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Mike Will Slayed It and Mike Will Made It

In 2012, Lex Luger did not have a hit song. Nothing he did last year deserved even a slight mention in the grand narrative of rap music in 2012. The dark synth sound that he established in 2009 with Waka Flocka Flame had all but left the rap consciousness by last summer. I wrote about this fact last year when it seemed Luger was ready to move beyond his synth overload style back in 2011 as he moved towards more sample based beats.

The initial hype around Lex Luger quickly dissipated. Waka Flocka Flame’s “Hard in the Paint” was Luger’s first hit, but his collaborations with Rick Ross (“B.M.F.” & “MC Hammer”) are what really sparked his career. So when Ross’ Maybach Music Group released their first album the opening single “Tupac Back” was mistaken for Luger, but was actually produced by Mike Will Made It. In only a year, Luger had already been replaced. Though Luger had a successful single (“That Way”) from the album, but another year later Rick Ross’ follow-up album to Teflon Don unsurprisingly didn’t feature one beat from Luger.

God Forgives, I Don’t had successful singles but the only single that sounded anything like the track that helped revive Ross’ career was “Hold Me Back”, a floundered single that was a lesser facsimile of the previous Maybach Music single “Actin’ Up”. Ross left Luger and so had most of the rap world, except for a few Chicago kids.

Last year saw a large amount of attention gravitate toward Chicago’s rap scene and specifically Chief Keef and his GBE crew. The breakthrough song for not only Keef, but the entire city, was “I Don’t Like”. Produced by Young Chop it pushed the harsh aesthetic of Lex Luger to a nihilistic end that would only be pushed further with the other voice on the song Lil Reese with his mixtape—aptly titled—Don’t Like. But, when Keef started releasing new tracks for his major label debut something had changed. He was still working with Young Chop and he still was barely rapping, but the songs were no longer as dark and Keef’s hook writing ability had improved. 

One of the other producers that worked with Keef on Finally Rich beyond Young Chop was Mike Will Made It. In an interview with Hip-Hop DX Mike Will explains working with Keef, “It went back to what I was saying at first, with the melody just feeling good…just glorifying his team, and talking the same shit how he’s living life.” Keef’s debut Finally Rich had far more variety than most people wanted to admit during the initial album review cycle; “No Tomorrow” produced by Mike Will with its sing-sung hook is one of the album’s best examples of Keef’s increased melodic skill. The dark sound of Luger that filtered down to Keef by the end of 2012 had been excised from Keef thanks to Mike Will. 

That focus on melody is probably why Mike Will can smile looking at his track with Rihanna “Pour It Up” continued to rise up the Pop charts. The song isn’t too dissimilar to Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance” in production or in lyrical content—the critics call them “Strip club anthem”, but this particular “anthem” is a surprise hit because of who it is singing it. Rap producers typically change up their style for R&B singers, but for Mike Will that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead Rihanna chose the song that was intended to be a rapper’s song and is going to become one of Mike Will’s biggest hits. “Neva End” was originally supposed to be an R&B track according to Mike Will for someone like Rihanna or Usher, but instead fell into the hands of Future. The track was re-released with Kelly Rowland, so Mike Will must have gotten a small chuckle seeing a major R&B star finally on the track that was succeeding without such star power before. 

Rappers are taking R&B tracks and R&B singers are taking rap tracks has happened for years, but in 2013 with Pop stars taking rap tracks and rappers not afraid to sing, these talent pools are merging together under the submerged synths of Mike Will. Rap is always ready to jump to the next trend, but Mike Will in 2012 seemed to have set up a strong foundation that he might be a return of the phrase “Super Producer”. 

Lex Luger Makes Grown Computers Sob

Lexus Arnel Lewis, or known as to most rap fans Lex Luger, turned 21 this year. Before, the age of 21 Luger’s had firmly established his place in the Hip-Hop history books. He reinvented the sound of Trap Rap, made Rick Ross a rapper that rap fans and critics had to respect, and two years after Rick Ross’ “B.M.F.” came out nearly every rapper has rapped over it or a similar style beat from Luger or any number of producers that quickly started copying him.

Six or so months after people began noticing Luger’s name, his sound enveloped the rap community resulting collaborations with rap stars Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, and Wiz Khalifa. His sound started to filter down the rap food chain, as guys like Shawty Redd and Drumma Boy, who had been producer for Trap rappers for years were being shunned in favor of Luger. Trap Rap had found a new meaner sound. Shawty Redd and Zaytoven—original producers for guys like Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane—had been making synth and 808 heavy beats since the 2000s, but the darker sound of Luger was now the sound that their previous collaborators were craving. So, in a year’s time Luger produced the first single for the joint Kanye West and Jay-Z project (“H.A.M.”) and had a lock on any rapper that dreamed of getting posted on a site like DirtyGloveBastard.

The sound that Luger established within its first year was already being run into the ground by him and other producers mimicking the sound. Luger insisted that he didn’t just want to create “B.M.F.” clones and he had more varied production for rappers; while it was interesting to read the New York Times report his new beats are “like a computer sobbing”, the retreads of that Rick Ross single like Wiz Khalifa’s “Taylor Gang”, Fabulous’ “Lights Out”, and Ace Hood’s “Hustle Hard” said otherwise.  

