Producers Now
When rap producer Ron Browz crafted the ominous beat that would ultimately become Nas’ legendary 2001 diss track, “Ether,” he initially had a much different MC in mind: Nas’ rival, Jay-Z, who was offered the instrumental first. But Jay’s then-A&R executive, Kyambo “Hip-Hop” Joshua, passed on the track, with no idea that it would later become the backdrop to one of rap’s most iconic diss records.
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“I get a phone call: ‘Nas wants you to come to hear what he did to the beat,’ ” recalls Browz, who had handed his CD to Nas’ travel agent months prior. “I go to the studio. Nas is in there eating fruit. Calm and no entourage. Just him and the engineer, and he’s like, ‘Yo. Play it for Ron.’ Then I hear the intro: ‘Fuck Jay-Z.’ I was like, ‘Wait. I didn’t put that in there.’ ”
At the time, Browz was living at his mother’s house in Harlem and had only scored one other placement, for the late rapper Big L’s “Ebonics.” “I’m in shock, but the whole time, [I’m thinking], ‘Ron, this is your introduction,’ ” Browz says. “In my mind, I’m like, ‘Is this a good thing or bad thing?’ Because it was going at the No. 1 artist in the game. I just remember sitting there with the great Nas, who said, ‘I’m putting this out on Friday,’ which was Jay-Z’s birthday. Jay-Z’s birthday is Dec. 4, and my birthday is Dec. 6, so it was like a fly birthday present.”
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“Ether” proved to be the game-changer Browz’s career needed, swiftly propelling him into the spotlight upon its late-2001 release. And, 23 years later, his story still resonates with many producers, especially in today’s competitive hip-hop climate where feuds are more prevalent than they’ve been since the 1990s or early 2000s. This year alone, there have been clashes between Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion, Latto and Ice Spice, Chris Brown and Quavo — and, of course, Drake and Kendrick Lamar, whose blockbuster beef yielded seven diss tracks in a month, including Lamar’s Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, “Not Like Us.”
Produced by Mustard, “Not Like Us” was the producer’s first-ever No. 1 on the chart — and arrived three years after his most recent top 20 Hot 100 song, Roddy Ricch’s “Late at Night.” “Mustard worked like a machine, sending beats daily because he was trying to get [Kendrick] on his album. This went on for months,” says Meko Yohannes, Mustard’s manager and co-founder of their record label, 10 Summers. “He was just overwhelming him with beats. As long as [Kendrick] said, ‘Keep them coming,’ we kept them coming.”
“Not Like Us” immediately became a pop culture phenomenon. Actress Taraji P. Henson used the song during her opening monologue at the 2024 BET Awards. Serena Williams crip-walked to the track while hosting this year’s ESPYs Awards. Multiple professional sporting leagues, most notably the NBA, used the song during their broadcasts. And at his Juneteenth Pop Out concert, livestreamed on Amazon Prime, Kendrick performed it five times. “I didn’t know what we were getting ready for,” Yohannes says. “I don’t think anybody did. Mustard always wanted to work with Dot. That was one of the things missing from his résumé. For the first time working together, not only is it Mustard’s biggest record, but it’s also Dot’s biggest record.”
Even if a diss record doesn’t become a “Not Like Us”-size hit, it can still significantly increase the profile of the producer involved. Though “Ether” failed to chart on the Hot 100 and only peaked at No. 50 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, it boosted Browz’s visibility in New York, where top-tier producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland reigned supreme at the time. “Ether” “was all you heard in the neighborhood, coming out of cars and anything with a radio,” Browz recalls. “Cars, stores, everything. It stopped the city.”
Browz, who had received $1,500 for Big L’s “Ebonics,” earned his “first big check” with “Ether,” for $10,000. But while he landed placements for DMX and 50 Cent following the song’s success, he also experienced some growing pains.
“This time, in New York, the club scene is crazy. Once we started going to the club, I worked with DMX, Lil Kim, Fat Joe, Ludacris and 50 Cent. Artists would say, ‘I need that “Ether.” Send that.’ I remember doing that for a while. I was getting the placements, but they weren’t the singles,” he says. “Singles had to be bright and happy, so I had to switch the sound, and that’s how my hit ‘Pop Champagne’ ” — the 2008 single that hit No. 22 on the Hot 100 on the strength of a remix with Jim Jones and Juelz Santana — “came about.”
While producing a big diss track has advantages, it’s not always without consequences. Several producers contacted for this story — including The Alchemist, who produced Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams,” as well as Wyclef Jean, who co-produced Canibus’ 1998 track “Second Round K.O.” — declined to speak about their experiences, preferring to leave them in the past due to the significant political implications involved. Reopening an old wound, or potentially straining relationships further after the fact, isn’t ideal for producers looking to expand their networks.
For Mustard, though, it’s working out. As “Not Like Us” remained in the top 10 of the Hot 100 during the summer, Mustard used the momentum to propel the release of his first album in five years, Faith of a Mustard Seed. (Lamar doesn’t appear on the project, but plenty of other hip-hop stars do.) Its first single, “Parking Lot,” featuring Travis Scott, dropped about six weeks after “Not Like Us” and peaked at No. 57 on the Hot 100, becoming Mustard’s highest-charting song as a lead artist since 2020. The track also continues to boost Lamar, who was named the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show headliner in September.
“We held back on [releasing] ‘Parking Lot,’ ” Yohannes says. “We stopped it because we wanted to give room to see how high ‘Not Like Us’ would go. We sat back like everybody else, just watching. It’s something that you can’t just make happen; you got to be ready for it and do your best to build off the momentum.”
This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.
On a densely landscaped block in Miami, a stone’s throw from the Biscayne Bay coastline, a canopy of banyan trees, royal palms and bullet trees eventually gives way to a cave. At least, that’s how Pablo Díaz-Reixa, the musician-producer known as El Guincho, likes to describe his home studio in the city’s Coconut Grove area.
A dark, squat room tucked directly underneath his bedroom, the cave is where Díaz-Reixa spends most of his waking moments. Sometimes, he’ll notch 12 hours a day there noodling on potential beats, tinkering with the drums or listening through stacks of vinyl records he keeps by the mixing board. “The sensation I get when I’m in the studio, making music, is incomparable,” he tells me on the muggy September day when I visit his place.
Stepping just outside his pint-size studio, though, Díaz-Reixa’s own living space is ample and decidedly un-cavelike. With skylights scattered throughout its tall ceilings, his modernist abode exudes a sense of calm even with his toddler son’s toys strewn about. The place used to be a Buddhist temple, he tells me, which the Dalai Lama blessed over FaceTime before it could become a home.
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Though Díaz-Reixa misses his former (and longtime) home of Barcelona, which he and his wife traded for this Miami enclave in 2021, living in South Florida suits him. The Cuban influences here remind him of where he grew up, on the Canary Islands located off the northwest Africa coast. He prefers a quiet neighborhood like this to the overstimulating glitz of South Beach — a fitting turn for a man whose producer nom de plume name-checks a bird of prey prone to nesting in the same cozy spot for years. Miami’s proximity to Europe and other major U.S. cities for music, like New York and Los Angeles, doesn’t hurt. But living in this leafy environment has been a boon for the producer in other ways. “When you have something that’s expansive, big, with a view… well, you start to think bigger,” says Díaz-Reixa, 40, while taking gradual pulls from a cup of black coffee and kicking back on an earth-toned modular couch.
Were it not for Díaz-Reixa mentioning in passing that he’s preparing for studio sessions later that day with a certain artist (he’s tight-lipped about whom), he seems like any other area dad puttering around in house slippers, stealing away moments within the demands of childcare to mess around with songs on Ableton. The difference is that Díaz-Reixa happens to be a superproducer who frequently works alongside genre-defying and culture-shifting artists, including Björk, Rosalía, FKA Twigs and Charli XCX, and left-field Latin pop musicians like Kali Uchis and Nicki Nicole.
A former indie musician with a proclivity for making “very innovative, very freaky, very strange” music, as he puts it, in the mid- to late 2000s, Díaz-Reixa is now one of pop’s most in-demand producers, especially among artists looking to take creative risks. With his ear for distinctly outré sounds, Díaz-Reixa’s unconventional production is catalyzing pop’s transformation into something more amorphous and idiosyncratic. “I think he knows how to lead songs into a truly unique place by juxtaposing hard and soft sounds,” says Camila Cabello, who collaborated with Díaz-Reixa for every song on her 2024 album, C,XOXO. “Producers like him truly make my favorite pop music — bold and fresh.”
Díaz-Reixa’s ethos for producing music, pop and otherwise, is informed as much by his open ears as it is isolation. “I grew up without a lot of resources,” he says. “So for me, my way of listening to music was to make it myself.” While coming of age in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, one of the archipelago’s two capitals, he listened to salsa, African music and other genres coalescing there at the time. His grandmother, a talented pianist, taught him how to read music when he was a child, but she was hardly didactic about it. Those lessons unlocked something in him — as did his hunger to hear more of anything, everything, since he didn’t readily have access to top 40 radio or a bounty of record stores on the Canary Islands.
As a teenager, he played punk and hip-hop grooves on the drums, and around then he began experimenting with recording himself — mainly Neptunes-inspired beats he had whipped up and loops he made on cassettes. “I always had a lot of curiosity about the process of recording, without knowing what a producer or an engineer was,” he says. Still, he always knew that he wanted to work in music in some capacity. “I always had it super clear,” he says. “I said it, and people would always laugh at me on my island.”
