First Placement is a Viewfinder series on producers and how they landed their first major placement, told as a first-person narrative, with the producer’s name revealed at the end.
Rockford, Illinois, is 1 hour and 48 minutes from Chicago. The same hometown as Toronto Raptor point guard Fred VanVleet. We played ball together in high school, but that’s a whole different story.
By my high school graduation, I had two choices: Continue playing ball like VanVleet, or attend the Art Institute of Chicago, which I did, before transferring to SAE in New York.
I started playing drums in middle school, but college was my introduction to beat battles. The beat battle world is like AAU basketball for producers. You travel to different cities competing, networking, establishing your name. Trap music dominates the beat battles, but I wanted to make soulful beats like the producers I idolize―Kanye West, 9th Wonder and Bink!
Don’t get me wrong, beat battles were vital. I needed that experience from 2011 to 2015. Epik Pro, who did “Don’t” for Bryson Tiller, and Jonah Christian, the producer behind “Find Someone Like You” by Snoh Aalegra, both producers I battled against before their big placements. They helped me see it’s possible to get major placements.
I told myself, one more battle then I would focus solely on placements. Starting with former Dreamville A&R, Matt McNeal who discovered me on Twitter in 2015.
We built a rapport and I would submit beats whenever artists on the roster were building their albums. Throughout the years, I met most of the Dreamville artists like Cozz, Earthgang, Bas from an invite backstage. Other members like JID and Ari Lennox over email. But I knew I couldn’t rely on just email, I needed to be in the studio with them.
Fast forward to 2019, I took some PTO and picked two random days in October to fly out to L.A. to Dreamville Studio. I had no sessions booked, I just knew I had to be in the building and hopefully run into someone.
I called Matt as soon as I got to L.A. First day was a bust and now I’m starting to worry that I made this trip for nothing. But then, he told me about a possible session with Lute who was on a red eye back from Australia. He’s jetlagged, but he’ll still meet me at the studio.
We spend most of our time just talking, more of a hang out than a recording session.
I played some beats and he picked a few he liked. But then I played this one beat that changed the session. Lute tells me this beat reminded him of a jazz song, then asks, “Could you flip a sample for me?”
“Love Is Everywhere” by Pharaoh Sanders was the song. I wanted to flip it right there in front of him. Thank God I didn’t. I needed to take it home, get in my space, and do it right.
As a producer who wanted to be Kanye West chopping samples, I felt like my whole life had prepared me for this moment. I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t want to gas it, but I knew if I flipped it perfectly, it could change my life.
I studied the sample for a few days and then it clicked. I locked in and it took only three hours to make the beat. It was the last beat I made before my 28th birthday. I sent it to him, he went crazy. I didn’t want to get excited, but I felt it, I knew I had a placement. A week later, Matt texts me, “Keep quiet but you have a placement with Lute”.
Fast forward to March 13th, 2020, I’m laid off from my job because of COVID-19 and was just unsure about everything, especially music.
Then two weeks later, I got an email from Lute’s manager, Big Pooh of Little Brother who wanted to start sample clearances. I spend the next few months doing paperwork I’ve never seen before. I’ve had a lot of almost placements so I’m still skeptical but each signature starts to feel more and more real.
Then came an official email that said the song, “Life” would be released on July 6, Lute’s birthday.