Early last year, the Fader posted a couple instrumentals Luger had posted on Twitter, which were different from the work that made him the rap producer of the moment. Those instrumentals were probably the first examples Luger’s sample heavy work released to the public—and are sadly no longer online—and these tracks weren’t good, but they showed Luger getting the basics of sampling down.

Last May, Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group released their first album. Self Made Vol. 1 ironically only had a couple Luger beats, when the album was full of the larger-than-life dark synths that he and Ross popularized just a year before. But the album’s big single still came from Luger with “That Way” a smooth R&B crossover hit featuring a hook by Jeremih and a Curtis Mayfield sample (“Give Me Your Life”) with the only trademark of Luger being his rising synth sound. That was the first of Wale’s three hit R&B singles—“Lotus Flower Bomb” and “Sabotage” being the second and third—and by far the weakest, as Wale rapping, Jeremih’s singing, and Luger’s production underachieved together for mediocre single.

That same month, Waka Flocka Flame released one of his many mixtapes from 2011, DuFlocka Rant.  The one track credited to Luger was not one of the sound system crushing bangers on the tape. “Nigga Knowledge” along with “Koolin’ It” released later in the year on another Waka mixtape (Twins Tower 2) brought back the sample heavy style of “That Way”. Both songs were better than “That Way”. Still they were not much more enjoyable than saying “hey, Lex Luger can change up his style”, as his typical overblown beats like “A Zip and a Double Cup” & “Who Da Neighbors” from Juicy J’s Rubba Band Business 2 remained his forte.  

Schoolboy Q’s Habits & Contradictions came out at the beginning of this year with a lone Luger produced track, “Groove Line Pt. 1”. After about a year of working with soul samples, Luger finally got the formula down. There no trap drums, no synths, and listening to the original “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Marlena Shaw shows that Luger swiped from the quiet opening before the song unfolds and gets funkier keeping the song as far away from his typical work as possible. The song is good, but the lack of Luger trademarks result in a track that has been done plenty of times throughout rap’s history, and has been refined to an almost dangerous level by one of the song’s featured guests Curren$y with his laid back stoner persona and producers like Ski Beats, The Alchemist, or Monsta Beatz.

Working on two of the biggest mixtapes in terms of real world popularity—gauging real world popularity with number of times it has been downloaded—“The Code” on Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Allerdice and “Lucky Ass Bitch” from Mac Miller’s Macadelic show Luger finding a good balance of these two disparate styles. Each track have the typical lurch of a Luger beat, but with “Lucky Ass Bitch” the distant vocal sample invokes Araabmuzik’s Electronic Dream where trance singing paired with hard trap drums makes for an oddly logical combination of styles. “The Code” works the similar formula of Luger’s typical drums juxtaposed with a leftfield sample sounding like a random track from a Japanese movie soundtrack (I doubt it is, but maybe?!). These tracks don’t bring to mind “a computer sobbing” but staying flexible with his original sound and mixing it with other sounds works better than diving wholly into another sound.

Luger has even thrown his hat in remixing other people’s work recently remixing Stalley’s “Everything New”, originally produced by Chad Hugo. The remix itself isn’t that great, Hugo’s dark key melody slightly tweaking the classic Neptunes’ formula fits the song better than Luger’s insertion of dry trap drums and creeping synths. But, the remix is one of Luger’s first, and considering the progress with samples he has made in a year, if he wanted to focus on remixes there is probably interesting work he could do. The young producer, as he has continued to work with more rappers has expanded his own sonic scope, while other producers and beat makers  are barely catching up to a sound that Luger has already found ways of inverting (Gucci Mane’s “Spread the Word”) and twisting (Chevy Woods’ “Vice”) for his own ends. 

James Ferraro didn’t make a Mixtape.

James Ferraro profile has increased in 2011 with his latest album Far Side Virtual being named The Wire’s album of the year and receiving increased coverage in places beyond the music circles that Altered Zones previously covered. So, at the end of 2011, he released a “mixtape” under the name Bebetune$ with the unfortunately ironic title inhale C-4 $$$$$.

Ferraro’s mixtape would seem to have goals of commentating on rap mixtapes with the ridiculous name “Bebetune$” and its rap influenced production, but this conceit doesn’t quite work as the “Bebetune$” drops that happens through the tape never connect in an away that Araabmuzik’s “Your listening to Araabmuzik” and the little rapping is just him saying swag and mumbling unintelligible words.

Presenting this as a “mixtape” should be the first warning sign of this project, because there might be little difference between “mixtapes” and “free albums” right now. Presenting this as a “mixtape” in a rap context puts it in the tradition of Lil Wayne’s Da Drought 3, 50 Cent’s early 2000s mixtapes, or the over half dozen mixtapes Waka Flocka Flame has released last year.

Except, Ferraro’s scope isn’t that wide, as it sounds like he listened to a few Araabmuzik and Lex Luger instrumentals and caught up on the hype that has gotten Lex Luger a New York Times feature and Araabmuzik’s Electronic Dream appearing on plenty of indie site’s album of the year lists. This weird mix of Luger’s drum kit and Ferraro’s abstract synths and oddball samples make the first few tracks kind of interesting, but as that novelty wears off all left is a passionless parody of music that misunderstood what was good about the original work.

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