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Eventually Díaz-Reixa moved to Barcelona. Around then, he played a solo gig as El Guincho at an underground Madrid club — with a sampler, a mic and a floor tom with an electronic trigger in tow — that changed his life. Young Turks (now Young)/XL Recordings, the tastemaking U.K. label group home to the likes of Radiohead and The xx, reached out to him on Myspace and signed him to a record deal shortly after, on the strength of that particular show. He began touring the world, and in 2008, he released his second album, Alegranza!, an avant-garde mélange of Tropicália, Afrobeats, looped vocals and other sounds.
Though he found a growing audience, especially in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico, Díaz-Reixa felt like an outsider even within the mid- to late-aughts heyday of inventive indie-pop. “There wasn’t a space for me in that music, nor in hip-hop, because of the themes I touched on,” he says. “I talked about love, identity. So I was in a kind of limbo as an artist. They didn’t know where to put me at festivals.”
In 2010, shortly after releasing his third album, Pop Negro, Díaz-Reixa got a call from Icelandic musician Björk. She wanted to work with him on her forthcoming album, Biophilia, so Díaz-Reixa made the trek to New York from Barcelona for the sessions. During that process, Björk said something that stunned him. “I remember that she told me, ‘You’re a producer.’ ” That didn’t totally sit right with Díaz-Reixa, who recalls thinking, “ ‘I’m an artist.’ ” Around then, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, and in 2012 — the same year he signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music — he returned to the Canary Islands, where he spent a little over two years with her until she died.
When Díaz-Reixa returned to Barcelona, and to music after pausing things for several years, he started reevaluating his career — and realized that Björk had been right: He was meant to be a producer, not an artist. “In truth, what she said made sense,” he says. “Because the part that I’ve most enjoyed is making songs. I liked shows, the connection. But I think my true calling is to spend as much time as possible in the studio, and the least amount of time possible on the other duties as an artist: promotions, doing two interviews a day, touring.” After that, he put together a new album, Hiperasia, that he used to “explore my skills as a producer and see who I was going to be as a producer,” he says. “I used that as a kind of school.”
A few years later, a musician he knew in Barcelona, Rosalía Vila Tobella, invited him to see her perform at a flamenco bar, or tablao. She was singing standards and accompanied by a guitarist, and he remembers being struck by the way she commanded the small room, putting on the type of show that wouldn’t be out of place in a massive stadium. But when Rosalía later reached out to Díaz-Reixa to collaborate, he at first demurred. “Obviously I saw her as a tremendous talent, but I wasn’t sure where I could help,” he says. “She was very traditional in a style of music that I was very ignorant about. So for me it was like, ‘How do I situate myself here?’ ” Once the two of them got to know each other, though, they clicked and started informally making music together.
Those meetups led to Díaz-Reixa eventually helping Rosalía co-write her staggeringly original 2018 album, El Mal Querer, the entirety of which he also produced. He declines to comment more specifically on what he imparted in those sessions, but following the success of the album — and the more he kept producing — he realized that the isolation of his youth translated into a major strength in the studio, in that he looks “in places that the majority of people overlook,” he says. “I’m neither the best instrumentalist nor the best singer. But I do have that little thing that I’m realizing something that, later, will appear in the session.”
That sensibility comes through in how, say, he might suggest a Gucci Mane sample for a Cabello song — which he did for the snippet that ended up undergirding the pop star’s “I LUV IT.” Or the way he subverts traditional song structure. “I always look for the element of surprise to arrive very soon in a song,” he says. “You don’t have to wait 40, 50 seconds until the hook.” Cabello, a fan of Díaz-Reixa’s work with Rosalía, says she found in the studio that Díaz-Reixa “adds that quality of a bloodhound on the hunt for something magical, and he doesn’t settle for anything less.”
While he’s partial to collaborating on full albums like El Mal Querer and C,XOXO, Díaz-Reixa still relishes working with artists on individual songs. Recently he collaborated with Charli XCX on “Everything is romantic,” a sweeping track from her album — and cultural phenomenon — brat. As Díaz-Reixa tells it, Charli already had brat’s campaign carefully defined by the time that, about midway through completing the album, she came to Miami for a week to record with him. Charli had a clear idea about what she wanted this particular song to be: “She had been in Italy with her partner, and she wanted to reflect,” he says. “She had something written, just lyrics.” He adds that she sought out a “grand” opening to the tune, and from there Díaz-Reixa swiftly assembled the piledriving beat at A2F Studios, where “Everything is romantic” came together, along with a few other tracks that didn’t make the final cut.
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Regardless of the project, Díaz-Reixa sees his job as a producer to meet artists where they are. “There are artists who have tremendous vision, and tremendous qualities to meet that vision, but they don’t have a way to convert the vision into music,” he says. “Other artists have a lot of qualities as musicians, but they need a bit of vision, or clarity. As a producer — and any colleague of mine would tell you this — what we have to do is just listen.”
Díaz-Reixa’s sought-after production skills, and his ongoing collaborations with boundary-pushing artists, are especially significant given that, for a while, he was a bit of an industry oddball. He stuck to his instincts for elevating music that was important to him — reggaetón, African music and off-kilter electronic music — for years, though it took a while for the world to catch up with him. “As in production, I made music that was kind of strange, indie,” he says. “There wasn’t space for people making music in Spanish with all those influences. Then suddenly, fast-forward 10 years later, that’s mainstream. Suddenly the world let its guard down and said: ‘No, all of these styles of music can be valuable, and they can be a part of a two-and-a-half-minute song that enchants the world.’ ”
His patience has paid off. Díaz-Reixa’s production work has nabbed him five Latin Grammys thus far and an MTV Video Music Award for “Con Altura,” a collaboration between Rosalía and J Balvin. He’s helping mentor the seven writer-producers signed to his label, Rico Publishing. He hasn’t yet sold his production catalog — though he has been approached about it. “It doesn’t interest me,” he says. “It’s not something that I see, for now. Also, when you’re a dad, you see a future there, too,” he adds, explaining that maybe his son could take on managing the catalog one day. More (secret) projects are also in motion. But at this point, Díaz-Reixa insists there’s no particular project or award left on his bucket list.
“Really, the greatest prize of making music is to keep making music,” he says. “My goal is much more artisanal: I love the process, I love to make music, and I want to keep dedicating myself to music — to be within the mystery of music, and to live inside that mystery.”
This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.
Shortly after the April release of his breakout smash single, “Million Dollar Baby,” Tommy Richman and his close collaborator and good friend Kavi made a “club pop-out” appearance together. The club, Abigail in Washington, D.C., holds about 250 people — but it was soon clear to Kavi that that wasn’t going to be nearly big enough.
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“The second we stepped out, there was actually, like, paparazzi taking photos of us. I’m walking down to the club, and there’s a line around the block, packed out,” Kavi recalls. “Around 700 people showed up… It was just such a wonderful night.” He pauses, then stipulates with a laugh: “At least for me and Tommy. I don’t know if everyone else [thought so], because it was just so packed at the club!”
Such flashbulb moments have quickly become commonplace for Richman, Kavi and the rest of their inner creative circle — which also includes “Baby” co-producers Max Vossberg and Jonah Roy, recording artist Paco (currently opening for Richman on his Before the Desert mini-tour) and videographer Josh Belvedere, whose kinetic behind-the-scenes clips of the song’s recording helped it catch prerelease fire on TikTok. Kavi says his role on the team is as much executive producer as producer: “When [Tommy] sets down a vision, I can think of people that can collaborate on it that would be best for it and sounds that we can chase — just sort of creatively direct which way it should go.”
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While the 21-year-old Los Angeles-based producer is one of five credited on the sublimely smoked-out, falsetto-led “Baby” — with Mannyvelli and Sparkheem rounding out the group — Kavi was responsible for the song’s “aha” moment. He was going through a sample pack of Canadian producer DJ Smokey’s that he found on Reddit and heard the vocal chop that ended up inspiring the song’s striking, pitched-down opening hook. “I was just like, ‘Oh, this is sort of hard!’ ” Kavi recalls. “And Tommy agreed… So we catered that vibe based off of the chop that I found and just built it into its own world.”
Born Kavian Saleh in Iran, where he grew up in Shiraz and Tehran, Kavi moved to L.A. at the age of 11. Growing up in Iran, Kavi says his musical influences were a mix of alternative rock bands like Muse and The Cure and EDM acts such as Skrillex and Knife Party, “a mishmash of what my parents showed me and what any 12-year-old on YouTube would find.” Not hip-hop, though: “Rap music doesn’t really exist in Iran,” he says. “And if it does, it’s pretty ass.”
That changed upon his U.S. arrival in the mid-2010s, when the future producer was exposed to rappers like Future and Chief Keef. “Wow… This is what it’s about!” he recalls thinking. “It really, like, tweaked me out.” His infatuation with those artists led him to study the techniques that then-rising producers like TM88 and Southside used on their records. “My main focus at first was very, very much just trap beat-oriented,” he says. “That’s all I did for a good four years.”
His relationship with Richman began about three years ago, when Kavi DM’d the singer-songwriter after catching his 2021 song “Chrono Trigger” on TikTok. The two began a creative relationship and friendship, and after pausing on collaborating while Kavi continued his trap production work, they reunited in 2023. When they started recording again, two of the first songs they worked on together were “Million Dollar Baby” and its follow-up, “Devil Is a Lie,” released in June.
