much started the whole crack movement in LA ⁓ There were guys outside That and I knew these I knew these guys, but these guys were the guys that were basically feeding the neighborhood Giving ⁓ You know if you needed work I got work
And, ⁓ you know, my mom, of course, like all the moms, they're against it. But when you help pay some bills, they get stuck between ⁓ a rock ⁓ and a hard place. Cause it's like, don't want you doing this stuff. ⁓ you paid a couple of, you helped pay, catch up a couple of bills and all that. You know, my mom, was a single mom at the time with a...
It was what four of us, know, and three boys, one girl, three boys. That's tough. That's tough. And, ⁓ know, I was an athlete too. So one of the main catalysts for me besides.
being a young father was I asked my mom to get me some football cleats one time and she just broke down and started crying cause she couldn't get it at the time. Like, you I needed them then she could have got it, you know, maybe in two weeks when she got paid, but I needed them then. And you know, that was,
That was the last time I wanted to see my mom cry. So it's a lot of stuff that goes into it, A lot of people are having revisionist history about a lot of this stuff, but I grew up in it. So I know how the time was at that time. And I had a great job at first. This is before I went to college and whatever. I had a great job.
working with my grandfather and two of my uncles at ⁓ an oil meter plant. That was our number one product and most of our ⁓ trade was international where the war was happening. So I'm the bottom of the totem pole when all ⁓ inter-commerce trade shut down.
Who are they gonna let go first?
the young guys at the bottom of the totem pole. So I got laid off and like I said, there's no hiring going on anywhere. And that was pretty much ⁓ the main catalyst to that time. And it birthed those type of songs because now it's two-parter, three-parter actually, okay.
We're the children of the crack epidemic, but there were kids born from the crack epidemic. And a lot of today's rappers are those kids. And when you hear the music that's coming out now, that's what it sounds like. It sounds like the kids.
of the kids of the crack epidemic.
Dan Marshall (14:41)
I think it's pretty interesting, but like, so I w from my perspective, I didn't really start hearing about trap music until like well into the two thousands, like, like the late aughts into the early 2010s. Is that about right? When that word started getting around or when the coined term trap music started happening?
Fatboi (14:58)
Yeah, yeah, the,
it coined around 2000.
three or four that's, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause it was.
Dan Marshall (15:08)
So the early aughts, 2000s or whatever, what they call it. It's like in
the Gulf War era, right? The Gulf War II era.
Fatboi (15:16)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
it, coined, it coined around then, but you know, you had, you had guys like,
the struggle was always in the music. ⁓ you know, you had like UGK pocket full of stones, you know, eight ball MJG, you know, Outkast would tap into, you know, they, they, they, they, weren't really on anything street. Right. They're not trap music, but they would, they would tap into the struggle.
Dan Marshall (15:31)
⁓
But those guys aren't trap music per se. Yeah, but they were like,
Fatboi (15:45)
You know, so, so yeah,
Dan Marshall (15:45)
they laid the DNA for it kind of.
Fatboi (15:48)
everybody, everybody tapped into the struggle. You know, you had those groups that did, you know, tackle into, you know, again, like I said, UGK, 8 Ball and MJG, stuff like that.
trap came off of New Orleans bounce.
the Memphis sound with Three 6 Mafia and all that, which I think they really started what would be known as Crunk but Lil Jon coined that. Crunk and then off of, know, ⁓ Trillville. And as I like to say, ⁓ Trap was a gumbo pot of all of that.
Dan Marshall (16:07)
Mm, MGG, yeah.
Right, right, right.
I gotta give a quick shout out to Trillville. Those are my guys. They were just to work with a lot. Yeah, so.
Fatboi (16:30)
you know, Texas, know, UGK and all that. Trap was a gumbo pot of all of that. Stirred it up, slowed it down a little bit from what Ying Yang Twins was doing and all that. And then you had a different bounce to it. was more like this instead of, you know, like this, you know, it's just a little rock now. Yeah, yeah. It's a smoother, you know, gangster boogie.
Dan Marshall (16:48)
lean to the side kind of thing in there.
Hmm.
Fatboi (16:54)
It's kind of what they would used to call that back in the days. It was more of a gangster boogie to it, you know, and that was, and the way we were playing the 808s, you know, cause it was, it's always about the 808s because it was about the cars still making the tracks, the trunks rattles. So if your card had 12s, 15s or 18s in it, ⁓ were, you know, we heard you coming down the block.
Dan Marshall (17:09)
⁓ making the trunks rattle
Fatboi (17:22)
So, then from the cars into the club. So trap all day. And then we had the club on the weekends at night, you know? So it went out the cars into the club, which was how I found my niche because being a DJ,
It's like, okay, all these songs that's playing in the club, these are the records that end up being on radio some kind of way and all that. So that ended up being my superpower when it came to trap, you know, being a DJ is like, well, shoot, if I make something for the club or the cars, and mainly the club, because that's what everybody, you know, people were still dancing then.
Dan Marshall (17:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
That's where you're picking up the
new music and seeing what's working and getting the instant feedback.
Fatboi (18:07)
instant feedback
and that was it right there. That was my superpower in, but that's basically where it came from. Now, at the same time, was playing the stuff that we were doing at Pure Pain with Camouflage and all the Rome Bad Daddy, Heartless Hustlers and all the groups that we had, T. Warders and Bolo. ⁓
Dan Marshall (18:32)
Hmm.
Fatboi (18:33)
I'm playing our stuff in the club, but I'm also playing, uh, Yo Gotti. I'm playing, uh, T.I. I'm playing Jeezy. I'm playing Gucci. I'm playing all this early trap stuff in the club. I'm at the same time. This is before a camouflage was killed. Yeah. I mean, it was all a mess, but we weren't calling it trap yet.
