When Young Thug links up with a producer he can churn out music with at a rapid rate, he tends to stick with them. Metro Boomin, London on da Track, and Wheezy have all worked into his regular rotation, and you can add another big name act to the picture: Carnage.
The Guatemalan-American producer, DJ, and sometimes rapper (under the alias Thirty Rack) found the right vibe with Thugger in the studio, to the point that they whipped up an EP in Young Martha which is out now (stream it here), with plans to release more music.
We caught up with Carnage to get a better idea of how Young Martha came together, what he and Thug have in store for the future, and what fans can expect from his next solo album. Carnage has also started the Beyond the Walls relief fund to help those affected by the earthquake in Mexico. You can donate here.
Can you break down the process of working with Young Thug?
He’s a musical genius. You go in there, give him a beat, and he finishes the song in like 10 minutes and he’s already trying to work on the next song. He will go in the studio and finish 10 songs in a day. He has so much music I’m sure he forgets about all of the music he has recorded, he always carries his hard drive around and he has at least one thousand songs.
With that kind of work rate, were you able to keep up or was it something you had to get used to?
I got used to it over time, bro. I have seen him fire so many engineers because he works so fast and the majority of the time they are not fast enough. I would be in the studio with five other producers and he would come in and be like, "Put on a beat," and if I don’t have the second beat already pulled up when he is done he’s moving onto another beat from another producer. It’s like he has ADHD. The most genius humans and artists have always been crazy or mentally insane and that’s what he is. You can never sit down and play a beat and think you know what he is going to do because he is going to do something you have never heard, or 30 times better than what you thought he was going to do.
Is there a possibility we see a volume two of Young Martha?
We already started working on it and it’s almost done. Young Martha is about to be the new Slime Season.
Are you planning on still doing four-track projects or are you going to expand?
I would like to do another four-track EP, then after that do a Young Martha album.
When you stopped by the office a few months ago I had to give you props because you were early on rappers like Lil Uzi Vert. Who is an artist that is bubbling right now that you think is going to be a big star?
I can’t let y’all know that. If I let y’all know that then all of the A&R’s are going to jump on and I can’t let that happen. Y’all just have to wait for the next time I drop some music and see whoever is on it. You already know they are going to be good. Think about how early "Rari" was; that was Lil Yachty, Famous Dex, and Ugly God, and that came out a year and a half ago before all of their success. Now they all are huge. I got my ears to the streets.
You’re talking about working on successive Young Martha projects, but you also have a solo project coming. How are you going to balance those projects?
I think the next one will be the Thirty Rack project, and then after that I'm gonna get it going on the Carnage album which is gonna be the best work I've ever done. Ever.
What’s something about the next DJ Carnage album that is going to make it the best ever?
Just like the Young Thug stuff, I’m going to take time and dissect these songs from all of these amazing rappers and singers. A lot of guys who are working on rap stuff or electronic producers I work with, they don’t listen to these guys everyday of their lives, they are just hopping on a bandwagon to stay popping. Now, everyone is trying to make rap music, but they don’t listen to rap music everyday, they don’t know the ranges that these guys can go from. So when they work with these guys, they send a beat over and these guys hop on it, and they just assume this is what everyone likes and they just put it out. Nobody really puts time into it. Wo with the Carnage album, I'm just putting weeks and weeks time into it so it's perfect and something you have never heard of.