Kavi admits that the immediate success of “Million Dollar Baby” — which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent its first 17 weeks in the chart’s top 10 — was not something his crew saw coming. “We were like, ‘Oh, this is a good vibe, this is sick,’ ” he remembers. “It wasn’t anything where we all sat down and were like, ‘Wow, this is a headbanger! This is crazy!’ It just was another record we worked on.” (Kavi says that he personally prefers the more “swagged-out” groove of “Devil Is a Lie” — which did not quite match the runaway success of “Baby,” but has shown impressive legs, debuting and peaking at No. 32 and spending 13 weeks on the Hot 100.)
Still, he is grateful for the exposure “Baby” has granted his close-knit team — “the best part about this is… all of us are coming up together, and we keep the sound and the circle very sacred and tight,” he says — and for the opportunities it’s now affording him, both as one of the central collaborators on Richman’s debut full-length, Coyote, and with his own work. Since his “Baby” breakout, Kavi has linked up with A$AP Rocky and also has been doing more pop-oriented productions for the first time with Disney Channel star Kylie Cantrall. Kavi says he has begun studying the work of pop super producers like Jack Antonoff and Max Martin as he tries to expand his skills and his portfolio: “I think I’ve developed my sound more now to not necessarily just be one-sided when I’m in the room.”
Meanwhile, Kavi is also working on his own solo music, which he likens to enigmatic alt-R&B singer-songwriters like Jai Paul, and plans on having his newly minted star buddy make an appearance on his upcoming debut project as well — though Kavi hopes that ultimately, his own name starts to stand out.
“Tommy’s my main priority because that’s like my best friend — we’re developing something great here,” he explains. “But I’m trying to build my own legacy as a producer as well. I don’t mind being the guy in the background… But also, I want my name to be known as, like, ‘Oh, this is Kavi’s production. Wow, that’s great.’ Build a legacy around it and just make some amazing music, you know?”
This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.
Working behind the scenes, interpersonal connection is everything — so Billboard asked a variety of booked and busy producers to talk up the rising stars, in-demand innovators and still-evolving veterans they want more artists and listeners to know about.
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“These twin brothers who go by TWO FRESH. I met Sherwyn years ago at a writing camp and I liked what I was hearing, [so] I started following him on Insta and noticed he was doing the artist thing himself. Everything I heard was fire to me, and I felt more people must know about this. But it wasn’t until recently that I found out he and his brother [KingJet] were a producer duo and have done a lot of stuff together. They have this raw, alternative, funky, soulful sound. Sometimes they remind me of N.E.R.D or similar. They are like the cool cats to me.” —D’MILE (SILK SONIC, VICTORIA MONÉT, H.E.R.)
Sherwyn and Kingjet of Two Fresh
Ben Outherevisuals
“TWO FRESH are behind some of my favorite genre-bending music in recent years, working with artists like Tommy Newport — ‘Tangerine’ is a favorite of mine — Samara Cyn, Duckwrth and Master Peace. For years they’ve been doing what people are gravitating toward now, blending live music with R&B, indie, rock, rap. I was immediately hooked by their pocket and feel — it’s impeccable.” —JULIAN BUNETTA (ONE DIRECTION, SABRINA CARPENTER, THOMAS RHETT)
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“OKLOU’S debut album, Galore, from 2020 is easily one of my favorite albums of the last few years. Her productions always have an incredibly sparse sound palette — her virtuosic writing for keyboard, plus her ability and confidence keep things so minimal — and she consistently makes amazingly beautiful and subtle harmonic choices. I would be so interested to hear her produce or write for other artists too.” —EASYFUN (CHARLI XCX)
Oklou
Gus Stewart/Redferns
“CECILE BELIEVE’s production always feels critical to me — always poised regardless of how much is going on and how hard she pushes elements. Her experimental and bold production decisions never usurp the heart of the track — it remains curious and compelling. Small wonder she is called upon by visionary avant-pop artists like the late great SOPHIE, Dorian Elektra and Caroline Polachek to collaborate.” —CATE LE BON (WILCO, ST. VINCENT, KURT VILE)
Cecile Believe
Julian Buchan
“I first became acquainted with OJIVOLTA (Mark Williams and Raul Cubina) in 2015, when they were working at my manager’s studio, Electric Feel, on multiple songs with Jon Bellion. We had an extensive conversation about the nuances and various technical approaches to producing a record, and I was deeply impressed by their vast knowledge and musical versatility. Over the next several years, we ended up collaborating on a couple of records and projects, including Halsey’s ‘Graveyard’ and [Ye’s] DONDA. They continue to impress me. While staying low key has its advantages, I believe everyone in the industry should know who they are.” —LOUIS BELL (POST MALONE, TAYLOR SWIFT, MILEY CYRUS)
Mark Williams and Raul Cubina of Ojivolta
Ryan Jay
“I met BUDDY ROSS as a very talented piano and synths player. He played on some records I was producing, and during that time he showed me music he was making on his own, and I was very impressed and signed him to my publishing company, Heavy Duty. He later got hired as the touring keyboardist for Frank Ocean, who quickly picked up on his level of talent. Buddy went on to be one of the main producers on Frank’s album Blonde. On top of his gift as a player and ability to build sounds on samplers, modular synths, various computer programs, etc., he plays and makes sounds with an emotion that is very rare. Everything he does makes you feel something. He brings many levels of depth to any artist he works with.” —ARIEL RECHTSHAID (ADELE, HAIM, SKY FERREIRA, VAMPIRE WEEKEND)
Buddy Ross
Max Wang
“HARRISON PATRICK SMITH, who just released his first album as The Dare. Someone sent me [The Dare’s] ‘Girls’ and asked me if I’d want to meet with him. I didn’t initially love the song, but after a few listens it started growing on me. Then I had breakfast with him and started to get to know him as a person. Twenty-something Harrison reminded me a bit of twenty-something Rostam. He kept sending me songs he was working on; they would just pile up. He’s prolific, and eventually I realized I liked most of the music he was working on. I think Harrison understands the intersection of ‘the song’ and ‘the sound,’ and it’s in this intersection that I think we producers do our best work. It’s not only about the song, and it’s not only about the sound; it’s about both, always, and I think Harrison gets that.”—ROSTAM (HAIM, CARLY RAE JEPSEN, SANTIGOLD, MAGGIE ROGERS)
Harrison Patrick Smith
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“One of my favorite producers, and people, in the world is CHONG THE NOMAD! She’s an incredible producer, songwriter and DJ based in Seattle. I discovered her music around 2018 through my manager. I immediately knew that someone with a name like that had to be making something crazy and different. We set up a hang a few weeks later and ended up making six or seven crazy beats together. Her ability to bring something different to the table every time has been key in pushing her own sound as both an artist and beat-maker. Drum-wise, she’s in a lane of her own. Always taking risks and providing rhythmic pockets that push other producers and artists to go above and beyond. I can play the craziest jazz piano riff, and she will find a small clip she likes in two seconds, chop it, flip it and put an insane beat over it that sounds like nothing else.” —ROGÉT CHAHAYED (TRAVIS SCOTT, BIG SEAN, JACK HARLOW, DOJA CAT)
Chong the Nomad
Jason Murray
“I first discovered JAY JOYCE when Little Big Town released ‘Pontoon’ in 2012. There was just something unique about the sound of the mandolin he captured and the heavy slapback on the vocals that made me stop for a second and say, ‘Who did this? This is so cool and different!’ The rest of the record was equally as sonically interesting — and, comparing that to their previous work, highlighted how a producer can change the sound of an artist and put them on a different trajectory. Jay always strives to capture sounds in an outside-of-the-box way that makes a record stand out. He’s always using weird gear I’ve never heard of, like an amp that was custom-made out of an old film projector. I hear rumors of him drinking mass amounts of Diet Coke and staying up into the early hours just experimenting with sounds. He has a level of creative genius that makes so many artists want to work with him.” —ALEX KLINE (TENILLE ARTS, TIGIRLILY, TEDDY ROBB)
Jay Joyce
Courtesy of ACM
“There is this kid I really admire; he goes by the name of TAIKO: a producer from Chile, super young but with a very interesting catalog. I discovered his music through Instagram, then a little time passed by and he was already doing stuff for J Balvin, Eladio Carrión, Mora, Jhayco. He even released an EP with all the Chile talent — that, for me, is a scene that we all should be more aware of. I don’t know which of his multiple talents is my favorite — I just think he creates these beats that carry a lot of personality and lead the artist to be inspired easily with his sound, having big songs in return.” —SKY ROMPIENDO (J BALVIN, FEID, BAD BUNNY)
Taiko
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“I look up to JEFF BHASKER and MIKE ELIZONDO. I first became familiar with Mike when I was a studio assistant on an album for Muse at [Rick Rubin’s] Shangri-La. We never crossed paths, but he was working with them over at his studio, and hearing his name led me to do a deep dive into his catalog. [And] it’s hard for me to pinpoint when I became familiar with Jeff’s work — I kept seeing his name pop up on so many songs I loved. I first crossed paths with him in 2018 while I was a studio assistant at Shangri-La for the Harry Styles album Fine Line, and he was always so kind and encouraging to me as a young, aspiring producer.
