Behind the Boards

Butch Walker scored his first hit as the frontman of Marvelous 3, who recorded the alt-rock smash “Freak of the Week” in 1998, before he launched a lengthy solo career as a singer-songwriter with a cult fanbase. But over the last two decades, Walker’s most widely heard work has been as a producer or songwriter. With his lyrical wit, his bottomless well of guitar licks, and his ear for big catchy choruses, he’s a pop punk power player who’s helped with Fall Out Boy’s comeback as well as singles for Bowling For Soup and American Hi-Fi. But his versatility and work ethic have also made him a crucial collaborator for pop stars like Katy Perry and Pink, hard rock bands like Sevendust, and even country singer Keith Urban.

Five years ago, Mike WiLL Made-It took over the airwaves, his murky, undulating trap beats powering Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” Rihanna’s “Pour It Up,” Ace Hood’s “Bugatti,” Lil Wayne’s “Love Me,” and many more hits. Meanwhile, he orchestrated Miley Cyrus’ emergence as a Top 40 libertine, delighting poptimists and infuriating others in the process. His sound was difficult to escape.Today, while fellow Atlantan Metro Boomin has taken over as mainstream rap’s omnipresent producer, Mike WiLL Made-It has scaled back. He’s focused on his Ear Drummers’ camp, particularly Rae Sremmurd, the brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi who made surprisingly durable pop-raps like “No Flex Zone,” “No Type,” and last year’s Billboard chart-topper “Black Beatles.” When it seemed impossible to play a mainstream rap hit without hearing his Brandy-supplied audio signature, Mike WiLL Made-It’s beats swung like pendulums—sort of like a trap version of those damned drops that bedevil electronic dance music. Listen to “Bandz A Make Her Dance” and “Love Me” back-to-back for those similar percussive builds.Mike WiLL Made-It’s latest full-length production showcase, Ransom 2, reveals that his techniques have grown far more complex. For “Razzle Dazzle,” he arranges a frizzy feedback storm over a booming kick drum; on Rae Sremmurd MC Swae Lee’s “Bars Of Soap,” he pairs 808 drums with icy synths reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder aficionado Alchemist; another Ear Drummers protégé, Andrea gets “Burnin” with a flurry of menacing cowbell percussion and dancehall chants.With cameos by Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and other boldfaced names, Ransom 2 proves that Mike still has plenty of juice. And while no one may have paid attention to his 2015 Miley disasterpiece, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, he can still orchestrate a beautiful pop catastrophe: On the one-off single “It Takes Two,” Carly Rae Jespen and Lil Yachty remake Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock’s funky hip-hop classic into a thinly veiled advertisement for Target. Hear the latest evolutions of Mike WiLL Made-Its sound on this playlist.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Damu The Fudgemunk operates in a niche known as instrumental hip-hop. It’s a subgenre that has existed since the late ‘80s, in the days of DJ Mark The 45 King, and has occasionally drawn wide attention through DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. and Clams Casino’s Instrumental Mixtape. But it’s mostly limited to listeners who like hearing beats without all that talking—or “wavy singing”—over it, as well as fledgling MCs looking for loops and breaks to rap over. Then there are the chic hair salons, hookah lounges, and coffee shops that occasionally sprinkle in a little instrumental hip-hop amidst the chill out, downtempo (yes, this still exists in 2017), and smooth deep house that make up their daily aural wallpaper. As a result, instrumental beatmakers like Damu tend to go ignored by all but the most committed listeners.Damu hails from a mid-2000s era when underground hip-hop drew an ever-decreasing audience as an industry dazzled by the rise of Dirty South virtually ignored it. He started out as a DJ with Panacea, a duo whose ghostly new age excursions—like 2007’s The Scenic Route—elicited few critical notices. He established himself by working with Boston rapper Insight as Y Society, and their zippy, ecstatic sunshine tones on 2007’s Travel At Your Own Pace made the album a cult classic among true-school rap fans, with OG vinyl copies trading for hundreds of dollars. Damu has since created a virtual cottage industry of beats, compiling them for indie labels like Redefinition Records and Kilawatt Music.His latest album, Vignettes, reveals how the Washington, D.C. producer is so much more than just a Pete Rock disciple. On the standout track, “Get Lost to Be Found,” he weaves a midtempo beat that slowly ripples and roils like an ocean wave. It’s a hypnotic body of music, full of subtle changes in rhythm that last for stretches of over 12 minutes, and it’s emblematic of how Damu can subtly twist instrumental hip-hop tropes—the Pete Rock-ish horn lick, the DJ Premier-like sample chop—into his own elegant sound signature.There’s so much Damu The Fudgemunk material on the market that it’s difficult to recommend a canonical release for listeners who aren’t immersed in beats culture, the intricacies of which can’t fully be explained here. But in light of the enthralling Vignettes, this playlist is a good start.

