A Quote by Lakeith Stanfield

My producer, HH, makes sounds, so I'm writing to his beats. — © Lakeith Stanfield
My producer, HH, makes sounds, so I'm writing to his beats.
Sometimes you're with a producer who just makes beats and you can kinda do your thing to whatever beats they come up with. But sometimes you get with a producer who really produces you and the music together, not just the beat then you can kinda throw in your ideas and vibe off each other.
I think writing and singing go together, but I treat them as two separate careers because I write for others. If I'm writing for myself, I prefer to be with the producer. And then we can vibe out and throw ideas back and forth, and I'll basically let the producer play me a bunch of beats until I vibe with one.
Nowadays, especially when you think of electronic music, it's like, the producer is mostly the one who makes the music or the beats and everything. But I am more, since I'm that old, when I started to make music the producer was just sitting in the back shouting and drinking beer.
I could do beats with a million sounds, and I could do beats with two sounds. Which one is going to make the most sense, and which one is going to sell the most records? Most of the time, it's the simplicity.
Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe a final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others, and makes them bleed deeper and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized.
I've never worked hands-on with a producer. I've been on my own writing, just taking beats and doing what I have to do. I've been on my own. To have Timbaland invite me in and say that 'I want to work with you' is amazing. He's a legend.
A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.
When I was first introduced to the music business, I learned how to make beats. All my friends rapped, but nobody made beats. So since I didn't do either at the time, I thought it would make more sense and I would be more valuable to the team as the in house producer.
I turn on the machines and start to think about ideas and take it from there, it usually begins if it's a beat, a track creating a beat/beats and then the bass-line/lines, then comes the sounds--drones, atmospherics etc, then the edits of various sounds I created and keep going till I feel I have enough sounds ideas to start working and building a track. I have many banks of sounds that we hear that can be manipulated in the machines.
I never made beats to make beats; I only made them when there was a record to make them for. That's one of the things that has changed in hip-hop that's made me like it less. It feels much more like it's a producer-driven medium, where there are all these tracks that are completely interchangeable.
I started off making beats when I was like 12. Then when I linked with people who make beats full time, I was like, 'Bet, now I can focus on writing and singing.'
It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?
I approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.
I vicariously lived the life of an independent producer from the time I was four years old. And what was always important was writing, writing, writing.
All of my HH Jags have Ducati stickers on 'em.
I've been in two long-term relationships and - this sounds awful - they were really helpful for writing heartbreak. It makes good songs.
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