Jeff Bhasker
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Mike Elizondo
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“Both of these guys are such sonic chameleons. Just extremely versatile. I love how Mike’s career has so many distinctive chapters — weaving from Eminem and 50 Cent to Fiona Apple to Avenged Sevenfold and Twenty One Pilots and Turnstile to even movies like Encanto. [And I’m] inspired by the fact that Jeff’s success really started kicking into gear in his 30s. I always respect and admire producers who paid their dues and had to grind out their path. Versatility is a huge factor in the longevity of both of these guys — which seems like an increasingly difficult feat these days. Both have weathered huge shifts in music and culture — and, in fact, have driven many of those shifts. They’re both musically fearless and follow their ears.” —ROB BISEL (SZA, KENDRICK LAMAR, DOJA CAT)
This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.
It was July 8, 2023, and the locals at the Oregon Country Fair were twirling.
Leah Chisholm had grown up attending the earthy music and arts festival with her parents and brother. Now she was onstage there, performing. The globally popular DJ-producer, better known as LP Giobbi, had recently performed at Coachella and would soon jet to Belgium to play dance megafestival Tomorrowland, but DJ’ing the fair — “my favorite place on the planet,” she says — meant more to her.
LP’s mother, father and other family and friends were in the front row, vibing to her blend of remixed Grateful Dead songs and house music, including tracks from the debut album she had released two months prior. The fair had hosted acts like the Dead, Bruce Hornsby and The Black Crowes in its more than 50-year history — but LP Giobbi was the first electronic artist to headline. This homecoming show could have been a peak moment. Instead, it was a wakeup call.
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“I just felt so exhausted, and that was such a sad thing for me,” she says. “It was like, ‘I got it. This is not how I want to live my life.’ ”
Just from scrolling her Instagram, it had been evident that since rising to electronic world prominence circa 2021, LP had been Doing a Lot. She was hopping across time zones for gigs at clubs, festivals and afterparties. She released her album Light Places in May 2023 and launched her label, Yes Yes Yes (named after the unofficial motto of the Oregon Country Fair), the following September. She founded the organization Femme House, which works to create opportunities for women and gender-expansive people, people of color and LGBTQ+ creatives in music through education, scholarships and more. She was (and still is) the global music director for W Hotels. Raised by Deadhead parents (Mike and Gayle, who’ve been to more than 100 shows since first seeing the band in 1973), LP launched her Dead House party series — where she puts her dance music spin on the jam band’s songs, including at official afterparties for acts like Dead & Company — and officially remixed Jerry Garcia’s 1972 debut solo album, Garcia, in January 2023.
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She was, as they say, killing it. And she was fried.
Ashley Osborn
“I had put so much pressure on myself,” LP says today on a sun-drenched September afternoon in Laguna Beach, Calif. She has been working on music here in a friend’s backyard studio, where we’re barefoot and curled up on the couch drinking purple smoothies. “It was like, ‘This is an opportunity most people never get. You have to give your all into everything you do.’ That took over as me being a workaholic.” Amid the “extreme highs and extreme lows” of what effectively became a never-ending workday, it was hard to really show up for her family, friends, fiancé or “for the music, really.”
It wasn’t unusual for LP’s tour manager to catch her crying on flights while she listened to the Dead’s wistful “Brokedown Palace” on her headphones, feeling both closer to and farther away from her family as Garcia sang, “Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come/Since I first left home.” “He’d be like, ‘You OK?’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m just trying to process!’ ” she says, breaking into her generous and terrifically oversize laugh.
Figuring out how to grow and enjoy her success while also staying connected to where she came from is why her new album is called Dotr. Out Oct. 18 on Ninja Tune, the project is named for how she signed notes to her parents when she was a kid and didn’t yet know how to spell “daughter.” She tears up several times while talking about them. “They’re everything to me,” she says.
While LP produced Light Places amid the swirl of a rising career, she made her new album as the road “kind of swallowed me whole” during a period of tremendous grief. Three of the album’s 17 tracks are named for significant women in LP’s life who died while she was making it. Her fiancé’s mother, Patricia Lynn, whom LP knew for more than a decade, died in March 2023. Her piano teacher since childhood, Carolyn Horn, died the next month. Then Susan Milleman, a professional singer and close friend of LP’s mother, died the month after.
“I was in the studio trying to finish songs,” she says, “and I was just like, ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything right now.’ ”
But she worked through the pain. Amid house tracks featuring artists like Brittany Howard and Portugal. The Man, there’s Lynn wishing her a happy birthday in a sampled voice message. A sample of Milleman singing centers a track named for her, and “Carolyn” opens with a stunning piano solo that LP recorded when she realized Alzheimer’s was starting to noticeably affect her teacher.
While making the music, a light bulb went off in LP’s head about her 20-hour workdays and infinite to-do lists. “Here I am promoting women and Femme House, and I was not tapped into any of my feminine energy,” she says. “It was all very like, masculine productivity ‘do do do’ energy that just got out of balance. With all these powerful women who passed away who I was honoring, it was just like, ‘Wake up.’ ”
Ashley Osborn
Through “a lot” of therapy, she made adjustments. While her tour schedule and general output are the same, now “I’m just doing it differently,” she says. “I’m not sending as many emails, and I’m not making as many DJ edits.” Plus, the hard work has paid off. “I’m waking up to the idea that I don’t have to prep seven hours for every gig because I’ve become a pretty good DJ,” she says. “I can go to dinner with the promoter and friends and family instead of working in my hotel room until the second I step onstage. My life is still pretty unbalanced, but in that unbalance, I’m finding balance.”
For her aptly titled Way Back Home Tour, she’ll play 21 shows across the United States from October through December. Nearly all of them will be performed in the round, which makes “a really big difference” in how she connects with the audience. The tour will take her through standard U.S. dance hubs like Los Angeles, Chicago and Brooklyn, but also places like Asheville, N.C., and her native Eugene, Ore.
These B-markets have become familiar terrain for LP through her Dead House sets, where she plays Dead tunes crossed with electronic music. These typically more rural, hippie-friendly cities, and the audiences who see her play in them, are more her speed. “Those are my people,” she says.
She means this more literally than most in the sprawling Dead tribe. Mike and Gayle raised her in Dead culture even before she was born, attending the Eugene show of the band’s legendary July 1987 tour with Bob Dylan, when Gayle was eight months pregnant with LP. “I made it all the way to the front of the stage because the crowd just opened a path to let me through, I was so huge,” recalls Gayle, who adds that her unborn daughter was “particularly active in the womb during the ‘Drums/Space’ segment” of the show. Deadhead culture later helped LP — who found her stage wardrobe of vintage Dead T-shirts stashed in the crawl space of her parents’ house — orient her career around the sense of community that is the core of not just the jam world, but the dance world, too. While her parents see themselves in the fans coming together to lose themselves on dancefloors at their daughter’s shows, they’ve also worked to understand her career — Gayle reading up on foundational house music figure Frankie Knuckles, even going to see where he used to play in Chicago. (Now 37, LP listened mostly to jam bands and jazz until her boyfriend, and now fiancé, introduced her to electronic music when they got together 12 years ago.)
But while LP fits elegantly into the long-standing crossover between jam and electronic music, these facets of her career are still different enough to warrant separate teams. WME represents her for her global DJ career, getting her gigs in Ibiza, across Europe and beyond, while she works with Ben Baruch of 11E1even Group — the management firm that also represents jam acts like Goose, The Disco Biscuits and Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbridge — for Dead House. With Baruch, she has taken her Dead concept to the source, playing Dead & Company’s Playing in the Sand Festival as well as afterparties during its 2023 summer tour and following one of its 2024 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas.
It’s naturally all been a mind-bending thrill for her parents, whom LP introduced to the Dead’s Bob Weir at a show. Gayle thanked Weir “for all the years of joy you’ve given my family.” Weir looked her in the eye and put his hand on his heart. “The pleasure,” he responded, “is all mine.”
“There are moments where I can be like, ‘OK, I’m aware of how cool this is,’ ” LP says, “and that was one of them.”
Another making-it moment came in 2023, when Taylor Swift asked LP to remix her song “Cruel Summer.” When Swift tagged her in an Instagram post about the edit, LP gained 1,000 new followers in 10 minutes. But she was also concerned the project might affect how she was trying to position herself in the underground dance realm. “I’ve been working hard to get the respect of the CircoLocos of the world,” she says, referencing the revered techno party based at Ibiza club DC10. The day the Swift remix came out, she got her first CircoLoco offer — and the team there complimented her on the remix.
“It legitimized me to people who have no idea what dance music is,” she says. “But what I didn’t see coming is that the cool kids were also like, ‘Wow, congrats!’ ”
Ashley Osborn
Her grinding has also given her leverage and a platform. “It’s just so cool that the more I do or the bigger I get, I can use this power [for] the thing I care about most, which is empowering women in our industry.” She initially thought expanding Femme House, which she co-founded with artist management consultant Lauren A. Spalding in 2019, would be an uphill battle; instead, power players have been eager to get involved.
Spotify, Insomniac Events and New York promoter Jake Resnicow have been key Femme House supporters, with Insomniac working with LP on, among other projects, booking rising Femme House artists as openers for the promoter’s shows at the 2024 edition of the Amsterdam dance industry gathering ADE.
“There are so many people in positions of power who have come to me and been like, ‘How can we make our lineups more diverse? How can we release more diverse artists?’ What I’m learning is that people eat what they’re fed, and the industry is finally like, ‘Do we have a balanced meal on our plate?’ ”
Meanwhile, LP and her fiancé recently finished building a house in their home base of Austin. The space includes a studio and room to expand — because the album is called Dotr not only to honor her parents “but also because I want to call in my own daughter.”
