Type Beats feat Jake One

what we had to make up a name for the Jake one genre.

What was your genre be? - Sounds expensive. - Sounds expensive. (laughing) I like that.

I like that.

“Sounds expensive as a genre that only you make.”

- I'm really, 'cause I'm not taking the easy way. It's gonna be some unique and particular. You either like it or you don't. - I fuck with that. - I fuck with that. Everybody can't have it.

- Yeah, yeah. ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I gotta pin the ends in the old facts world ♪ ♪ I know you're just an information that you won't get ♪

♪ booty tunes and let's you edit in a party ♪

♪ trying to impress ♪ ♪ In the tendions within this tip it's a nonsense ♪ ♪ We're gonna have a good time ♪ ♪ I promise you to wrap it home ♪ ♪ Red deep and dives ♪

♪ But now holding a huge one ♪ ♪ The art style's bad strength all the time ♪ ♪ It's the old man and the rap ♪ (upbeat music) - Welcome to the old man and the rap.

The NPR type beat of podcast. I'm your host, Don Will, and today's guest is Jake One. Jake is a certified Seattle legend, whose production discography is packed with enough names to fill a festival lineup.

His resume includes, rock him, Freddy Gibbs. Freeway, Chloe and Hallying, Jake Cole, Mayor Hawthorne, John Cena, M. F. Don, Lil Uzi Verde, fun, and many more. - The list is extensive.

- In this conversation, we cover his journey through music, his production process, and the type beats phenomenon.

We'll get into that in a second.

But first, I gotta kick the ballistics. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Some of you are probably wondering what type beats are. Like, what type of beat is a type beat?

“Are they beats that you make from typing into a keyboard?”

Is it a genre exclusive to admin assistants? - That was a terrible joke. - In short, type beats are instrumental made to emulate the style of a famous or name brand producer. They're an easy way for up-and-coming producers

to showcase their ability to make a particular sound. And for artists to find beats that match the vibe of a producer with a bigger name. - So, these are basically like dupes. - Yeah, exactly.

- Or like celebrity knock-off knocks 'cause the beat knock. - Uh, or, oh, better yet, canal street beats. - Anyway, type beat is used as a search term. And it's often coupled with the name of the artist or genre that is mimicking.

It's a trend that's been around for a while now. And one of the most famous examples is Old Town Road by Lil Nas X. (singing in foreign language) - Before it skyrocketed up the charts,

the instrumental for the viral mega hit was posted on the website Beat Stars under the name Future Type Beat.

“The producer who was relatively unknown at the time”

is a Dutch cat named young Kio. He listed the beat on the site for $30. And if you fast forward to now, he signed a universal music publishing group making way more than $30 per beat.

- Beat Stars is a production marketplace for buying, selling, and leasing beats. The type beats trend continues to this day. And these, go on, say it. - Celebrity knock off knocks.

- You're welcome. A told you it was good joke. - Have become fully integrated into the songwriting ecosystem. And now that we've got the type beats talk out the way,

let's talk to Jake one about his process and give him a chance to judge some Jake one type beats. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Listen man, your discography.

I was in prepper for the interview. I'm just like, go through with the media. I mean, I'm a rattle off a few names. And there's no way I could rattle off the names. But I mean, you go from 50 cent to Snoop,

to MFdom, the brother I lead, to fun, to John Cena, to Chloe and Halle, to Brent Fire's. I mean, it's a journey. It's a wild ride. - Yeah.

- And my question to you is as a producer is there a genre of music that you have it worked in yet that you wanna try? - I don't know about wanna try. - Okay.

- I definitely haven't done like country or nothing though. There was, you know, interesting enough. I met some dude that was like a producer

Whatever that was. This is probably like seven, eight years ago. The hip hop inspired country stuff. - Yeah. And the reason I found out about this is that he,

they did an article in the New York Times that he mentioned he was using my drum kits. And I was like, what was that? (laughing)

- So yeah, I never really, I mean it's funny.

Like I probably do like everything on some level except country. I mean, yeah.