Young Thug says “Metro Boomin want some more,” Kodak Black says “Lil Metro on that beat,” and most famously, Future says, “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you.” Regardless of which rapper is identifying Leland “Metro Boomin” Wayne at the moment, odds are you’ve heard his name and his beats on the radio a lot in the last few years. The St. Louis native began driving to Atlanta to collaborate with musicians as a high school student. Since his flashy piano work on 2013’s “Karate Chop,” he’s been one of Future’s closest collaborators, and he’s slowly expanded his clientele across the music industry, from Kanye West to Nicki Minaj.Although Metro Boomin is a master of the heavy bass and busy hi-hat programming of Atlanta’s ubiquitous trap sound, his work isn’t as singular or distinctive as previous kings of the scene like Lex Luger and Mike WiLL Made-It. Instead, Metro has distinguished himself with the sheer variety of sounds that he’s integrated into the trap blueprint, from the haunting chords of “Bad and Boujee” by Migos to the ethereal flute sample of “Mask Off” by Future.Metro Boomin is also a big collaborator, crafting the woozy groove of ILoveMakonnen’s quirky hit “Tuesday” with Sonny Digital and working alongside three other producers on Big Sean’s “Bounce Back.” His ear for bringing together the contributions of others served him well as he executive produced Drake and Future’s hit collaborative album What A Time To Be Alive and 21 Savage’s breakthrough mixtape Savage Mode. Sample 2017’s hottest producer with this playlist of his greatest hits.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

New Jersey singer and musician Jack Antonoff fronted the band Steel Train for a decade with only a small cult following before pivoting into an unlikely career as a producer and songwriter behind Hot 100 hits by platinum pop stars like Taylor Swift and Lorde. It all began when he joined The Format’s Nate Ruess in a new project, fun. The band’s second album, Some Nights, launched “We Are Young,” an anthemic track that became one of the biggest pop hits of 2012. Ruess followed up the album with a solo project while Antonoff fronted a new band, Bleachers. But Antonoff went on to gain most of his success behind the scenes.Antonoff’s early outside credits include co-writing with Canadian indie pop heroes Tegan and Sara, including a track on their 2013 breakthrough album Heartthrob, and a bonus track for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Kiss. He also landed a big hit for Sara Bareilles, helping her write the Grammy-nominated, triple-platinum single “Brave.”By then, Antonoff and girlfriend Lena Dunham were rubbing elbows with a number of Top 40 stars, including Taylor Swift and Lorde, who both began seeking out his ear for nostalgic ‘80s pop sounds and confessional lyrics. Antonoff co-wrote several tracks on Swift’s 1989 and also her recent hit duet with ZAYN, “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” He’s frequently collaborated with Lorde, both on her recent hit “Green Light” and on the second Bleachers album, Gone Now, due out June 2nd. He also collaborated with Grimes on “Entropy,” from the soundtrack for Dunham’s HBO series Girls.Though he sings in Steel Train and Bleachers, Antonoff’s Terrible Thrills series defers to stars like Tinashe and Charli XCX for their own spin. His affinity for female voices and perspectives has served him well as a songwriter, and ultimately, he might be happiest when handing the mic to a woman, even on his own records.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

At this point in our young century, Dan Auerbach’s trademark sound is damn near inescapable. His entrancingly fuzzy slide work, moody atmospherics, velvety reverb, and love for prominently framed percussion all pop up in albums by garage punks, shaggy hard rockers, folkies, rappers, and even pop divas. Of course, it’s through the wildly influential jams of The Black Keys (whom Auerbach has co-produced for most of the duo’s career) that his sound has left such a profound impact on modern music, but that’s not its only path. After all, in addition to maintaining a solo career—including his upcoming June 2017 release Waiting On a Song—as well as a clutch of side projects (The Arcs record from 2015 is a particularly tasty highlight), he has evolved into one of the music industry’s most in-demand producers.Much like The Black Keys’ music, Auerbach’s immediately identifiable work behind the boards has become more sophisticated with time. Patrick Sweany’s “Them Shoes,” from 2007, is a slab of husky, stripped-down blues rock that’s light years removed from the intensely textural swamp funk and gris-gris soul comprising Dr. John’s 2012 gem Locked Down, one of Auerbach’s most ambitious productions to date. Even when Auerbach, who possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, steps outside of his rock ‘n’ blues comfort zone, he leaves a unique sonic imprint on the work of other artists. This is certainly the case with Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, on which he wraps the singer’s art-pop noir in layers of nostalgia-kissed echo and sustain so plush, your ears will sink into them. This is also true of Nikki Lane’s outlaw-country epic All Or Nothin, which boasts the same throbbing groove hypnotics heard on the Keys’ albums.Compiling tunes from all these albums and a whole mess more, including some overlooked production nuggets like the Buffalo Killers’ stoner-rock trip Let it Ride, our playlist is sure to impress even the most diehard Auerbach fans.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.