With family so close to her heart, it makes sense that she wants to start one of her own. When it happens, she foresees “a time when I have to slow down even more.” But it’s OK, because as she has recently figured out, it’s less about doing the most than about being present for life as it happens.
“I’m not the best producer, the best piano player or the best DJ,” she says. “What my gift actually is is feeling good and whole in my body, finding my joy and being a reflection of that joy for other people so they can see it in themselves.”
Across genres, a new crop of producers has broken out in recent years (some as recently as this past one). Some have quickly established themselves as go-to hit-makers; others are talented newbies who’ve just gotten their first tastes of success. But regardless of experience level, these producers — selected based on their histories on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard’s Hot 100 producers chart, along with placements on other charts — are helping to define music’s future.
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Young but already established hit-makers, their big Hot 100 breakthroughs occurred within the past five years
Rob Bisel
The primary producer on SZA’s SOS, he’s charted 13 songs on the Hot 100 (12 by SZA, including “Kill Bill”); he’s also engineered big hits by Doja Cat, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, The Creator.
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Nik D
Debuted on the Hot 100 in 2019 with Travis Scott’s No. 1 “Highest in the Room”; returned with hits by Drake and Metro Boomin before co-producing Jack Harlow’s No. 1 “Lovin on Me.”
Jacob Durrett
Produced on seven Hot 100-charting songs — six of them by Morgan Wallen, including Durrett’s debut entry, the top 10 hit “Wasted on You” — all since 2021.
Omer Fedi
Has placed 23 songs on the Hot 100 since his chart debut in June 2020, including four No. 1s: 24kGoldn’s “Mood,” Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” and Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy.”
The Kid LAROI (left) and Omer Fedi
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Charlie Handsome
Of the 54 Hot 100-charting songs he’s produced or co-produced, 23 are by Post Malone and eight are by Morgan Wallen; seven reached the top 10; and two (Jack Harlow’s “First Class” and Post and Wallen’s “I Had Some Help”) reached No. 1.
Jasper Harris
Since 2019, has charted 17 songs on the Hot 100 as a producer, including his first two top 10s in 2022: Jack Harlow’s “First Class” and Post Malone and Doja Cat’s “I Like You (A Happier Song).”
Jasper Harris (left) and Lil Nas X
David Dickenson
Blake Slatkin
Produced on 12 Hot 100-charting songs since 2020, including four No. 1s: “Mood,” “Stay,” “Unholy” and Lizzo’s “About Damn Time.” 2024 credits include Charli XCX, Omar Apollo and Wallows.
Leon Thomas III
Produced on SZA’s “Snooze,” plus Hot 100-charting hits by Drake, Jack Harlow and Ye/Ty Dolla $ign; he’s also worked on songs with Post Malone, Ariana Grande and Giveon.
Ty Dolla $ign (left) and Leon Thomas III attend Affinity Nightlife presents “Music Is Love | Love is Music” Grammys after party at Academy LA on Feb. 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
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After some time in the production world, they recently broke through to the charts’ top tier
Evan Blair
Cracked the Hot 100 with Nessa Barrett’s “I Hope Ur Miserable Until Ur Dead” (2021), then moved up the chart with Dove Cameron’s No. 16-peaking “Boyfriend” (2022); earlier this year, reached No. 2 with Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things.”
BNYX
Charted 13 songs on the Hot 100 as a producer, all since 2022. Four hit the top 10: Drake’s “Search & Rescue” and “IDGAF” and Travis Scott’s “K-Pop” and “Meltdown”; has also worked with Lil Tecca, Lil Uzi Vert and Yeat.
Yeat and BYNX
Jason Renaud
A.G. Cook
His first Hot 100 production credit was on Beyoncé’s “All Up in Your Mind” in 2022; this year, he returned with four Charli XCX tracks — “360,” “Girl, so confusing,” “Apple” and “Talk talk,” with Troye Sivan — which all hit the top 10 of Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.
Ernesto “Neto” Fernandez
One of the biggest current regional Mexican producers. First charted on the Hot 100 in February 2023 with Peso Pluma & Natanael Cano’s “PRC” and followed that with the No. 4-peaking “Ella Baila Sola” (the highest-charting regional Mexican song ever). He’s charted 19 total songs by Peso Pluma on the Hot 100, plus three by Xavi and one by Junior H.
Teo Halm
Has charted three songs on the Hot 100 as producer, all in 2022: Omar Apollo’s “Evergreen” and SZA’s “Notice Me” and “Open Arms.” Co-wrote Drake’s “Fair Trade,” which reached No. 3.
Sean Momberger
Produced on two recent No. 1s — Jack Harlow’s “Lovin on Me” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” — after making his first Hot 100 appearance in 2018 with Chris Brown’s “Tempo” and returning with Gunna and Future’s “Too Easy” (2021) and Lil Baby’s “Everything” (2022).
Sean Momberger at the Spotify Best New Artist Party held at Paramount Studios on February 1, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
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Nova Wav
The veteran female duo produced on Beyoncé’s “Cuff It,” which spent 35 weeks on the Hot 100 (reaching No. 6) and became her longest-charting song as lead artist, as well as on Bey’s “Jolene” from Cowboy Carter, which reached No. 7 earlier this year.
La Paciencia
The close Bad Bunny collaborator has charted 21 songs on the Hot 100 since June 2023, all by the Puerto Rican superstar, including two top 10s: “Where She Goes” (No. 8) and “Monaco” (No. 5).
RIOTUSA
Ice Spice’s right-hand producer charted six songs with her on the Hot 100, all since February 2023, including her two top 10s, “Princess Diana” (No. 4) and “Barbie World” (No. 7).
Austin Shawn
Produced all seven of Bailey Zimmerman’s Hot 100 entries, including the No. 10-peaking “Rock and a Hard Place” in 2023.
Gabe Simon
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Gabe Simon
First charted on the Hot 100 in 2022 with Jessie Murph’s “Pray” (No. 95) — then followed up with seven Noah Kahan hits, including “Stick Season” (No. 9), “Dial Drunk” and “Northern Attitude.” (The latter two made the top 40 and also topped the Triple A radio chart.) Earned two more Hot 100 top 40 entries this year with Koe Wetzel’s “Sweet Dreams” and Wetzel and Jessie Murph’s “High Road.”
They’re brand-new to the charts, but their achievements already make them worth watching
Grant Boutin
Charted for the first time in September 2023 with Tate McRae’s “Greedy” (which went to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and spent eight weeks atop Pop Airplay) and then with her “Run for the Hills.” He’s also worked with Meghan Trainor and Tomorrow X Together.
Sean Cook
Paul Russell’s inescapable “Lil Boo Thang” (No. 14 on the Hot 100) marked his first producer credit on the charts; he made a strong follow-up co-producing Shaboozey’s Hot 100 No. 1 “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”
Sean Cook
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Dave Hamelin
Charted for the first time on the Hot 100 this year with five songs from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter: “16 Carriages,” “Just for Fun,” “II Hands II Heaven,” “Tyrant” and “Amen.”
Hoskins
Charted for the first time on the Hot 100 with Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s No. 1 “I Had Some Help” and co-produced Post’s F-1 Trillion single “Guy for That” with Luke Combs (a No. 17 peak); previously had only produced one other charting song, Khalid’s “Present” (which spent a week on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs in 2021).
Gerreaux Katana
Broke onto the charts and reached No. 15 with ascendant rapper Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me.”
Florian Ongonga
Charted for the first time in July 2023 with three Gunna songs, including the No. 4-peaking “fukumean”; also produced Gunna’s “Prada Dem” featuring Offset, which reached No. 15 on Hot Rap Songs.
Tommy Richman’s Crew (Kavi, Mannyvelli, Jonah Roy, Sparkheem and Max Vossberg)
The breakout star’s creative inner circle all charted for the first time with their work on his Hot 100 topper “Million Dollar Baby;” Kavi, Roy and Vossberg followed that up with “Devil Is a Lie,” which peaked at No. 32.
Frank Rio
The go-to producer for Ivan Cornejo, he has produced on 16 Hot Latin Songs entries (including three top 10s) by the young singer-songwriter.
Frank Rio
NEON16
Jack Rochon
Three songs from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter became his Hot 100 entrée: “II Hands II Heaven,” “Protector” and “Jolene.” He’s also worked with 6LACK, H.E.R. and Kehlani.
Nevin Sastry and Shaboozey
Courtesy of Nevin Sastry
Nevin Sastry
Charted for the first time co-producing Shaboozey’s Hot 100 No. 1 “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”; also worked on the artist’s “My Fault” and “Drink Don’t Need No Mix,” which reached Hot Country Songs’ top 50.
This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.
Hidden up a wooded hill in the sprawling backyard of his suburban Los Angeles estate, Dijon “Mustard” McFarlane is on the tennis court, perfecting his forehand.
“I’m an extremist,” the 34-year-old producer explains as he warms up his top spin. “I play every day, sometimes two times a day.” The L.A.-born musician, who shot to prominence at 21 when he produced Tyga’s 2011 hit “Rack City,” beckons his coach to serve again. After some rallying, Mustard slices a ball that nearly hits the Billboard cameraman kneeling beneath him, trying to get a close-up shot. “Oh, sorry! Man, you’re brave for sitting there,” Mustard says.
