Zaytoven Explains Why He Never Spends More Than 10 Minutes Making a Beat
Earlier this week, Zaytoven sat down with Sway, Heather B & Tracy G on Sway In The Morning. If you have 45 minutes to spare, I would encourage you to watch the entire interview, but for those who enjoy their rap news in short bursts, the highlight of their conversation comes at the 19-minute marker, when the veteran ATL producer reveals the average length of time he spends crafting a beat.
"There is no record that you done heard me produce that I done spent over 10 minutes on," Zaytoven said.
Sway, being the sage, experienced purveyor of hip-hop that he is, responds to Zaytoven by explaining that many producers would find his answer, and by extension his beat-making practices, to be blasphemous. Surprisingly, Zaytoven doesn't disagree. "It is blasphemous," he replied.
5 New Albums You Need to Hear This Week
Press play on new albums from Drake, Kevin Gates, Duke Deuce, Lakeyah, and Ambré.
5 Songs You Need to Hear: Best of the Week
Tap in with new songs from Falz, Pharrell Williams, SZA, LADIPOE, and Muni Long.
“None of It Makes Sense”: An Interview With JELEEL!
Rapper JELEEL! has enough viral energy to power a city block. He breaks down the process of finding his voice for Audiomack.
While it's hard to believe Zaytoven, as talented as he is as a producer, didn't spend more than 10 minutes crafting beats when he first began his production career, the reason behind why he doesn't spend much time on each record does make sense.
"I got into working with Gucci Mane. The reason why is because he's impatient. I'm impatient. We want to listen to this music in our car. I don't wanna just do one song and ride around listening to that. I want to listen to five songs. We can't do five songs if I spend an hour on the beat, you spend an hour writing it. Now we only got one song."
Adopting a churn-and-burn creative strategy isn't only a product of meeting collaborator needs, though. In an interview last year with DJ Vlad, Zaytoven made no effort to hide the fact that his goal isn't to make timeless music. "Nowadays, I don’t think a song means as much as it used to mean. One song can’t last you a year no more," he explained.
Considering most of Zaytoven's production catalog sounds the same, it's not hard to believe that he, in fact, doesn't spend more than 10 minutes crafting a beat. But maybe songs would mean more if, say, more time went into making them?
Chicken, meet the egg.
