Metro Boomin and Zaytoven Dish on What It's Like to Be the Hottest Producers in Rap

Metro Boomin, Sonny Digital and Zaytoven dish on what it's like to be hot producers in the rap game.

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Complex Original

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Red Bull brought hip-hop super producers Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, and Sonny Digital together for a lengthy sit-down about the Atlanta hip-hop scene, their approach to beat-making, and the artists that they each work with. The conversation clocks in at over an hour and a half in length, and is filled with interesting bits of information about the producers and the artists they work with.

Zaytoven started things off by talking about the city many of his collaborators are from. "I feel the reason that Atlanta is so on fire for so long is because the city has so much flavor to it. You've got a lot of young guys," he said. "Atlanta can do crunk music, it can do snap music, it can do swag music. Atlanta has it all."

Later in the interview, the three producers went into the origins of trap music. "When I think of trap, I think of something that's unrehearsed, something that's edgy, not too well put together," said Zaytoven. "So the music that we were making... it means that we was in there making songs that we wasn't trying to make perfect. We talking about robbing somebody or selling dope or whatever, it's not supposed to sound too clean."

Metro went into his longtime struggle with the disconnect between his perceptions of his own music and the reality of it. "I went through that for so long," he explained. "I would be making beats and in my head I would be like man this shit is crazy. But then in reality it wasn't. And it didn't help me because I had my mom lying to me all the time, telling me it was hard," he laughed.

There's tons more to discover in their lengthy conversation, which you can check out in the video above.

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