Zaytoven’s Atlanta home is a dreamworld for anyone who grew up on MTV Jams: Lamborghini truck in the driveway, giant backyard with a salt water pool, decked out in-home movie theater with a popcorn machine. But amidst all the flashy toys, Zaytoven — the godfather of trap music who helped craft modern classics for artists such as Gucci Mane, Migos, Future, and Usher to name a few — is a quiet host, letting his space speak for itself.
He rolls downstairs to greet us in a Scottie Pippen Jersey and Tinker Jordan 3s before calmly inviting us into his basement recording studio (fittingly calling it his “Personal Space”). Outside, the walls are lined with the plaques and trophies he earned for songs he produced, but in here, he’s still just a hungry musician looking for that next sound to catch his ear. It’s the perfect setting to let us know what’s changed and what it feels like to create a sound that captures a city.
**Please note: this interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
StockX: How long have you been producing music?
Zaytoven: I started around like ’98 so dang, that’s a long time. How many years is that?
StockX: 21.
Zaytoven: That made me sound old. (laughs) So yeah, about 20, I say about 20 years.
StockX: Where are we at right now? Where are we sitting?
Zaytoven: Right now we are in Zaytoven’s basement. Most people know me for creating music in the basement. Mostly at my mom’s house and my mom’s basement because that’s where I got started. But you know, I moved and of course I moved my equipment and now we’re in Zaytoven’s basement.
When I started making music in my mom’s basement, that was around 2000. We were living in San Francisco, my parents moved to Atlanta and I came maybe like a year later. I was out in California, getting my feet wet, making music, and making beats. So I started making money and buying equipment, shipping it down to my parents’ house, because they got a basement, they got room for me. I couldn’t afford to stay in San Francisco.
StockX: It’s expensive.
Zaytoven: Yeah, too expensive. So I started shipping all my equipment to Atlanta. I remember having a poster board on my wall and it was like beats for $100, $200, Studio Time, $25, you know, it was like that. Now I had did music before, I made some beats and I sold a couple of beats and everything before but I knew coming to Atlanta I was going to have to start all over.
StockX: Where do you think that entrepreneurial sort of hustle, grind spirit came from for you?
Zaytoven: You know, and it’s harder to get out all your ideas in the short amount of time that you got that you can afford to pay for. And I wasn’t no rapper. More so, I was a guy that wanted to produce. So I want to sit in the studio all day. I don’t want to be in the studio for three, four hours and to try to make beats – I want to be there all day. So I think that entrepreneurial thing has really been in me since I was younger, cause I’ve always been a musician. I always played at church or to make some money. I always cut hair. I always did certain things to hustle up and make money. And the guy that was mentoring me, JT the Bigga Figga, that’s all he was: he was just an independent hustling guy. He was the guy that was showing me… “this is how you make beats, this is how you make the keyboard align with the drum machine.” So it was instilled in me at a young age.
StockX: What is it about the keyboard that inspires you to continue using it throughout all your work?
Zaytoven: Well the keyboard is what got me started in music. I played the keyboard and organ at church. One thing about a keyboard is you can change the sound and make it sound like a good time. You can make it sound like a flute, you can make it sound like a trumpet or whatever. So the keyboard is the main instrument that you got to have and know, I think, to be a producer. That’s why it’s so important.
StockX: How do you think your style evolved? Was it inspiration from other artists that you grew up listening to?
Zaytoven: First of all, I’m a military brat. My dad was in the army, so I moved all my life. It’s one thing to live in San Diego and listen to the music that they listen to. It’s another thing to move to San Francisco and they like a whole other type of music. It’s another thing to move to Atlanta, Georgia and the music is totally different on top of me being a church musician on top of me listening to gospel music all the time. So it’s all those influences that helped me create my style. It was like from Gucci Mane to OJ da Juiceman, to the Migos, to Soulja Boy, to Young Dolph, you know, they all helped me evolve because they all liked different music. They like different sounds. So you got to make music that pleased those artists.