“I play, too; it’s cool,” the photographer replies, unfazed.
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“Aight, you’re one of us,” Mustard says with a grin, pointing at the man with his racket. For a second, it feels like the sportier version of a knighting ceremony.
He may still be polishing his tennis game, but after more than a decade of making hip-hop hits, Mustard scored an indisputable ace this year, reaching his highest career peak to date as the beat-maker behind Kendrick Lamar’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Not Like Us” — the biggest hit in Lamar’s spring beef with Drake. On the track, which cemented Lamar’s victory in the court of public opinion, the Pulitzer Prize winner is at his most venomous, using Mustard’s pop earworm of an instrumental as a Trojan horse for accusing Drake of being an Atlanta “colonizer” who steals sounds from local rappers and to resurface the serious allegations of Drake’s supposed predilection for underage girls.
But for such a hate-fueled anthem, “Not Like Us” also proved to be a uniting force for the world of West Coast hip-hop — unity by way of a common enemy. “When I was growing up, I watched 2Pac, ‘California Love,’ Dr. Dre, Snoop, the Death Row days,” says Mustard, who was born and raised in L.A.’s Crenshaw neighborhood. “It’s like being a part of that again, but in this day and age.”
The release of “Not Like Us” did plenty to galvanize the West Coast scene on its own, but Lamar further cemented its place in hip-hop history when he hosted The Pop Out — Ken & Friends, a Juneteenth concert at the L.A.-area Kia Forum. It was a show that was so sacred to L.A. natives that rival gangsters danced and sang to “Not Like Us” practically hand in hand onstage. To warm everyone up, Lamar enlisted Mustard to DJ a bevy of hits. But before literally popping out from under the stage, Mustard, a lifelong DJ typically confident in front of crowds, found himself on the verge of a panic attack. “I was nervous as s–t,” he confesses. “It just didn’t feel real.”
Aaron Sinclair
It was a full-circle moment for the producer, whose wide-ranging résumé — encompassing rap, R&B, EDM and pop — also includes hits like 2 Chainz’ “I’m Different,” Jeremih and YG’s “Don’t Tell ’Em,” Tinashe’s “2 On,” Ella Mai’s “Boo’d Up,” Lil Dicky and Chris Brown’s “Freaky Friday” and Rihanna’s “Needed Me.” “When I was a teenager, I’d write with YG in Inglewood [Calif.]. He used to live right across the street [from The Forum]. I made ‘Rack City’ across the street from there,” says Mustard, shaking his head in disbelief.
To start his set, Mustard walked up to his turntables, appearing calm and collected, even though he secretly wasn’t. After he fiddled with the knobs, the audio of a viral TikTok began: “The real takeaway from the Drake and Kendrick beef,” the voice of TikToker @lolaokola said, “is that it’s time for a DJ Mustard renaissance.” The crowd began to roar as the audio continued: “When every song on the radio was on a Mustard beat, we were a proper country. It was happier times. The closest we have ever been to true unity.”
After “Rack City” became a smash in 2012, the artist-producer then known as DJ Mustard seemed unstoppable. There was something about his simple formula of “a bassline, clap and it’s over… maybe an 808,” as he puts it, plus that catchy producer tag “Mustard on the beat, hoe!” that attracted pop purists and hip-hop heads alike, making his work go off both at the club and on the radio.
“Being a DJ, being in front of people and parties, I know what makes people move,” Mustard tells me between volleys with his coach. Every element of a Mustard track is done with clear intention to propel the song, not to clutter it. “I always used to tell Ty [Dolla $ign], ‘Man, you’re so musical, bro, but that s–t does not matter if they can’t hear what’s going on,’ ” Mustard recalls. “Simplicity is key for me and bridging the gap between that and the real musical s–t — but it still needs to be ratchet enough to be fun, too.”
Aaron Sinclair
He learned to use turntables from one of the best: his uncle and father figure, Tyrei “DJ Tee” Lacy, an L.A. DJ who frequently soundtracked parties for Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and other local legends. Later in the day, I follow Mustard to Lacy’s restaurant, the District by GS on Crenshaw Boulevard. “This is where they got into it in Boyz n the Hood!” exclaims Mustard, gesturing to the street in front of the restaurant.
As he walks through the staff entrance and the kitchen, he daps up each person, his diamond-encrusted chain with a Jesus Christ pendant swinging as he moves. He sits down in a corner booth, and Lacy comes to join him. Mustard orders the usual: fried catfish. “Mustard as a child is the same as Mustard as an adult,” Lacy says. “He always cared about his craft — always.”
When Mustard was growing up, Lacy would often bring him along to his DJ gigs. One time, when he brought his nephew to a party in the Pacific Palisades, he had an ulterior motive. “I actually had [intentionally] double-booked myself,” Lacy says. “ ‘Don’t leave me,’ Mustard said. But I was like, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right. Just play that and play this, and you got it.’ ” Three hours later, he got a call from Mustard: “Come get me! The party was so cracking, they busted all the windows!”
From then on, music always paid the bills for Mustard, and he became the hottest DJ at Dorsey High School in Crenshaw. Within a few years, he would be one of the hottest producers in the world.
Amid the height of his early success, Mustard remembers a conversation he had with another radio-defining producer: Timbaland. “We were talking about the music industry,” he recalls. “He’s just like, ‘I want you to know, man, you’re not going to always be hot.’ ” Even though Mustard says he never let his ego get out of hand during those first years of success — his mother made sure of that — the caveat felt unfathomable at the time.
By the end of 2014, just two years after the peak of “Rack City,” Mustard seemingly had it all: 23 Hot 100 producer credits already, a new mansion on a hill outside the city, beautiful jewelry, even his own line of DJ Mustard mustard bottles. (Actually, he regrets that last one: “That was not an ‘I made it’ moment; that was a dumbass moment.”) Still, Timbaland warned him, “There’s going to be a time when nobody picks up your [calls] — soak this all in, and when that time comes, save your money… don’t panic,’ ” Mustard recalls. “And then it became a thing. And I was just like, ‘Ah, this is what [Tim] was talking about,’ and thank God I was ready for it.”
Mustard photographed September 16, 2024 at Johnnie’s Pastrami in Culver City, Calif.
Aaron Sinclair
As the decade wore on, his number of Hot 100-charting songs each year declined, from notching 14 in 2014 alone to between one and five each subsequent year. Still, a colder period for Mustard was better than what most musicians can ever dream of. And as time wore on, Mustard made the conscious choice to evolve. He focused on developing himself as not just a producer, but an artist in his own right. He started his own record label, 10 Summers, which launched the career of Grammy-winning R&B singer Ella Mai.
“I think with any producer, the ultimate goal is to break an artist. I believe that’s the hardest thing for a producer to do… I’m always for the challenge,” he says. It’s certainly something he has proved an aptitude for time and again, producing career-breakthrough tracks for artists like Mai, Tinashe, YG, Tyga and Roddy Ricch.
“You can’t be hot forever,” Mustard explains. “Even the best in the game… You have to reinvent yourself. And that’s what I did.”
Every hip-hop fan remembers where they were when “Not Like Us” dropped. Released the day after two other Lamar dis tracks, “6:16 in LA” and “Meet the Grahams,” no one saw it coming — not even the beat’s producers.
Mustard, for his part, was “on [my] way to a baby shower. Somebody sent me a message, and I was just like, ‘Oh, s–t,’ and then I hung up in their face, and I was just playing it over and over.” When he arrived at the baby shower, he could already hear the neighbors blasting it from over the fence.
Fellow “Not Like Us” beat-maker Sean Momberger was getting his car towed by AAA after a flat tire. “My friend texted me that Kendrick had dropped again,” he says. “I clicked on the link and heard our beat, and I was just shocked. I FaceTimed Mustard, and we were yelling and laughing.”
Mustard and Momberger were never in the studio with Lamar (or Sounwave, the song’s third credited producer and a longtime collaborator of the rapper) to make “Not Like Us.” The song started with Momberger sending Mustard some sample ideas and Mustard doing what he does best — “infectious” and “catchy” production with “a simplistic beauty driven by bouncy drums and West Coast undertone,” as Momberger describes it. But while the track stays true to the Mustard sound everyone knows, it also embodies how he has iterated it over the years to be fuller and more sample-driven.
Mustard texted it, along with about six other beats, to Lamar — who said nothing but reacted with a “heart.” Though he wasn’t in the room with Lamar this time, he had been in the studio with him before, years ago. Once, he says, Terrace Martin, a core musician on Lamar’s 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, took him to one of that project’s sessions. “I remember seeing that s–t and being like, ‘Whoa, that’s a lot going on.’ With me and YG [Mustard’s most frequent collaborator], we didn’t have that many musicians around. That was my first time seeing s–t like that. Thundercat was there, Sounwave was there. Terrace was there… I knew [that album] was going to be some crazy s–t, but I didn’t know it would be like that.”
Though he couldn’t have predicted the impact To Pimp a Butterfly would have on culture, Mustard says he has a good intuition for hit records. “I don’t want to say I’m always right, but I’m pretty much on the money,” he notes. Mai agrees: “Mustard’s greatest strength is his ear.”
Aaron Sinclair
For all his success producing radio-ready singles, however, one-off collaborations don’t move Mustard like they used to. “I can do stuff like ‘Not Like Us’ every day,” he says. “I can do that with my eyes closed… In my next phase, I’m not doing singles,” he insists, though he does admit he would do “Not Like Us” again “100,000 times” without hesitation. “I’ll do [a single for an artist] if I can have the whole album or the majority of the album, but other than that, I don’t get anything out of that.”