Dan Marshall (18:50)
kinda sneak it in there a little bit.
Fatboi (18:59)
And then TI came out with this song called Dope Boys in the Trap.
Dan Marshall (19:03)
Hmm. I kind of just crystallized what was happening there. Yeah.
Fatboi (19:07)
over,
over. And that's, that's kind of when it was like, okay. And then TI, you know, TI kind of put it together like, okay. ⁓ and KP is like, okay, this is what, okay, this the one, this is the one that every, like we, we trying to put, ⁓
Dan Marshall (19:24)
That's
what everyone was sort of trying to build and that just kind of came together.
Fatboi (19:27)
Well,
they were trying to make T.I. like this polished rapper, like all the other big rappers. But that was kind of a fill out thing because T.I. was, he's good, he can do that. I mean, he's that talented. But KP, his A &R, yeah, and the positioning in the...
Dan Marshall (19:37)
Mmm.
but how they're positioning him, how they're positioned
him with the marketing is really where it kind of came. Yeah.
Fatboi (19:53)
Right, right, right. So you know what saying? And right,
exactly. With marketing and all that. So, you you want him to be this huge star and all that. But his A &R KP, they knew, hey, this dope boy is one in the trap. That's the one. So when it got confirmed by all the success it had in the underground, in the clubs, in the cars and all that, they were like, okay, yeah, this is it. This is the way we need to go.
because the first T.I. album actually flopped.
Because it was polished and TI was, you know, the singles that they were.
Dan Marshall (20:28)
It was already enough
of that floating around, you it didn't differentiate enough.
Fatboi (20:32)
but Dope Boys in the Trap was where we were at in reality. That's where we at, we're there. So I think his next album was called Trap Music.
And he dove into it. And here we are because yeah, it defined the genre because what we were doing, what I was doing at a Pure Pain with camouflage, we were trapping too. Because that's what literally everybody on the label at some point in time was trapping. My little brothers, my cousins.
Dan Marshall (20:46)
that just sort of defined the category, right?
Fatboi (21:07)
⁓ all the artists on the label, know, camouflage, you know, it was, and it also became the thing, and this is where...
artist development disappeared with the labels because
Dan Marshall (21:19)
Ugh.
Fatboi (21:20)
All these, this new generation of rappers were being signed by former trappers. You know, the guys that were supplying the work for everybody. Instead of going down that, you get to a certain degree and you want to clean your money up. Okay, let me open these businesses and all this kind of stuff. I want to be legitimate. And the next best phase.
Dan Marshall (21:28)
Hmm.
Fatboi (21:46)
to go into was record label.
Dan Marshall (21:49)
Right, well that happens a lot with art. There's all kinds of art studios down by Miami. That's one way they clean up that money. This painting is worth five million dollars and I will insure it and then I'll sell it to somebody. ⁓
Fatboi (21:56)
clean it up, you know?
So
all these labels popping up, know, pure pain and Savannah.
Dan Marshall (22:09)
and
they kind of keep it in the family with the artists that they sine.
Fatboi (22:12)
CTE,
I mean, you go out and you find these young guys that have this talent and you try to get them out the streets. So, know, grand hustle. ⁓ I mean, you can go back to ⁓ death row, know, same thing. So artist development in the labels went away because we were artist development now.
Dan Marshall (22:36)
Well, that and social media, like the trends with the music industry in general, like.
Fatboi (22:38)
Well, this is before social media. This
is before social media. so, you know, this, this is that window like, yeah, yeah. Well, Twitter 2008, Instagram 2010. Yeah.
Dan Marshall (22:44)
Okay, like about 2010 is when social media started kicking in, right? Yeah, okay.
Somewhere in there, 2008,
2012 is where it was sort of forming, I guess, yeah.
Fatboi (22:56)
So
the window we're talking about is 2000 up to about two, yes. Yeah, yeah. So we're right there. ⁓ And the A &Rs ended up being the guys that, you you had to go through the guys that were running the independent street label.
Dan Marshall (23:04)
So leading up to that is what we're talking about. Okay.
Right, because everyone's
Fatboi (23:21)
because y'all
can't tell, I mean, they actually told us with Gucci that Gucci's, it might've been the, not the first, maybe the second album. They told us, ⁓ I think it was Back in the Trap, they told us that album sounded like a mix tape. But no, it didn't sound like a mix tape. It sounded like what, I mean, it was intentional. We knew what we were doing as far as the sound that Gucci wanted and all that.
This is the sound. It's not a mixtape. We're giving his fan base what they want, but the labels at the time were still looking for this big polished ⁓ Death Row, Dr. Dre, Bad Boy Puffy top end sound. Yeah. And like, no, we're rough because that's what we come from. We come from roughness. It's dangerous where we at. You know.
Dan Marshall (23:56)
Right.
chasing what had already existed.
Fatboi (24:11)
So, and also keep in mind at the same time, BMF, Big Meach them were in Atlanta as well. So the BMF thing was going on too. this was the landscape at the time. This was life. know, so either you were going to...
go to college and get out that way, which a lot of people did, or you were gonna become an entrepreneur because every guy on the street was an entrepreneur. If you were a good businessman, you made it far. If you weren't, you didn't. And the good businessman went far and turned it into legitimate businesses, but...
Trap at the same time, you can take that, for instance, if you're a heart surgeon, your trap is the operating room. If you are a defense attorney, you're a trial attorney, your trap is the courtroom. If you're a school teacher, your trap is the classroom. So trap isn't,
⁓ exclusive to just trap the trap. Trapping is, is hustling. The word of it is hustling. Like, ⁓ like making a trap, you know, like, like a crab trap. You drop the trap. When you pull it up, it's crabs in there. That's basically what you were doing. You were trapped, except you were trapping what they call it. You were trapping, you were trapping another
Dan Marshall (25:42)
Well, well, yeah.