“I think I, I pretty much tried to do everything”

I wanted at this point. So that kind of invalidates my next question which was, is there a genre of music that you won't make and why not? Which you know what I'm saying like,

I would assume that you know as the artist, your game to do whatever feels good. You know what I'm saying? And as long as it's not like this, it's whack. You're not into it.

And I think that's kind of what I've done the whole time is just tried to do what I like. And then find a place where it works. - Yeah. - As things work, then I lean more that way.

Like at one point I was like, man, maybe I'm not the do programming drums and we're only making music and then I had that room with that stuff. And then I started making beats again.

I'm like, no, I could do the whole beat again myself.

What do I need these guys for?

- Yeah. - It's just constant different kind of challenge. And I do enjoy just doing stuff that doesn't make sense. Like with who I am and what you would think of like, the guy that had the chance for it on tight.

Like there's a couple of things out in the head of my career and I was like, how was I even part of that? Like how am I in the studio to play Boy Cardi? I don't even understand this. You don't even know what it is.

But at least I was smart enough to get out the way. You know what I mean? Like I was in there like hand your head of the beat though. Can we drag you back? Like, no, I didn't do that.

I was just like, this is puzzling but clearly he's got something. - Yeah, you know, it's youth culture. But you got to let them cook how they cook. I mean, I'm not, if I come to your house and you're making a meal that I wouldn't personally eat,

rock on by all means. - Right, right.

“And I think as a, you know, I'm 47 years old.”

So like, I've really been doing this a long time. Like more than I haven't been. - Yeah. - For sure, like two thirds of my life and like, I kind of don't know what it is like to not do it.

But I also think back to when I was a kid and like all the real musicians just hated us. You know, even though guys at the record stores, everybody hated us. Like hip-hop was not respected on any level.

Not at all. I think it's hard to like get that perspective unless you were there to understand the fury, just older people had. And it wasn't just older wife,

he was everybody that was old. It was like, "Wicked this bullshit out my face." Like, "What is this bone-back that literally incest everybody?" My parents hated it.

- Right. (laughs) - My dad, my record collection was not a guy to touch his record. Like, "I can't put that shit over there."

- And it's funny why I listen now. I'm like, "All right there, there might have had a point." But that was our drums and noise. So like, I try to look at what the youngins are doing in the same way where like, "Who am I to speak on it?"

You know what I mean? It's not for me. - Yeah, it's an age thing. But going back to brass tax like, I'm just trying to understand the sheer volume.

Like, how many beats are you making a month or a year? - Uh, man. - And I know some of the stuff is just exploration and playing and figuring out what you're doing. - Yeah, yeah.

- You know, it depends like I would say, once Tuxedo started and we started touring, I definitely slowed me down a bit for a while, but then I had to figure out how to work on the computer better and then that kind of spread a whole different style

for that. But I mean, I'm definitely not making multiple beats in the day or nothing like that. Like, okay, I'm especially at this stage, I'm just kind of like when I feel like doing it,

I do it if I don't, then I'm not gonna make beats. Like, it just, yeah, you know, it'll come. - You live in life. And life inspires you with certain ways.

“And sometimes you have to respect life and respond to life.”

Like in your 20s, maybe, yeah, you could just sit in the basement all day and make some shit. And now you kind of have to go be present for your family. - Well, of the corner you're young too,

it's just like the shit is just so exciting. Like I remember everything like 16, 15, and get my first equipment going to steal my dad's records. Like I did that, like there was nothing I wanted to do besides that.

- Yep. - And that wasn't even what the goal of like, necessarily making it in music. That wasn't even something I really knew was out there for us at that time.

So it has to start from that place, you know. And like, and then I feel like the older you get,

you're just always trying to find that place

and that comes in some way different ways, you know. Like anything to make it feel like it's not a job, it's not mundane, it's not the same thing. I mean, I feel like I made the same beat. Thousands of times at this point.

- Yeah. - That's the real challenge, the longer you do it. And then, you know, once you start having success, competing with your success is really hard. That's like a real life.

- Yeah. - Because you're just like, oh, well, I know how I felt when this one came out and it doesn't feel like that for this. I need that again.

And you're always trying to outdo yourself. And that's when you start feeling that pressure, you know. Like, then it's, you know, I remember Drey said this somewhere where he was like, I mean, it's cool if you made one, but, you know, what about the next 10?