It’s why he dropped his own album, Faith of a Mustard Seed, this summer, which features Ricch, Travis Scott (whose “Parking Lot” with Mustard went to No. 17 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart), Ty Dolla $ign, Future, Young Thug and more hip-hop heavyweights. Mustard reckons the album (named after a suggestion by his late friend Nipsey Hussle) took him five years to perfect — the equivalent of a lifetime in popular music, especially hip-hop. During that time, rap went from being constantly atop the Hot 100 to weeks, months and even a whole year passing without a rap No. 1. Top players like Thug and Gunna went to jail; Nipsey, Young Dolph and Takeoff died; Ye went rogue. New faces like Yeat and 4batz popularized new styles; Afrobeats and reggaetón seeped into the American rap mainstream.
Still, Mustard believes Faith of a Mustard Seed warranted the wait. “There’s nothing on that album that I feel like in 10 years I’ll say, ‘Damn, I wish I did that better,’ ” he says. “I hope it teaches kids that you can take your time and do the right thing. You don’t have to rush it out. I think [the industry] today is just so fast-paced.”
Mustard hopes the perfectionism that drove both Faith of a Mustard Seed and “Not Like Us,” including Lamar’s own multifaceted bars, will encourage artists to “really rap now… I think now it’s opened the door for … the real rappers that love rap music and lyrics and the double, triple, quadruple entendres and all that s–t cool again.”
Aaron Sinclair
And he’s hoping — or rather, manifesting, sometime between waking up and hitting the tennis court — that this dedication to his craft will yield a Grammy next year. “I definitely speak it into existence every morning,” he says with a laugh. “The highest reward we can get as musicians is a Grammy. I know that people talk like it’s not a thing, but it actually is. It’s like Jayson Tatum right now saying, ‘I don’t want to win the NBA Finals.’ Like, if that’s the case, then go play at Venice Beach.”
Regardless of whether he takes home a trophy on Feb. 2, he knows he has something monumental to look forward to precisely a week later, when Lamar headlines the Super Bowl halftime show — where “Not Like Us” will no doubt get its biggest showcase yet. “Of course I’m going,” he says. “I’m going to go and be in a box and watch… I just can’t wait… I might shed a tear!”
Yet despite surreal moments like that, Mustard says his life is “still the same” as it always was. “I don’t take no for an answer. I’m persistent. Every day, I’m doing something that has to do with the journey of trying to get to where I’m trying to go. At this point, I don’t know how far I can go. I don’t think there’s a limit. I’ve always been like that. That’s how I got ‘Rack City’ — just waking up every day, making beats… and hoping.”
This story also appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“People call it Brat Summer — it should be called ‘artist development summer,’ ” Jack Antonoff jokes on a mid-September afternoon, sitting on the rooftop of New York’s Electric Lady Studios and reflecting on the past few months in pop music. Charli XCX, whose brat album helped define the season, is an old friend of Antonoff’s — they co-headlined a 2015 tour called Charli and Jack Do America — and he points out that her 2024 success speaks to a larger movement of artists creating their own mainstream niches instead of latching on to trends.
“Sabrina [Carpenter], Charli and Chappell Roan — the three of them have had this shared experience of artists who have been crystallizing, and that’s where you get gems,” Antonoff says of a trio of pop talents who have dominated recent cultural discourse. “And that’s the story of being an artist. That’s true artist development. And it doesn’t matter where we are in tech or streaming or anything — the only way to win is to create your own language.”
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This year, Antonoff has had a direct hand in abetting artistic evolution at different levels of stardom — helping a longtime collaborator, Taylor Swift, shape-shift while staying on top of the pop world, as well as a rising artist, Carpenter, secure her place on the A-list. For the latter, Antonoff produced and co-wrote four songs on Carpenter’s new album, Short n’ Sweet — including her first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, “Please Please Please” — allowing the pop singer’s sardonic tics to shine on her way to arena-headliner status.
“No one deserves it more,” Antonoff says of the former Disney Channel star, who has released six albums by the age of 25. “Sabrina’s been quietly growing, and her albums have been getting more awesome, and she’s been honing her sound and performances. It’s not like she just popped onto the scene — this has been a decade of grinding toward it.”
During the week that Short n’ Sweet was released in August, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department — on which Antonoff contributed to 16 songs across both of its volumes — spent its 15th week atop the Billboard 200, the longest run at No. 1 of any Swift project. Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department on the night of the 2024 Grammys, where previous full-length Midnights was awarded album of the year and she set the record for the most career wins in the category.
Amy Lombard
This year, Antonoff’s work with Swift and Carpenter — along with the self-titled fourth album from his long-running band, Bleachers, which arrived in March — could help him notch his sixth consecutive Grammy nomination for a producer of the year, non-classical, a category that he has won the past three years. If Antonoff takes home the trophy at the 2025 ceremony, he would set a record as the only four-peat in the 50-year history of the award.
“It would be a really [nice] resolve to a really special period,” says Antonoff’s manager, Jamie Oborne. “If it’s based on the work alone and the broad spectrum of work, I can’t imagine anyone else winning.”
Instead of functioning as a victory lap for Swift, The Tortured Poets Department was emotionally unguarded and knowingly messy, dividing critics and inspiring immediate fan devotion on its way to the biggest first-week debut of her career. “The best bodies of work are when people drill into the most personal, the most if-you-know-you-know kind of stuff,” Antonoff says. “I think the depth of [Tortured Poets Department] was surprising to people because I think people are constantly surprised when artists continue to be artists. You see so many people take the wrong turn and pander and become terrified of what they could lose. That’s the recipe for all the worst music, and I can only relate to people who don’t give a f–k. That next body of work — it doesn’t matter how big your audience is, it either comes from the depths of you or it doesn’t. And I love that album so much because the whole thing is so remarkably vulnerable.”
That ethos helps explain why, in the midst of a record-setting run as a pop studio whiz, Antonoff keeps pushing his creativity into unfamiliar areas. After producing the April soundtrack to the Apple TV+ fashion drama The New Look, which included Antonoff pals like Lana Del Rey and The 1975 covering early-20th-century songs, he also signed on to provide original music for a Broadway revival of Romeo + Juliet, which began previews in late September. More recently, he unveiled early plans for his Public Studios initiative, which, with the help of The Ally Coalition, will build studios in LGBTQ+ youth shelters and create a network of engineers to help train those interested in production — free of charge.
Jack Antonoff photographed September 10, 2024 at Electric Lady Studios in New York.
Amy Lombard
Antonoff also deconstructed the first Bleachers album, 2014’s Strange Desire, for a 10th-anniversary rework dubbed A Stranger Desired, released in September. And amid all of the projects, he foremost describes 2024 as “a touring year,” having led Bleachers on a global trek that will culminate with a headlining gig at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 4.
He admits that he gets asked about his schedule by the people around him — friends curious about his balancing act and why he hasn’t zeroed in on the more successful pieces of his artistry. “My hunger to make things hasn’t changed since I was like 14,” Antonoff says with a chuckle, “but the context for people has changed.” When asked about the idea of winning four consecutive Grammys for producer of the year, Antonoff returns to the idea of artist development — that even when he’s receiving what he describes as “a huge honor,” his priority remains “protecting that zone” that allows him to grow as an artist and person.
“I really don’t let anything get in the way of that,” Antonoff says. “I keep my head down and I go back to work.”
This story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Quincy Jones said it best,” explains Nile Rodgers: “A producer of a record is like the director of a film.” From his first production credits on tracks by Luther Vandross, Sister Sledge and Diana Ross to his more recent work with Beyoncé, Daft Punk and Coldplay, Rodgers is one of the rare producers who bridges the gap between the classic understanding of a record producer and today’s digital music-maker.
In the 20th century, Rodgers and his contemporaries recorded songs to lumbering rolls of tape, bringing the visions of artists and songwriters to life with their ornamentation, arrangement and technical skill. While that is still true for some producers, the trade has changed dramatically. Around the turn of the millennium, increasingly powerful DIY recording tools and the piracy-inflicted bust of the music business drove recording from fancy studios and into musicians’ homes — shifts that democratized who could be viewed as a producer and blurred the lines between the processes of songwriting and recording. How producers are compensated has also evolved, with greater distinctions for payment by genre, widely varying upfront fees and greater possibilities to earn publishing income than ever.
Producer Fees
The most reliable form of income for producers: a sum owed for their work before the song comes out. Fees tend to start around $15,000 to do a track for a major-label-affiliated pop or R&B/hip-hop artist; a superstar-level producer might charge up to $75,000 (or higher), but $30,000 to $40,000 is considered a good range for one who is well-established and working with a major-label act.
When producers work across an entire album of songs, it’s common to reduce per-track rates. “It might be $30,000 for the first three songs, $20,000 for the second two and $10,000 for the last song,” says Lucas Keller, founder of producer management firm Milk & Honey.
These fees are paid half upfront and half upon the delivery of a record that the label deems “commercially satisfactory.” While that first half is a producer’s to keep, the second is an advance against master royalties earned from the song. In today’s streaming economy, however, many tracks don’t recoup their fees.
