First Placement is a Viewfinder series on producers and how they landed their first major placement, told as a first-person narrative, with the producer’s name revealed at the end.
I was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Altadena, California, in the Pasadena area. When my mom was pregnant with me she would always play The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. My dad was into a bunch of rock stuff—a lot of Rush and P-Funk to Prince.
My introduction to making music was playing guitar. I started taking classical lessons when I was seven. Did that for a couple of years and then started doing some rock, some electric. I was super into the British Invasion period, like Cream, The Beatles, Rolling Stone, and Jimi Hendrix, I count him in that 60s psychedelic rock era too.
The beats started when I was 15. After a friend loaded a bootleg version of Logic onto my computer. I learned to use it by remaking Beatles songs. One of the first things I remade was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Then slowly transitioned into more live instrumentations to more hip–hop production stuff.
Because I come from a live music background, in the beginning, I heard the music as, this player is playing this thing, but when you’re in production mode, there are so many things you’re able to do that people wouldn’t be able to play live. Hearing those things in songs and then translating that into the music, to make sure all of it supports the song, has been a part of my progress.
I did this project, Dirty Laundry, in 2018. It was the first real EP I put out. For the first time, it felt like, okay, I have something meaningful to say, to offer, and something I haven’t seen or heard other people do. It’s something that sat right on my soul. I didn’t realize I wanted to be a producer even after producing all the tracks on Dirty Laundry. I didn’t know that was a specific job to do until one day of my best friends, when I was showing them a groove I made and they called it a beat. That’s when it hit me, I guess I do make beats.
I produced my first top-to-bottom project for Pose Retals in 2019 called Sunset BB. I told her I could send stuff whenever after she posted on her IG story, producers hit me up. She sent me a playlist of songs she was inspired by and I made six or seven beats tailored to her style that next week. I didn’t expect her to use all of them, my impression was that I would have one beat on the album, but she just kept sending me songs to the beats. That was the project that taught me the producer/artist relationship. It’s like, they have this thing they’re going for, but don’t know how to go about doing it. My job as a producer is to get it done.
Going into 2020, I put out my second project, TV Dad. I was thinking, I’m a producer now, but I still felt like I didn’t have the knowledge it took to really call myself a producer. So 2020 was very much a studying year for me. Especially with the pandemic, it just gave me a lot of time to dig in and get better at making beats. That really helped, especially with my production partner and best friend, Kevin Long. All during 2020, like, every day we would face time and show each other what we made. It was one of those times I’ll remember for the rest of my life. We ended up getting so good in a short time because we were just pushing each other. It wasn’t something we tried to do, it was fun.
Kevin is actually the one who told me to go listen to Mavi. I have a vivid memory of skating this tennis court and listening to Let The Sun Talk during the pandemic. I loved his voice and his lyrics. We met Mavi this past summer when my friend MALAYA was opening up for Cisco Swank and Luke Titus on their tour stop in L.A. at The Resident, Kevin played modular synth during her set. Mavi’s manager Zay came up after the show and told them he really liked what he heard and how they were interested in getting some more musicians in there for Mavi’s second album, Laughing so Hard, it Hurts.
We had a session with them the following week. It was a great session, we made a song. Zay called a couple days later, saying Mavi really liked working with us and asked for a pack. Kevin and I sent one over. Zay called a couple months ago to say “Hemlock” made the album. He hit Kevin. a few weeks later and told him a couple of his beats got on there. One of them used a sample that I had made. All the beats that made it–“Hemlock,” “Opportunity Kids,” and “Chinese Finger Trap,”–all came from that pack we sent.
This was the first time I produced for an artist I knew prior, that I love and respect. It’s like a dream come true. I feel very grateful to have played a part in its making.