Why do they call it a trap? know, that whole thing. Yeah.
Fatboi (25:51)
So, and then,
you know, and then if you, you know, just fall back from the tree so you can see the forest even more, the trap is even bigger though. ⁓ It's a bigger trap that we're all in and.
Dan Marshall (26:04)
Well, it's, yeah, going back to your doctor, I would say the
trap is the medical insurance system, but that's the real trap.
Fatboi (26:13)
See, I mean, yes,
that's a trap within a trap within a trap within a trap. And that's the whole thing. That's why trap. Yes. And trap trap goes so far because of that. There's.
Dan Marshall (26:21)
It's the greater system it represents. Yeah, I follow you.
And it's people
creating their own systems basically out of cracks in the concrete, know? Yeah. Growing up a little flower in the crack in the concrete.
Fatboi (26:32)
That's it. That's it. The concrete, there you go,
rolls in the concrete, you know, growing in the concrete. And now the trap is, if you can code, that's a hell of a trap to be in right now.
Dan Marshall (26:45)
Well,
not for long until AI takes it all over, but yeah. Then you gotta go to the next thing. The next thing will be ⁓ vibe coding with AI, I guess. I don't know. I think people are getting addicted to this AI thing in the same way they got addicted to crack. And it's gonna come to a similar end, I think too, personally.
Fatboi (26:47)
Until, right. And AI is taking over, AI taking over the trap. ⁓
Yeah.
Yeah, a little too addicted. you know, yeah.
And like you said with the, when social media came along, the trap changed.
Dan Marshall (27:11)
So talk to me about how the music changed. Cause to me, I always hear the thing with like the really fast high hats, almost like a little sprinkler, you know, I wanted that start happening. What kind of songs would
Fatboi (27:12)
Trap move.
See, see that thing
right there. you know what Dan, see ESP moment. Because I thought about this just a few days ago because there's, ⁓ man, and maybe you can pull it up because, and I actually, ⁓ glad you, cause this is a great segue. Cause I pulled this record up just for this purpose, for those hi-hats, because there's one record.
Dan Marshall (27:44)
Let me see if I can grab it.
Fatboi (27:45)
There's one record that solidifies the trap sound with the trap drums. And that record is this record right here.
Dan Marshall (27:53)
Okay.
Fatboi (27:59)
This record right here, this part right here. Can you hear it?
and maybe you can pull it off.
Dan Marshall (28:05)
Yeah, give me the title. It's James Brown.
Fatboi (28:08)
Yeah, I'll send it to you, the one that I...
Dan Marshall (28:12)
Okay send it to me, I'll pull it up on the, I gotta pull it up on this other browser.
Fatboi (28:15)
So that is, let's see, Dan.
So that right there, you listen to trap music, that funky drummer.
drum pattern shaped hip hop in general because a lot of the early 808 drum beats were almost replicating funky drummer with the 16th hi-hat roll. ⁓
and the double snare, cat, cat, cat, cat, a lot of that, whether a lot of people know this or not, but a lot of that was stemming off of this one drum break right here, man.
Dan Marshall (28:58)
Alright,
Dan Marshall (28:58)
Let's listen to a little funky drummer though if I can find it here.
give the drummer some of the spunky soul we got. we go. You don't have to do no soloing, brother. Just keep what you got. Don't turn it loose, because it's the mother. When I count to four, want everybody to lay out and let the drummer go. When I count to four, I want you to come back in. Ha! It's in my collar. Ah! I drop the holler. I said it's in my feet.
Fatboi (29:07)
This is one of the most sampled records of all time. And this is the catalyst of the basic drum beat of trap and hip hop in general really. AID is hip hop for sure.
Dan Marshall (29:24)
They're absolutely locked in. They are not changing.
Fatboi (29:27)
Locked in.
Dan Marshall (29:30)
8-4
Ain't it funky?
Ain't it funky?
Fatboi (29:32)
That's it.
That one part right there, man, and I don't, hey, I don't care. Whenever I hear that drum beat, man, I'm locked in. And I just saw something, I just saw Clyde talking about that. And Clyde
Clyde, funky drummer, Stubblefield. I just saw something, and this is lit, it's crazy. This is how it works.
Dan Marshall (29:47)
Stubble field. The drummer. Yeah.
Fatboi (29:59)
Cause I literally, once that happened, said, that'll be, and it was coming off of the trap music thing. I didn't know we were going to go into trap music today and threw me a curve ball. And I literally got this funky drummer record ready and did a little more research on it see if I could find anything that I didn't know about it before. And ⁓ I pulled up something where Clyde was talking about it. ⁓
Dan Marshall (30:07)
I threw you a curve ball because I had a feeling. ⁓
Fatboi (30:26)
And Clyde's, cause I already knew they were on the road somewhere on tour and they were in the hotel rooms and James woke them up in the middle of the night say, Hey, come to the studio. And this was the record that they, that, that they did. And, ⁓ that drum beat for Clyde is always just like, it's a warmup drum beat, but he was on one that night.
Dan Marshall (30:45)
Well, that's
what I noticed about the original tambourine mix. It's like five minutes of jamming before we get to that section where James says, just do what you're doing. And it turns into a thing. It was a collaborative effort. They're warming it up. But once James identified, that's the funky.
Fatboi (31:00)
And it.
That's literally how it went. And know, Clyde said,
Dan Marshall (31:08)
Just do that.
We had to
get five minutes of warmup to get the funk kind of happening, you know? And then once he was there, James has got, he's the pilot, you know? He's got his engine working. Guitar players are both doing their thing. They're locked in. They're not changing. Once he gets right, James is like.
Fatboi (31:18)
Yo.