Independent artists and/or those with little-to-no recording budget sometimes get more creative in paying producers what they are owed. Instead of a fee, “a lot of producers are getting 50% of the master monies, either in perpetuity or until the artist makes the producer’s fee back,” says Audrey Benoualid, partner at Myman Greenspan. Producers can also receive a fee under the aforementioned $15,000 for their work.
Points
The percentage of master royalties producers receive for their work. Earning from two to five percentage points of a record is common today, starting at two points for a newcomer and four to five for a well-established, in-demand producer. This amount is subtracted from the act’s percentage share of the recording; labels aren’t expected to cede any of their share to compensate a producer.
In rare cases, a superstar talent may command six to eight points: Rodgers and his manager, Hipgnosis founder and CEO Merck Mercuriadis, confirm that, on average, Rodgers earns six points, but every song is a unique negotiation. As Keller explains, things can get more complicated when two producers are involved: “Let’s say two sizable producers want four points each. We likely won’t get to take eight all together, so what about we try to split six points down the middle?”
Publishing
Because modern musicians often write and record as they go, the line between songwriter and producer is blurrier than ever. Many creatives that are now primarily classified as producers are also part of the songwriting process — and these multihyphenates earn publishing in addition to fees and points.
“Back in the day, when people talked about what a songwriter did, it was the guy who wrote melody, lyrics and chords. Today, if you come up with the beat, like many producers do, you can also be credited as a songwriter,” Mercuriadis says.
This is especially true in hip-hop. Michael Sukin, a top music attorney who has worked in the business since the 1970s, credits the genre’s emergence as a big part of redefining what a producer does. Timmy Haehl, senior director of publishing at Big Machine’s Los Angeles office, says, “In hip-hop, publishing is sometimes split down the middle: 50% for the top line, 50% for the track.” (In pop and other genres, there isn’t a standard amount of publishing a producer-songwriter can expect; that share of the composition is negotiated on a case-by-case basis.)
Extra Earnings
Some producers can pocket extra income through neighboring rights — performance royalties earned on the master side of income in many countries outside the United States. This, however, “has to be for a qualified record or qualified person,” Benoualid says. “You can’t be a U.S. citizen, unless you record in London and the studio is credited on the album — then you qualify for neighboring rights there.”
Producers in the United States qualify to earn a similar (but more limited) royalty from their masters playing on digital radio stations like SiriusXM, Pandora and other noninteractive digital transmissions. This is paid by SoundExchange, but producers aren’t entitled to this income unless the artists they worked with tell SoundExchange to pay the producers part of their royalty directly.
Nowadays, veteran hit-makers like Dr. Luke and Max Martin may also sign protégés to production deals or joint ventures with publishers to earn additional income, allowing them to, as Keller puts it, “amass a huge catalog with real enterprise value.” The younger producers, in exchange for part of their monies, in turn get introductions to, Haehl says, “people in [the veteran hit-makers’] network [and] special opportunities with artists.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Whether you’re a math-and-science whiz or an intuitive creative, there’s a prestigious audio engineering program that can prepare you for a career as a producer — or for whatever studio path you might follow — while emphasizing a well-rounded education in the process.
Here’s a selection of some of the best academic programs, along with sage professional advice from those who lead them.
Belmont University Audio Engineering Technology
The program: Heavy on math and science, the curriculum teaches students to design systems, components and processes and prepare for careers as recording-studio and live-sound engineers and audio-software designers. “If it makes a noise or records a sound, somebody has to think about it, create it, program it, build it, use it, apply it,” program chair Michael Janas says.
The skills producers need most now: “Motivation. If they’re trying to force themselves as a square peg into a round hole, they’re going to struggle.”
Berklee College Of Music Music Production and Engineering
The program: Working with artists, writers and other engineers, students learn technical skills (microphone placement, signal flow) and personal skills (critical listening, communication). “Reading the room, leveraging the strengths of artists, how you speak to people, deliver bad news — these are incredibly sensitive, difficult things,” program chair Rob Jaczko says. (Alums include Charlie Puth and Abe Laboriel Jr., Paul McCartney’s longtime drummer.)
The skills producers need most now: “Understanding the business landscape. We all need to have a better understanding of how we monetize our work.”
Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, New York University
The program: With six available studios, students here learn everything they need to know about becoming a producer or engineer — except for heavy-duty technical instruction. “We want to get them up and running and confident,” says Nick Sansano, program chair. “We’re not necessarily teaching them all the mathematics and circuitry.”
The top issues facing producers now: “Lack of access to money. You need some support to get things off the ground.”
Drexel University Recording Arts and Music Production
The program: Students learn the basics of recording, production, arranging, composition, postproduction, mixing and mastering. In one sound-recording course, experienced artists (recently, members of John Legend’s band) work with students directly. After their sophomore year, students spend the summer working in live-sound engineering or another music-business sector. “They can go out and explore an area,” says Ryan Moys, who oversees the RAMP curriculum. “Sometimes you figure out what you don’t like.”
The skills producers need most now: “Knowing different software platforms: We teach Pro Tools, Ableton and Logic. And great communication skills. It all comes back to you’ve got to be a cool person to hang out with.”
Fredonia, State University of New York (SUNY)Sound Recording Technology
The program: Drawing from European “tonmeister” curricula of the 1940s, which combine technical and musical instruction, the 35-year-old SRT program offers training in studio hardware, live sound, recording, editing, signal processing and sound reinforcement. “[Bachelor’s of science students] have a fairly good handle on the science side of the recording business,” says Bernd Gottinger, the professor who oversees the degree.
The top issues facing producers now: “Responsibility and trust. Gaining that trust is probably the most difficult achievement you can look at as a producer. Usually, it gets established by long years of working in a different world, until the band says, ‘Listen, you’ve been doing these recordings for us for 20 years, why don’t you actually produce them for us?’”
Frost School Of Music, University Of Miami Music Engineering
The program: Developed in 1977, Frost centers on a recording studio with three full-size consoles. “Half our students end up at a company, like Dolby or Bose or Amazon Lab126 or Shure,” department chair Christopher Bennett says. “They work on the innards of devices that end up in the studios.”
The skills producers need most now: “The more you can learn under the hood, the better engineer or producer you’ll be. If they understand things like room acoustics and theory, it empowers them to make more creative choices.”
Jacobs School Of Music, Indiana University Bloomington Audio Engineering and Sound Production
The program: Among IU’s 1,600 music students, prospective engineers and producers get hands-on experience in pursuit of their 80-recording-hours-per-semester standard as part of this 41-year-old program. “That level of responsibility makes a big difference,” department chair Michael Stucker says.
The skills producers need most now: “Signal flow is a concept that’s really important to us. Physics and acoustics as well.”
Middle Tennessee State University Audio Production
The program: With five recording studios, plus a postproduction studio and separate labs for mixing, mastering and electronic music, students learn mixing and sound reinforcement and put on end-of-semester shows for live audiences. “We don’t really think of ourselves as training people for a job as a music producer,” says Bill Crabtree, director of the master of fine arts program in recording arts and technologies. “That’s not the kind of entry-level job you’re going to get right after college. It takes a while.” (Alums include Luke Laird, who has written No. 1 hits for Carrie Underwood and Eric Church, among others.)
The top issue facing producers now: “Artificial intelligence has the potential to disrupt a lot of things. However, it will be a tool. Having those skills — we think that’s important.”
Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology (OIART)
The program: OIART emphasizes highly technical skills for careers in music production and audio engineering and recording. “We’re not selling dreams of gold records. We’re very realistic with our employment goals and the types of careers students can expect,” says Lee While, OIART’s chief operating officer.
The skills producers need most now: “The student group has aspirations to work in a major studio and be a producer. But somebody who aspires to be a hip-hop producer suddenly discovers they have a real talent for sound design for video games.”
Peabody Institute, Johns HopkinsMusic Engineering and Technology
The program: Bachelor’s degree programs range from highly technical, five-year studies emphasizing electrical engineering, math, science and computer science to a two-year graduate program working with classical ensembles and rock bands. “Some find, ‘I’m interested in how loudspeakers are designed or getting into programming with signal processing,’ ” program chair Scott Metcalfe says. “Others embrace their composition side.”
The skills producers need most now: “Musicianship. Understanding the goal of the artist and what the market is.”
Purchase College, State University Of New York Studio Production
The program: With nine studios at their disposal, students get hands-on experience, from arranging their own pieces to engineering sound in the Dolby Atmos format, in genres from classical to hip-hop. “We want them to be able to do everything. We don’t want people to be button-pushers,” says Peter Denenberg, coordinator of the music and technology program. (Alums include Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Samara Joy.)
The top issue facing producers now: “Being forced to deliver projects in spatial audio is an incredibly difficult ask. It just adds a level of complexity and difficulty.”
Steinhardt School Of Culture, Education And Human Development, New York University Music Technology
The program: Director Paul Geluso says graduates of the program are “skilled professionals” who know hardware and software product design, audio engineering, and performance and composition: “The students do a little bit of everything their first two years and [then] they gravitate to one area.”
The skills producers need most now: “Our students take theory and history. We’re definitely music-first in our approach to our engineering side.”
Thornton School Of Music, University Of Southern California Music Technology
The program: Offering a bachelor’s degree in music production and minors in production and recording, Thornton emphasizes songwriting. “We build this program around our students being strong musicians with a technical inclination,” program chair Rick Schmunk says. “They can write the song, arrange it, produce it, record, edit, mix, master.”
The skills producers need most now: “Arranging and songwriting. We don’t have much trouble finding students with enough technical skills to be effective.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.