StockX: Almost like a chameleon.
Zaytoven: Exactly. Yeah.
StockX: What’s so special about being able to be in your own home, to be in this space, and make beats?
Zaytoven: I just felt like that’s been my style and my flavor. When I first started with J T the Bigga Figga, he had it in his basement. I couldn’t afford no building, so you got to put it at home in the basement. And I actually liked the feel of it. There’s a unique sound that comes from when you’re working in a small space in your house. I think it just adds an edge to the music. I remember when I first started in my mom’s basement, my studio was right next to the furnace, so I had to go and turn the furnace off while somebody record and I forget to turn it on and my daddy come down and be super mad at me. But all of those things is what made my music the way it is.
StockX: Were there any imperfections in the process?
Zaytoven: Everything about my music is imperfection. I might be the laziest, sloppiest producer you’re ever going to meet. I’m one of the guys that, my whole sound comes from me not going into the drum machine and learning how to turn off something or make something better. I use an 808 but every time I use it, it kind of bleeds on top of each other. Now that’s something in the machine that you go in and turn it off and clean it up. I didn’t know how to do that, nor did I want to take the time to figure out how to do it. So I just use it as it is and all the sudden it becomes the sound that everybody trying to mimic that and it’s like, that’s crazy.
StockX: So when somebody asks you, “Zay, how do you define trap music?” What would you say?
Zaytoven: Trap music has always been just hustling music. It just sounds like the theme or the soundtrack to somebody that’s hustling, whether they selling drugs or they selling haircuts, it’s a hustling type of music. It’s very dirty, it’s edgy, it’s not so polished and clean.
StockX: I mean, you’re the pioneer of that sound. Do you feel a sense of responsibility or do you feel pride? Because there’s probably a lot of young producers coming up that catch inspiration from some of those imperfections and uniqueness that we’re talking about. Do you ever think about that?
Zaytoven: I always think about it. I always think about the generation that comes after me and I’ve listened to their music. It’s like, “man, that’s what I was doing.” I guarantee you that every producer has a “Zaytoven kit” or “Zaytoven sounds.” I buy different plugins now and some come with sounds that say “Zaytoven Bell” or “Zaytoven Organ”, so it’s flattering that the sounds that I chose are being used over and over again, for years.
StockX: How do you stay on top of innovating and building on those sounds? We just talked about how through your process there are some imperfections that became a unique sound to yourself now 20, 21 years later. How do you keep evolving your music, your sound?
Zaytoven: New artists and new producers always inspire me because I’m a competitive person. So if somebody new comes in and they got a new sound, a new swag to it, it just sparks me to be like, “Okay, I got to get in the studio, I got to come up with something else new. I got to get on top of my game.” And in the time that we living in, we don’t have a lot of producers-musicians. So that kind of gives me an edge. The fact that I can play the piano, it gives me an edge. When I did Beast Mode in 2015, I really started playing the piano a lot heavier on my tracks. Because I was at a point where it’s like, “Well dang everybody can do what I’m doing already,” but then I got started using something I feel like everybody else can’t do. So that’s what it gave me a whole new birth.
StockX: When you sit down in the studio in the basement and it’s a blank slate, how do you start your creative process?
Zaytoven: It varies. Sometimes I might start off with a drum pattern. Sometimes I might start off just playing keys or I might just start skimming through all the sounds in my archives. Let me find some weird or some that I ain’t never really used before and build on top of that. But once the building process start, it’s like it ain’t no stopping, it’s just going. You know what I mean? I’m not a guy that sits there and takes 15, 20 minutes trying to find one perfect sound. I’m going to find a sound right away. “Okay, that sounds pretty good. Roll with that. Add on top of that. Add on top of that. Okay. It’ll be done.”