Yeah,
he told him, you know, stay right where you at, because what you're doing, that's a mother. That's what Clyde said, James said to him. I said, it's a mother. know, he's looking at it like, you know, this is just what I do when we warm up. But he was so locked in that night, and he was mad too, because they didn't want to get out of their bed to go to the studio.
Dan Marshall (31:33)
Like instant, instant composition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a mother.
That's
part of the font.
Fatboi (31:54)
and that's
part of it. And this is the only failed single James Brown ever put out.
Dan Marshall (32:00)
Funny how that works. Funny, that's the one that becomes the, that becomes the ⁓ legend. Yeah.
Fatboi (32:01)
but it became one of the most sampled records in hip hop history. In music history, yeah.
That's the legend of it. And ⁓ it's so crazy that, you know, going in the trap.
Dan Marshall (32:12)
The marketing guys didn't know
how to market it. Right, but.
Fatboi (32:14)
No. Yeah, because
I mean, it's just a jam session.
Dan Marshall (32:19)
But
the musicians, it was like the first viral thing before it was viral, you know?
Fatboi (32:24)
good jam session, but that 16th, I believe, I believe, know, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe the power of that 16th hi-hat roll is because of that record right there. producers in the eighties with the 808 were programming that beat.
Dan Marshall (32:28)
That's the origin of the 16th notes.
Fatboi (32:51)
in in the electronic world with the 808. ⁓ Because if you listen to old Run DMC, LL Cool J, boom, boom, ka, boom, ka, boom, boom, ka, ka, boom, ka, boom, ka, ka, ka, I believe.
Dan Marshall (33:07)
that's an undercurrent of what's, but I would say that trap music to me, I hear that kind of hi-hat hyper fast. Yeah, that's why I'm, right. But then it got to like a sextuplet thing or something like super, super fast. Like when we get to the 2000s, right?
Fatboi (33:09)
Funky Drummer is the catalyst for all of that.
Well, that came later. That came later. But it started with the 16th.
Okay. So that comes,
yeah, that, that, that came because we tricks of the NPC that we could do. Like you, you could, you could do that with. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of 16th, we'd go, we'd go 32nd, 64th, sometimes, ⁓ 32nd and a third, you know, we, we, we changed the, you know, depending on what we wanted, depending on what we wanted and.
Dan Marshall (33:37)
So you cut up the denomination of the note.
the denomination or the quantization or whatever, yeah.
Fatboi (33:56)
⁓ but that was, that was the MPC. I believe the, I believe the 808 could have done that, but nobody would, that's a little too much programming.
Dan Marshall (33:58)
Okay.
That's more of the Akai NPC
kind of function.
Fatboi (34:07)
That's, and that's what the, the, the 16th note on the pads to do the ⁓ 808s like that. And the hi-hat rolls. That's the main, especially when it comes to trap. That's what the MPC, yeah.
Dan Marshall (34:19)
Yeah, that's sort of the giveaway to me. Like I hear that. I'm
okay. That's, you know, the
Fatboi (34:25)
Well,
the new guy, Southside and ⁓ Metro and ⁓ Sunny Digital and all the guys that came behind us, they mastered emulating the hi-hat roles in FL Studio. But it came from...
Dan Marshall (34:49)
the MPC. So they were trying to replicate MPC production in FL Studio.
Fatboi (34:50)
NPCs. We were all doing that on the NPC. Yeah. And
they, boy, they took it a step further.
Dan Marshall (34:58)
So.
And
we talked about this before, like some of the, it's like the technical limitations sort of sometimes become tools, right? There was this mastering plugin in FL studio, right? That like, was hard to replicate outside of FL studio. So when got one producer would be like, we're to take it to the big studio, like patchwork or whatever and mix it properly. The guys they're working in pro tools, like, wow, we should clean this up and, you know, and polish it right up. And then everyone's like something's missing from the demo.
Fatboi (35:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah. You changed my mix, man.
Dan Marshall (35:30)
and it was this mashed right
it was because it was clipping in floor FL studio but in a way that but the way that people liked it like yeah that's I'm sold that's the one I want can you give me that but louder or whatever yeah yeah
Fatboi (35:37)
It was clipping, but that clipping was giving a sound. Yeah. Yeah. That's the sound. It put all the dirt and grit on it because
you know, throughout time, like, like, you know, like, like you say the, ⁓ what the flaws of what, how, how's it go? Did you say
Dan Marshall (35:55)
⁓
the flaws of a medium soon become its signature. Brian Eno thing there, yeah.
Fatboi (36:00)
Right. So
the cleaner everything got, we kept trying to get that because the MPC-60 had a sound to ⁓ it.
Dan Marshall (36:11)
Oh, that's going back. That's not even
like the 2000 or 3000 or whatever that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fatboi (36:16)
That's the eighties.
So the MPC 60 had a sound to it. And going before that, the SP 1200 had a hell of a dirty, dirty sound. It's the, the, the SP 1200 was like 12 bit and it's super dirty, super dirty. So thrust forward to FL studio.
Dan Marshall (36:26)
Oh man, we're like in 1990 now here.
Yeah, and I'll remember the... That's going back. Yeah, yeah.
Fatboi (36:42)
It's super clean. But if you clip, ⁓ the soft clipper in FL studio in the master track, it puts that mud on it, puts that dirt on it, that dust. ⁓ It puts that, yeah, it puts that dust on it and makes it all tight and man. it just, it just hits a certain way. But again,
Dan Marshall (36:50)
Like in the master track or whatever, yeah.
And it squishes it all together in a way that everyone likes, right?
Fatboi (37:08)
You can't get like, and the old guys that we're talking about, they hated the dirt. They wanted to get it clean.
Dan Marshall (37:15)
Oh, not
even the old guys. We're some of the engineers we've talked with like Cory and, you know, they're like, when it came up, we were we were trained to do it a certain way. Oh, yeah, Old old guys.