And, you know, at a certain point, that's where I started taking pride in, like, man, I'm still here somehow. Like, I don't even understand it sometimes. - So, would you say that the John Cena beat

is your biggest one still to data? Like, what's the most recognizable one at this point

- I think it just depends on like the era of people

“your under 30s would totally have a different answer for that.”

Though they love the John Cena too. The over 40s will tell me it's the day I went. It's like, I thought I got had ones in different areas of my career, but yeah, the John Cena thing is just something nobody could have predicted

that would still be going to this dam I heard it on TV yesterday. Or, you know, my daughter, that's the one that she's even like, she thinks is cool because it just impacts her world of like, yeah.

She sees a meme with some kid getting smacked in the face and somebody else in John Cena. Like, that happens every day. (laughing) And they sing the horn thing, you know.

So, yeah, I'd definitely price it out one. It's just the main stream of just entering your regular life. We call it when you hear your song, you're not listening to it, you know, you hear it in the wild. - Yeah, yeah, here it is in the wild, yep.

- Like, I was in LA a couple of weeks ago and Silver Lake and I went outside and I heard this G-Herbo song and then I was like,

I never heard that anywhere before that strange.

So like, yeah, you just never know, you know. But so like, of all the work you've done years and years of work, you've never added a producer tag to your beats and you don't have like a, you don't have the East Direct for account intro, like, for real.

Like, what was the decision to not do that? I had this one, a little sound effect that I put on certain records and it kind of almost was like a good luck charm for a minute. Like it's on, while they match her monies.

- This is fantastic. (upbeat music) It's on a couple of Rick Ross songs. It's on the, the most recent one I used it on was Jay Coe in my life with 21,

which was weird 'cause I hadn't used it for years and for some reason I put it in that beat and then that had to be in the biggest song I ever made. (upbeat music) - Spiling up, just like every single day.

- You know, I have a drop that Dune says my name on from one of my songs that I use every once in a while but it's not just like, I feel like Dune's to do that like when they pull up a template to make a beat, that's just in the template.

- Yeah. - And I don't really move that way. (laughs) I do feel like when I put a drop in there and maybe I like to beat more or something.

I don't know, there's definitely some sort of science to it. - Oh, like I like my mistakes done with the beat.

“- Have you seen this trend of people speed running beats?”

- Oh, were they, they just click like on the piano roll and it's like, yo, I made this beat in two minutes or whatever.

- Basically long story short, I'm gonna try to summarize it.

- I think I know what you're talking about. - Yeah, a YouTuber re-made soldier boy cranked that and like I'm minute and he told people like, I'm just doing this for fun. Don't try to challenge me on this.

I'm not gonna answer the responses. - Right. - And naturally the whole internet challenge to him and people start to read speed running it. So the fastest speed run he's got now.

It's like the combination of gaming and production. - Yeah. - It's 19 seconds. He's remake this beat in 19 seconds. - All right, that's pretty fire, but dangerous at the same time.

- Right. - It's a lot of setting up sounds and like, - It's all in there already, right? So like, - Yeah, yeah.

- I ran into this the first time

I started working with Southside from Adelaide Mafia. He calls me big bro, so I guess that's my little homie Southside. He's a lot of big, he's just feel like a lot of producers big homie on the sound. He would get in there and like,

it just would be crazy how fast he could make a beat to me, but it's that piano roll. They kind of have their things that they do and they have their sounds set up. A couple of times he would just click

and then it would really be like, he wouldn't be playing the beat out loud. He would click, he would put my loop in and then he would hit play and I'm like, oh shit.

“That's what I mean, we know that's gonna, you know?”

And it's just so like, anti-oil what I come from. It took us like days to make something loop back in the day, right? It just did with guilty of like making one thing loop

with another was like a science project, right? And I think it's cool, like take all these new things and exploit them, like sampling is exploitative in his own self, like we didn't have to play instruments somewhere.

So why wouldn't the youth do it the way they do it? I do think what my generation of guys has a different ear because we had to get to it from a different place, which it's good and bad, you know? It's fun, it's all, it's a conversation

between art and technology. And it's to me, it's a lot like the way the fruity loops works and some of these computer-based programs, it's gaming. Yep.