Because when I create, I want to make 10 beats. I don’t want to make just one beat because what I found out is a lot of times when I spend a lot of time on one track, that’s not even a beat that people like. The one that I had to hurry up and do and rush because I got to go pick up the kids, people will be like, “Aw, that beat is so amazing. I got to have that.” So I treat it like that. I create music like that.
StockX: Do you have an intuition for what beats are going to hit and what beats won’t?
Zaytoven: I definitely have my own intuition on which beats I feel like, “Okay this beat is special, or this beat right here, everybody going to want this, this beat right here is major.” Funny thing is that a lot of times people do want that beat or those beats that I feel special about, but they never turn into hits.
StockX: Really?
Zaytoven: Yeah. The best beats I feel like I have never turned into a hit or never really came out.
StockX: Really?
Zaytoven: Yeah. It’s the beat that you’re about to throw away. “This don’t even really sound that good, but I’m going to keep it and somebody get it,” and they be like, “Man, this right here, I got a hit to this.” It’s crazy, man. That’s amazing it’s like that, because you know, a song, a hit record, is a writer and the music, it’s like chemistry. It’s got to be a perfect match. So just because I have a great beat doesn’t mean it’s a hit record.
StockX: When you do produce a beat, do you have an artist already in mind or is it after the fact, you’re like, “You know what, I think so-and-so would be great on this”?
Zaytoven: A lot of times I create with the artist right there in my face. So if I’m working with Gucci Mane or if I’m working with Future, we creating [the beat] right there. So I’m making a beat. He come up with a song. We do that 10 times in one day and don’t even listen to them until a week later, because tomorrow we’re going to do the same thing.
Some of those songs that when I’m making a beat, it feels good, it’s like, “Ooh, this beat’s so hard.” And everybody’s like, it’s hard. Some beats it’s like, “Oh, that’s all right.” But he’s going to rap to it anyway just because that’s how we make music. I guarantee, you ask any producer, any songwriter, a lot of times the ones that they didn’t really feel was going to be great are the ones that would go on to be a hit. So when I play beats for somebody and they say, “Man, just play me all the A beats. Play me your best beats.” It’s like, I can play the best beats, but that don’t mean it’s going to be a hit that you’re going to connect with. So let me play you all the beats. You know what I mean?
StockX: When you were building out this space in the basement, what were some essentials you needed? Obviously the rooms got a lot of wood, a comfortable feel. What were things that you knew you needed to create the stuff you did?
Zaytoven: Some of the main tools I look for when I build out my studio, especially my home studios, is more so a small space. It’s just I want a small intimate space cause that’s how I like to create. That’s the way I started. That’s how I’ve been doing it. I feel like it just… It takes me back to being hungry. It takes me back to trying to make it, if you get what I’m saying. Yeah. You know what I mean? Sometimes you get too much stuff and it’s too big and it’s going to come out too pretty.
StockX: How do you think the Atlanta sound has evolved over the years and where do you think it’s heading in the future?
Zaytoven: The Atlanta sound is always evolving and you can’t really ever put your finger on where it’s going to go. Since I’ve been here in Atlanta, it has gone from conscious music to crunk music like with Lil Jon to snap to dance to swag to gangster music. Atlanta has had so many different flavors of music that I think that’s why it’s been so influential and the place of hip-hop for so long. It’s because Atlanta just don’t stop.They keep their finger on the pulse of the music.
StockX: But why is music so special here? Why is that?
Zaytoven: I don’t even know. That’s a good question.
I really feel like one of the reasons why I wanted to stay in Atlanta, make this my home is because I moved all my life. I was born in Germany and I lived in California, and I lived in Mississippi. You know what I mean? Like real country Mississippi. And I lived in places like San Francisco and you know, LA and San Diego, big cities. But Atlanta is all of it in one.
In Atlanta you can go outside and see chickens running around but there’s also nightlife and you’re going to see all the fancy cars, you’re going to see all the superstars, you’re going to see all the jewelry. It’s like all mixed in one. Atlanta just has everything.