Fatboi (37:23)
No, I mean, mean the Bruce Wadines and all those old guys, they hated the
dirt of the mediums that they had that they were that they had to use. They hated the dirt on them. They wanted it to be cleaner. But it was, you know, like, you know, the phrase that you say, the medium that they were using back then. But it ended up defining. A sound and as time went on, they're still wanting to get cleaner and the generations coming behind it like.
Dan Marshall (37:35)
Right.
Fatboi (37:49)
I like that dirt. I want that dirt.
Dan Marshall (37:50)
I got a fun story for you. It kind of ties back.
We're talking about the blues and sinners, right? Clarksdale, Mississippi. OK, so and this is actually a story the guy from Steely Dan. He wrote up as an obituary. For Ike Turner. For for Ike Turner, kind of a notorious figure in music because of his relationship with Tina Turner, right? But he was a producer before he met.
Fatboi (37:57)
⁓ yeah.
Really didn't.
Dan Marshall (38:18)
Tina or Annie Mae or whatever her original name was right he was guess where he was born Clarkdale Mississippi right and um so he he produced what's arguably the first rock and roll record to have distortion on a guitar because he had a broken amp right it was like in his car or whatever the speaker
Fatboi (38:28)
Wow.
you
⁓ so it was an
accident? was a happy accident?
Dan Marshall (38:42)
Serendipity
and he liked the sound because the speaker was blown or whatever takes it to the studio The the engineers like that's all all nasty sound we get you a clean amp for you. No, no, no use that one Produces a song called rocket 88 I used to teach this because I taught about distortion types and stuff and engineering school and
uncredited on this, but he produced it. It's called Rocket 88. It's first intentionally distorted guitar on a record that Ike Turner produced. ⁓ I guess the context of the whole obituary or the write-up or whatever, know, memorial, was like, know, sometimes you get these artists that have great talent or producers or people just have a lot of talent, but you have to give the devil his due.
right? And you live a tortured life. ⁓ You'd say Ike Turner, everyone associates that with like domestic violence and a turbulent relationship.
But you can't deny the talent, right? You gotta maybe separate the two things as being, you know, two sides of the coin, right? And it just, it turns out that he's from Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the whole legend is the place you go to sell your soul to the devil in exchange for unworldly talent, you know? Which I always thought it was like, wow, that's kind of a neat coincidence, I guess, but, but.
More to the point where we're talking about the happy accidents, something blows up, like, you know, that's sounds kind of cool. And you have to push against the status quo to get it through.
Fatboi (40:05)
Yes.
Sounds pretty good.
Yeah.
I heard, recently heard Teddy Riley talking about ⁓ recording ⁓ my prerogative for Bobby Brown. And he had the song pretty much done in the MPC 60 ⁓ at his house. And they could not get it right in the studio when it came time to record the song.
⁓ in the studio couldn't get it couldn't get it right no no matter what they did couldn't get it right so he had to send for his npc he had to send for his npc 60 and he had i think he said he had like a a task am ⁓ eight track recorder or something like that he had to bring that whole setup
Dan Marshall (40:59)
The whole thing just replicate it
Fatboi (41:01)
And, and, and,
and, and, and he had it already. It was, it was ready to go inside the NPC. So he just turned it on and, and, and, and let the chain that it came out of go into, uh, the tape in the stu- that's it. Hey, that's it. And, and, and, and it followed the chain and you just couldn't put it like, man, why can't I get it to sound like what it sounded like? Well, whatever you would do. First of all, when you created it,
Dan Marshall (41:12)
That's the signature of the sound. As dirty as it might be, that's our prerogative to follow the chain.
Wha- Wha-
Fatboi (41:30)
You yourself was on one and whatever you were doing in that moment, you were doing it.
Dan Marshall (41:32)
Mmm.
Well, it's sort of like a recording studio, especially at the higher levels, is usually just a blank canvas, right? It's like you go to a movie soundstage without building a set. It's just four walls and concrete and some green screen. Maybe you got to provide the set. You've got to paint the whole picture. And I think people forget about that when they go to the studio. Yeah, you didn't paint the set yet. It's just four walls.
Fatboi (41:45)
Sound painting.
Right.
Dan Marshall (42:04)
So if you got something that's really important to the sound of your record, you have to provide that.
Fatboi (42:05)
Right.
It gotta go there. You gotta bring it.
Dan Marshall (42:13)
And maybe some engineers that work in the big studios have to be a little more tolerant in the long run. The ones that last are the ones that do this about people bringing in their world of production sound. Cause that's usually where it falls apart, right? The demo to the finished product is
Fatboi (42:30)
Yeah, yeah.
That's the danger. That's when you get in the danger zone, because can we transfer this over?
Dan Marshall (42:38)
We'll just replicate everything from scratch
at the expensive studio at $200 an hour or whatever. And it's all this time pressure and you got to do it and it loses something. I've seen this happen a bunch of times.
Fatboi (42:43)
And it doesn't work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's exactly what they were trying to do with this record. They were trying to reproduce it. I mean, cause I know how it goes. So, but you know, the equipment that they brought in and it just didn't have the sonics of what the original did, which is why I tell people, you know, our friend Kush, I tell him all the time, say, hey man, once we do it, I don't like changing it. Because whatever we caught,
the magic we caught in that moment, when you start trying to replicate and perfect it, it loses something. Like it...
Dan Marshall (43:19)
Yeah, yeah. It keeps
going around in circles. like, you know, I come back to the original idea. Well, what if we do? What if we do? What if we do? And like, you can do that forever.
Fatboi (43:28)
Yeah. And you, the main thing we've talked about this before, we clean up the flaws when we do this. Mistakes? No. Fix mistakes. But flaws, that's where the character comes from. No, don't, don't, don't fix that. And when, when, when you start perfecting it, it becomes mechanical. It's A, B, C, one, two, three. And the people can feel that. They, they feel the...