It's like playing Tetris or some shit. I mean, that's how they look at making beats. And you can't argue with the results. I'm sure all the records you hear on the radio that are impacting are made on one of those kind of programs.

I hate that I get to somehow this on my, I almost said my space guy damn.

“For you page the explorer page, whatever.”

Yeah, Instagram. I'm like, why am I getting sent all these dudes making wack beats on S.P. 1200? I don't care what you're using, you know?

You've got four million boards and seven jazz samples

and it sounds like a bad mod, D.B. Like, I'm cool, I don't want that. You know what I mean? So it's crazy that there's just like very like battle on like these sounds are real

and these are not. And this is analog and this is like, it's all the same shit, yeah. You know what I mean? It's all samplers.

I mean, yeah, there is a certain sound you get from different machines. But one is not necessarily better than others all in the user. (gentle music)

Another topic I want to talk to you about is the tight beats phenomena. On the intertight beats, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm interested in it. I'm not a leader of it, like,

I'm not so honored in a way if that makes sense. That's dope because the Jake one style is again, you go from artist to artist, almost like sub-java to shum-java very easily. So you have a really hard to pin down kind of style.

There's not like a signature Jake one style. Right. But you do have a bunch of people making Jake one tight beats on YouTube. Right.

Prior to this interview, I lined up three of them for you and sent them over to you. And I wanted to get your opinion on each one. I can't plan for you live, but I'm gonna add them in post.

Yeah. I'm gonna say the name of all of three and I want you to give me like a little commentary on it. Yeah.

The first one is a Jake hole in Jake one tight beat

by Jelly Beats. (upbeat music) Okay, yeah, this one, I did not like this. There's like sometimes I would get some might be like, yo man, you're my favorite producer.

Randy was fired this one and they play you one. They just, you know, like the normal age. I'm like, damn, I just weak like that. Like, they're more accurate. I wouldn't go that far on this one,

but I mean, I guess I kind of see what he was trying to do. But no, I don't really like that one. Is there a decision that he made

“that you absolutely would not have made the stands out?”

I mean, I feel like it's, and here's the weird part of it is I sell my drum kit. So like, people got some of the tools, right? You got some of my drums, yeah. If you really wanted to do it,

you probably could kind of do it. It's just not the way I would have programmed it. You know what I mean? Some general, like I probably wouldn't have chosen those sounds. Okay, it's not terrible, but it's not good.

If it didn't say Jake won't tie a beat up, it would be, it would be better. The next one is the Freddie Gibbs, Tom's, it's Freddie Gibbs, Jake won't tie a beat produced by, I think his name is produced by Natch.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - What's more, it's kind of weird because I only did maybe one or two songs ever for Freddie Gibbs, so I don't really think I have a defined thing

I've done for him. Like, Jake, I've done a bunch of records for her, so I kind of get that one? - Yeah. - This one was all right.

- It was okay. It wasn't terrible, it wasn't offensive. There are some offensive ones that I kind of enjoyed. (laughing) - So I got to ask this before I broke to the last one.

“Were you a fan of like bad stuff, like music that people have made?”

- I always told people that I wanted to be really good

or really bad. - That's my shit, like the middle ground is the most offensive place to be, and I want to love it, I hate it. I want to strong, I'm all the same.

- You know, there was a time I was collecting demos that people would get me or like, a guy in the safeway parking lot at a CDR. - Yeah. - There's something made the hall of fame for me

that I still listen to. They're like, you know, they're just comedy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughing) You know, as far as what they're performing or singing, but it's just something that, you know,

something in the lyrics that just had me laughing. My number one of all times, this old man that came to a vitamin studio, and probably like 2004. And he recorded this song that was kind of,

and one of the little homies did the beat on the Triton or motif, and it was kind of like a filly international inspired song. - Yeah. - And homie clearly had written, you know,

this is song he'd been ready to do for a long time. And it was just absolutely the first shit ever (laughing) It was so bad that his daughter who went to school with one of the kids of the studio wouldn't let him come to the studio

in a work 'cause we just had some of the jokes. - Wow. (laughing) - And you know, on occasion if I'm DJing and I'm trying to close it down, I'll play that song, just to get people up out of there.

