Zaytoven Explains Why He Never Spends More Than 10 Minutes Making a Beat

"There is no record that you done heard me produce that I done spent over 10 minutes on."

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Updated:: Oct 20, 2018
Original:: May 3, 2017

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.

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.