Dan Marshall (43:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They know that F is
coming after E. They know that G is coming next after that. No surprises.
Fatboi (43:57)
Right. And
it loses its edge ⁓ because it knows what it's doing. You know, like for instance, when you see a running back in Barry Sanders, let's go Barry Sanders. You see Barry Sanders put a move on somebody and it's like, my God, did you see that?
Dan Marshall (44:07)
Yeah.
Okay.
No
one could see that coming
Fatboi (44:20)
because Barry didn't see it coming. Barry did that in the moment. He did it because of what you were trying to do to him and it caused him to react a certain way.
Dan Marshall (44:22)
Mmm.
Right.
And it's just instinct and training and conditioning altogether.
Fatboi (44:34)
All of that,
but if Barry tried to replicate that move, he wouldn't be able to do it.
Dan Marshall (44:40)
Right, right, how do you do that? It's it's flow. Yeah.
Fatboi (44:45)
his flow and
you know whatever the flaw was maybe he missed the initial hole and got himself in trouble.
Dan Marshall (44:53)
Happy accident.
Fatboi (44:54)
but he got himself out of it because he's Barry Sanders and I know how to, I'm gonna, you know, so same thing in the
Dan Marshall (45:00)
we don't really talk about trap music and all the stuff you did with that and like people gotta know we take for granted everyone knows we ain't no spring chickens anymore right the 2000s were 20 something years ago now right the early the aughts anyway
Fatboi (45:12)
Yeah, man.
Yeah, mean,
did we, I mean.
We didn't get into anything outside of the... I mean...
Dan Marshall (45:24)
We barely got warmed up on it. That's why it's an eight part series, I guess, you know, so.
Fatboi (45:29)
Yeah, well damn, didn't, we talked about what led up to maybe the trap music, the catalyst, what got it.
Dan Marshall (45:38)
We have talked about the lead up. We just started talking
about the musical signatures. I think we got some good content on that. What else about the music set? The music sets trap apart like the actual technical parts of the music, like the 808 808 talk to me about the 808 of trap, how they're different from what came before.
Fatboi (45:50)
808.
We substituted anytime you can put the kick and the bassline at the same time, doing the same thing.
Dan Marshall (46:03)
Well that's tricky because the low end is tough to mix. Like you can get away with stuff in the mid range but the low end is super, that's the foundation of your mix. So how do you pull that off?
Fatboi (46:13)
Foundation. ⁓
You high pass stuff getting in the way. Get it out the way and let that 808 live in its own domain.
Dan Marshall (46:23)
So
anything that needs to be mid range, just turn off the bass. Find a frequency and call it the floor and.
Fatboi (46:30)
Get it out the way. Now.
I played chords, I played a bass line on my chords. So there was always a bass line on my chord. And you can hear it ⁓ with the 808.
the frequency that would overlap with each other is just out the way. So you can still, so you still get, you still get the warmth from the bass part that I have in the chord, but it's not in the way of the 808. It's in, it's, it's in, it's so yeah. And that stuff was, yeah. So that, that, cause we, we were definitely still putting 808 cause, cause all of us, and this, I think this is the difference between
Dan Marshall (47:00)
gets tucked in there a little bit. Yeah. We've got some fall off from that frequency. Yeah.
Fatboi (47:12)
The first wave of trap producers, ⁓ us going into the next wave of trap producers, all of us played. We actually played the keys on our records. ⁓ Yeah. the second wave ⁓ of trap producers came with the emergence of ⁓ FL Studio.
Dan Marshall (47:27)
That's musical training.
Hmm.
Fatboi (47:40)
and now they could just kind of paint the notes in.
Dan Marshall (47:44)
Well,
they're coming from like, I'm doing this on my laptop. I'm from a computer user building the stuff they hear in their head reacting to what FL Studio gave them.
Fatboi (47:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep. And they may not have been able to play what they played on a keyboard, but they're musically gifted enough they can hear it. And they knew how to, I was in the studio with, I had to drop off some files ⁓ to Waka to get mixed. So I pulled up to the studio, ⁓ Southside was in there making beats.
and
I'm up at the front. So me, I'm up at the engineer giving him the files. Waka's up there standing by the engine, me and the engineer. So it's us three in the front. Southside and other guys are in back of us. And when I first came in, you know, I'd dap Southside up, say what's up. And I see him on his laptop, ⁓ you know, getting ready to start making the beat. You know, I hear some drums getting
you know, he's messing around with drum sounds. So I'm facing, you know, my back is to him now, because I'm talking to Waka and KY, the engineer.
And all of a sudden I started hearing music coming from, it's like, and I turned around and was like, hold on, you just did that? And he was like, yeah.
And then that was the moment I realized, okay, we dealing with something else with this FL studio. Cause he, didn't see him play one key, but he just made this hard ass beat.
Melodies and everything. He got melody and everything, but he ain't push one key. But he wasn't missing on the notes that he was playing. Every time he painted the note in, it was where the note should be. Yeah, yeah, he's painting it in on the timeline, but he's not missing with the notes.
Dan Marshall (49:17)
Okay.
Huh.
So just paint it in like on the timeline kind of. wow, okay.
He just constructed
another way of working within FL Studio.
Fatboi (49:43)
Yeah, and that was the moment that I realized ⁓ I was starting to become a dinosaur. our way...
Dan Marshall (49:51)
Hey, hey, hey, life
finds a way, right?
Fatboi (49:56)
Hey man,
that was the moment right there, right there. I still tell Southside that today is like, yeah, that was the moment right there when I know y'all was on some different shit.
Dan Marshall (50:09)
You gotta watch
out, man. You turn into a dinosaur, the little furry mammals with claws start evolving and eat your lunch, you know?