It's getting airplane, it's just for the wrong reasons.

“- It's weird though, OG Smokey, do you wanna make love?”

That was the song was called the one you... - Yeah, you gotta send this to me, please. - I'm gonna find it said it too 'cause it is absolutely. (laughing) Man, South by Southwest was absolutely

where you were rack up on weird music. - Oh man, yeah, I think it's harder now because a link is a link and also just like the barrier for people to make shit is just so minimal at this point that we can just find horrible shit all day,

but like, yeah, when a dude paid money to go to a studio and still made something that was just absolutely great. - Yeah, like, you know, let's start a little bit of patience. - You had to have initiative to be bad. It was not like, I'm just gonna turn on my MacBook

and make some shit. - All right, that's not the same. - All right, so the last Jake won type beat that we have on the DACA today is Rick Ross and Jake won type beat by so special beats.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Kind of like this one, man, I'm not gonna lie. It's a sample that I like a lot, like I already liked this song

and I never really thought to sample it, but yeah,

this was actually executed pretty well.

“And I think like, you know, I probably have like,”

oh no, six, seven, eight songs are Rick Ross out there and they kind of fit into the same thing. That was like a certain thing I was doing for him and this is it, I mean, I wouldn't say it sounded exactly like what I do, but there's definitely some of the elements

for sure, like even the way he made the one phrase or Pete that I was like something I was doing a lot in that time, so. - Yeah, well, I don't know how much you buy an analytics, but based on the analytics,

you write it those beats in the right order. This one is the one that has the most views. So apparently there is something to analytics. We got to give the robots their credit, you know what I'm saying? - Okay, all right, yeah.

- As a bonus question and I think you kind of answered it already, but would you be able to tell of somebody was using your drums, like one of your drum packs? - I hear it all the time then, and there's a couple that were like kind of big songs.

I was like, "Hey man, I programmed that. "I should've got a piece of that." (laughing) - How does that feel? Man, it's got to feel weird to like,

'cause the one, I will be forever fascinated about people like you who can hear a snare drum and be like, the meters and the CC strut or something. And you're like, "How the fuck do you know "because I know the sound of that snare?"

I know a couple, I can name songs with really short clips, but when it comes to individuals, sounds like that, I can't do it. - This is just like something that I just feel, it's just been my passion, right?

This is what started me when I started making beats.

That was such a crucial component.

Like, oh, I mean, listen, like, midnight marauders, they're used like the brethren break like five times or something crazy. Like, that was essentially the drum break of the album. You know, some of these are just so specific,

“like they're just obviously that's what it is.”

And then I love hearing the ones where it's just like, I'm like, "Ooh, okay, they caught the one snare off, "well, Hannah, that's nice." So like how they did that. - Yeah.

- But then there's all the techniques that we had to do to make those things sound right. And the difference between like an amateur and a professional even doing that, you hear like certain guys chop up a break beat.

And there's the air is all like a abruptly cut off. And there's all this like little art to it. This has been totally lost. No, like, cares about this. - Yeah, I mean, I still care about it.

I still care about myself. - Yeah, so thank you for caring, 'cause it's appreciated. (laughs) After hearing three people, three producers try to emulate you and try to make choices

you would make sonically. Is it flattering to hear people make Jake one type beats? - They say imitation of the highest form of flattery. - Yeah, I mean, I just look at it like I did something that impacted that, you know, people weren't inspired

to even do that. That's cool to me. I mean, I don't really feel like do's around my heels in the same way where I'm like, "Oh, man, I can't." (laughs)

- You know what I mean? - I don't ever feel that way. - Well, it's because I'm just not very to doing one thing, like if I only did one thing, then yeah, that might be a problem.

- Yeah. - Also didn't make none of this shit up, really. There's certain things maybe I brought to it that people weren't doing, but I didn't have this

revolutionary technique that nobody ever did before.

It was like, I put my own take on all these different things. - Right. - And maybe that was the thing I did that was special. - On some level, I kind of feel like the tight beats producers and people who do that.