Fatboi (50:16)
Yeah, was, that was, that was, that was, was eye raising for me, man, because he was so good at it and he did it so fast and he didn't miss a note. I'm like, man, how are you doing? Cause okay. And I know, you know, I can, okay, you've done it and I can see the chords that you playing. Cause I, and you know, I know what the chord is cause I can see it cause I can play that chord on the keys, but I can't paint it.
Dan Marshall (50:24)
Hmm.
Right.
He didn't cut. Yeah, like you see the whole timeline stretching out. You say this note there, there, there.
Fatboi (50:42)
You just painted it in there.
Yeah,
I see what you did. And I can play that same chord on the keyboard. I know you didn't approach it that way. How the hell did you do it? And if I started doing it, I'm not going to be able to paint it in there and it make, you know what I'm saying? It's like, nah, it's like.
Dan Marshall (50:53)
But that's not how you approached it coming up to that point. Yeah, yeah.
That's not how you're used to working. That's like some DAWs
just lend themselves to certain things like FL Studio Pro Tools is good for certain things like editing and mixing for me. ⁓ Logic is good for like creating sound. It's got lots of cool sounds built into it. Some people prefer to use it like Ableton. I like what it can do. I just don't get it like.
Fatboi (51:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Ableton, yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Marshall (51:27)
the visual metaphors,
I'm like, wait, wait, it's just a loop or can I do a sequence? I've had guys come over here to teach me how to do it. I was still like, I don't know if I get it. It's like calculus to me. don't like.
Fatboi (51:36)
Yeah. Yeah,
yeah. Well, I ended up taking some calculus classes. And when I say this, this is when I go in my hole and learn stuff, you know, when nobody's seeing me. And so I learned FL and I learned how to sound paint. But when the software version of the NPCs came out, I painted the NPC now.
Sometimes, you know, I'll play something. If I make a mistake on the keys, I'll just repaint it instead of playing it over. just paint it. And, ⁓ so, so I, eventually, I eventually learned how to, how to paint. And, so now, you know, that gave me new life. Yeah, we learned, learned new tricks. learned some new tricks, but it took South, it took Southside to show me that. And, ⁓ okay. So this is the sauce. So, you know, similar to when COVID came in.
Dan Marshall (52:16)
All dinosaurs can learn new tricks.
Yeah, well.
Fatboi (52:31)
And I took 2020 to learn Luna. That's what I was doing during that time. I was learning Luna.
Dan Marshall (52:38)
I
overthrew my HOA. I had to stick it to the microfashes, but we're getting off topic here. That was that was my COVID project. Yeah, you know. Yeah, that was very satisfying. But yeah, no, well, new boss meet the old boss or whatever. but you know, I didn't mean get sidetracked with that. It's like peak middle age, but
Fatboi (52:40)
Wow. I remember you saying that you did that and became the guy yourself.
That's right.
Dan Marshall (53:02)
I guess only to say keeping that open mind. Like at some point, you know, younger people are going to have good ideas and you got to keep an open mind to like be willing to learn from them or just fossilize. Right. That's kind where we're going with that. You know.
Fatboi (53:15)
Yeah, and the way I looked at it...
Southside, cause all those guys was around us. They were around. They were around. They were teenagers around us. So all of these dudes, all of these guys were super young, super young. Mike Will, Southside, Sunny Digital, Spins, Metro. All of these guys were super, they were all teenagers, all teenagers. We're in our mid to late twenties now.
Dan Marshall (53:25)
Right.
Fatboi (53:42)
But all these, all these guys are, I mean, it's 16, 17, 18, 19. And they took a lot of stuff that they were seeing us doing and used it in their domain for how they were learning stuff through FL Studio. And they create, they took the baton, I call that, they took the baton from us and they paid it forward.
Dan Marshall (54:08)
Well, it's the, it's the flower in the concrete crack, right? Like if the barrier to entry is buying a $3,000 beat machine, but you have a laptop and a cracked version of FL Studio, you're in business, right? And why don't you just do that?
Fatboi (54:09)
Like a mug, they, I give them props for what they did. They moved it forward. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Marshall (54:30)
And that birthed the whole, I would say that was instrumental of not birthing it, like instrumental in that whole genre, that adaptation, you know?
Fatboi (54:40)
Yeah,
that adaptation because a lot of
FL Studio had already been making a lot of the current hits was coming from FL Studio. Well, before, before, before.
Dan Marshall (54:49)
I felt studio was like a house
music machine from like, I don't know, Holland or something, right? You know, it was not intended. Yeah. Some somewhere in Europe.
Fatboi (54:56)
Sweden or some, some, yes, one
of those places like that. Well, was, it was, it was literally Fruity Loops. It was just loops at first, back in the day. And then they made the, the, the DAW for it. But when Snap Music, all the Snap Music was made on Fruity Loops, it was made on, it was made on FL. So it was already making the new hits.
Dan Marshall (55:03)
Right. Then they went with the cool acronym later, you know.
It was kind
of floating around in the scene a little bit.
Fatboi (55:22)
It was floating around and all the young guys were catching on to it because number one, it was cheap. They didn't have to pay $3,000 for, to be able to create music. ⁓ they didn't need it. and, and we had to, we had to buy an MPC, something that could sequence every lock everything together. But we also had to have ⁓ a $3,000 keyboard with T sounds to go with that.
Dan Marshall (55:45)
Right. So it was just
naturally built a moat around that production technique. Right.
Fatboi (55:49)
Yeah, exactly.
so now it's all, you know, they just needed to find drum sounds and a lot of them were using ⁓ the FL, ⁓ the Fruity Loops ⁓ keyboards, know, since that were already built into it and all that. but FL was already making hits. The whole snap movement was FL. All of that was FL. Trap overtook.
Dan Marshall (56:11)
Yeah, yeah.
Fatboi (56:17)
Snap, because it, you know, it was just, come on, mean, GZ, TI, Gucci, it's too much, too much. That was too much power. But, and the Snap movement seemed more of a trend. It was more fatty. How much songs can you?
Dan Marshall (56:25)
Right.
Yeah, once you've heard a few of them, yeah, I got the gist, yeah.
Fatboi (56:40)
It's kind of, you know,
so, ⁓ the trap thing, you know, it went, but the young teenagers, the young Mike wheels, the young, ⁓ South sides, the young metros, they jumped on that thing and them already kind of being in these rooms with us. And, you know, they were the next wave of where trap was coming or where trap was going to go. And, but what I, what I give them.
is the timing was perfect for trap to explode because they came into the game at the same time social media hit. So you talking about Twitter 2008. ⁓ think YouTube started making this, it started making this round in 2008 is F7, eight, somewhere around there. And then Instagram 2010.
Dan Marshall (57:17)
Mmm that confluence of events. Yeah
Yeah, yeah somewhere around there. Yeah
Fatboi (57:34)
So you talking about this is the era of social media and those guys figured out how to ⁓ social media along with the music. That visuality that social media would give you because all of us, we were behind the scenes mostly.
Dan Marshall (57:52)
Yeah, it was
part of the industry, part of the machine, right? You're not the front of the machine, you're in, they're the gears. And they're like the whole machine.
Fatboi (57:55)
Yeah, but
But also
with that trap wasn't a, look at me thing when we were trapping. Trap is behind the scenes. It's in the shadows. We ain't out front. So that same mentality kind of moved. I moved with that same kind of mentality. It's like, yeah, let me get the money. Let me get paid. I'm gonna serve this product.
Dan Marshall (58:08)
the shadows yeah you know yeah no exactly
Not trying to draw too much attention to yourself, I just really bought the product. Yeah.
Fatboi (58:23)
Let me get the money from it, but I don't need to be out front.
Dan Marshall (58:26)
Yeah,
I kind of prefer my face to not be shown here.
Fatboi (58:30)
Yeah, it's kind of,
you know, I kind of kept that, you know, same thing, you know, but I mean, at the same time, you know, I would be seen, but it wasn't the thing that I was trying to sell the product with. not selling, I wasn't branding myself with the product like that. And that's something that they did. They really branded themselves.
Dan Marshall (58:43)
Right, right, right.
Fatboi (58:53)
with the product and they found out how to maneuver social media and make that bring in even more money with them. And that's what I told Southside that before too. like, man, y'all figured out the loop in this thing, man. to really, because when it was coming in, we were against all of that. It was like, man, what is this shit?
Dan Marshall (59:10)
Right.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not giving up my secrets. I'm not showing
people my workflow and blah, blah, blah.
Fatboi (59:20)
All,
yeah, we were against that. Now, whenever somebody would make a spoof of, you know, My Kitchen by Gucci Mane, you know, you had this white kid that had on like this tin chain, supposed to be like platinum, had aluminum foil in his mouth, supposed to be like platinum teeth, and he's mimicking Gucci, and it got so many views on YouTube. ⁓
Dan Marshall (59:29)
Yeah.
Hahaha
Fatboi (59:49)
We were loving that. would see it, but we were looking at it like we're touching the world.
Dan Marshall (59:50)
Right.
Well, it's like when people get ⁓ parodied by Weird Al Yankovic, you you made it, right? ⁓
Fatboi (1:00:00)
Weird Al Yankovic.
I mean, we were loving it and we were flattered by it. They were paying homage to it. ⁓ At the time we looking at it like, man, white kids is eating this up. White kids is liking it. Cause we knew the hood was eating it up. Cause we go outside and see that.
Dan Marshall (1:00:25)
Well, that's been ⁓ the path for pop music and rock music since Jump, right? Yeah, that's always been the path.
Fatboi (1:00:32)
jump from jump
from jump. But when you're, when you're doing it, when you're making it, you don't see that, you know, now Southside and Mike Will and Metro and all of them, they probably saw that because by that time Trap Hat became the number one thing floating. So they saw a different thing from their, from their fan base, but
when we were starting it and blowing it up and getting it to interest that it was getting it and all of that.
If you saw white people, we didn't think white people would be into trapping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mean, mean, trap moved in trap moved into EDM and all that. I mean, it's just, it took, it literally took over the world, but I say the timing is, it was really right for Southside and Mike Willdom because it
Dan Marshall (1:01:07)
Hey, they got trap country. They got trap country now. Probably never saw that coming.
Fatboi (1:01:31)
Trap exploded with social media. It exploded with social media, but everything comes from somewhere. Rock and roll stood on the shoulders of blues and all of that. The second wave of trap stood on our shoulders and the little brothers took it to
Dan Marshall (1:01:33)
With the platform, yeah with the platform, yeah. Right. It's part of the platform, yeah.
Mm.
Next stratosphere. Yeah.
Fatboi (1:01:55)
Crazy heights,
crazy heights. And it became the, you know, the labels were looking at everything different now. I mean, they started looking at everything different with us because we were the ones telling them, see, I told you, now shut the fuck up and do what we want you to do.
Dan Marshall (1:02:10)
They love that. They
love hearing that.
Fatboi (1:02:14)
⁓ I mean, because
they literally, they literally told me and my manager, ⁓ Big Ron, Wasted was just cool. And we got Dr. Luke waiting to just, he wants to just give tracks to Gucci. And I was like, I don't care if it was Jesus, Jesus can't make Gucci sound like how I make him sound. He just can't.
Dan Marshall (1:02:37)
Oh, we gotta do the sine off.
Fatboi (1:02:39)
What is levels to this man?
Dan Marshall (1:02:40)
That's right. Thank you for watching.