They're kind of selling practice beats. - Sure. I mean, come on, we all have fake premiere beats. - Yeah, you know. - Like a lot of producers in order to practice

or get better and learn the gear they're using, they reconstruct like reminisce over you or like. - The crazy thing is in the olden days, the prehistoric days, we had to actually just do it with our ears, right?

So like, I could listen to premier's beat of like, that's the bouncy lady snare. I know that. I had, I don't know where that shit came from. This one, I think this is off the Heather B song,

like I was good like that. Like I cared that much and you know, anytime I'm around him, I just get on his nerves and just, you know, just badger him to death about like, did you get that snare from the beat that time?

- You know, I love doing that to him, but, you know, at some point you end up coming up with your own thing, you know? And I think there was also just a runaway to get to your own thing with so much longer. - Yeah.

- Like I don't think I got good in making beats for like seven, eight years, you know, I mean, I was at it for a long time. And then something clicked, I learned how to play a little bit. Developed my own thing, but like,

and some of the early stuff I was doing, it's just funny to me, you know, when I listen to it.

And now it's first beat is the first beat you make,

they put that shit on the internet. - Yeah, everybody here. - You can get a drum pack from Jake when you can get loops from Splice, you can master it on lander. It sounds like polished mediocrity in some ways, you know what I'm saying?

- If everybody's using the same sounds,

“I mean, that's what we're gonna get, you know,”

like if I could download South Side's 808 Mafia kit, use Ferdy Loops, use the same presets he uses. I could probably get to like 77% of what he does, but you still can't be him, you know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah.

- Because future ain't on your shit, so it's not special. - Yeah. - So that's the part that gets left behind a lot. And then, you know, it's also like, there's a lot of team and up now, which is great.

I think it's more people get credit on something that they did, the better I think the olden days do, this would have like a dude coming to play every instrument, and just like, yeah, you ain't really do shit. So, you know, they would have like additional guitar

by one dude who really made the whole beat. (laughing) This is the whole game, you know? Now, you know, you see like 30 people on the credits, but they probably contributed something,

and maybe only a couple of dudes didn't do nothing. This should just, is constantly involved in that way,

“and that's what makes it fun, you know, like, yeah.”

So if I'm making the same exact beat that I made in 2010, I'm just, I would have quit, you know, like it just wouldn't have been fun to me. (upbeat music) Shout out to the homie Jake Wumper Stopping by the show.

There's a pretty high chance that he's got a production credit on an album that you're bumping right now, but the best way to find out what he's been up to is by checking him out on Instagram, under the name Jake Uno, or by dropping by snarejordan.com.

And that's it for this week, but don't forget to stick around for the post credits. The Armanacovrap is created and hosted by Don Will. Executive producers are Don Will, ICCA, and Travis Harris.

The show is produced by Colby Balfour. The show's associate producers are Brianna Harris, Tiara Jackson, and Javans Stevenson.

“The production coordinator is Bianca Ortiz.”

Audience development is handled by a song Sproul and a Sean McCullan. Adop's an audio marketing strategy is handled by Fabian Mickens. The show is directed by Travis Harris.

Video editing was done by Colby Balfour. This episode of The Show was written by Don Will. Art Direction for The Show was handled by Kouchik Karadindi. Graphic design was done by Jefferson Harris. The show's camera operators are Travis Harris, Colby Balfour,

Trigger Bowden, and Compton Timberwolf. Compton's also our technical director and audio engineer. The show's theme music was provided by Don Will, with additional production in each episode by Von Pee. Don Will also doesn't really think

this speaking about himself and the third person is that weird anymore,

which kind of makes it pretty weird. All right, now time for the post credits. Earlier in the conversation, Jake won talk about a song that was in his words. Absolutely, the first shit ever.

A song that was so bad, it got the artist banned from the studio and now lives on an infamy as the dance floor clearing final song and then Jake won DJ set. And Jake was kind enough to send a song to me. So ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure

that I present to you. Do you want to make love by OG Smoky? [MUSIC PLAYING] All right, I'll see you guys next time on the Almanac of Ratt. Absolutely, the first shit ever.

[LAUGHTER] All right, I'll see you guys next time on the Almanac of Ratt.

Absolutely, the first shit ever.