Who Is The Surf Club?

Hit-Boy and Chase N. Cashe—the masterminds behind The Surf Club—break down the history of their crew and relationship with Sean Kingston, Drake, and Diddy.

Not Available Lead
Image via Complex Original
Not Available Lead

Intro

Not Available Interstitial

Last year, when Drake blessed the world with his incredible “9AM In Dallas Freestyle” we found ourselves playing the song over and over and reciting the lyrics word for word. But there was always one line that caught our attention that we never totally understood, “Chase N. Cashe, that’s my brother from the Surf Club.” Which made us wonder, what’s the Surf Club?

To find out, we got on the horn with the crew’s two main members, Hit-Boy and Chase N. Cashe. As it turns out they have been in the industry a lot longer than you’d think, putting in work for years and producing for everyone from the Pussy Cat Dolls to Eminem. The other SF members are a talented group of writers, producers, and artists as well, including Kent M$NEY, Chili Chil, Stacy Barthe, Young Ry, and B. Carr, who recently produced Wiz Khalifa’s “Hopes And Dreams.”

Not only did Hit and Chase give us a breakdown on what exactly the Surf Club is, but they also talked about how they came up with industry heavyweights like Polow Da Don, Sean Kingston, and of course Drizzy Drake. Plus, they told us about producing for the likes of Pusha T, Lil Wayne, and Kanye West. And finally, Hit-Boy told us about recently signing to G.O.O.D. Music. So grab your board, we’re hitting the Surf Club.

As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin)

What Is

Not Available Interstitial

What Is The Surf Club?

Hit-Boy: “Surf Club is a collective of young artists, writers, and producers. It’s a click and it’s the team. There are different entities within Surf Club. Everybody is kind of doing their own individual things, but it’s all filtered Surf Club. Anything to do with any member, you can find it on itsthesurfclub.com.


 

The way we explain [the name] is that an actual Surf Club is where people go to hang out. It’s just a cool, relaxed place. That’s what we embody—we’re cool, relaxed, chill people. - Hit-Boy

 

“The crew didn’t even really start on no music stuff. It started with me and [my friend] Chili Chil. When we were like 17, we used to just go to the mall to get at girls and we just called ourselves Surf Club.

“The way we explain [the name] is that an actual Surf Club is where people go to hang out. It’s just a cool, relaxed place. That’s what we embody—we’re cool, relaxed, chill people. Then Chili Chil actually started screaming out Surf Club when he would record songs so we just ran with it.”

Chase N. Cashe: “It’s really a brotherhood more than anything. I can honestly say that it’s the closest thing to Dipset and N.E.R.D mixed together that you can get. I would compare us to the Blackground era. Like how Missy Elliot, Timbaland, Ginuwine, Static, Aaliyah, Nicole Wray, and Magoo might have been on different labels, but they were always together and always working on each other’s projects.”

Who Is In

Not Available Interstitial

Who’s In The Surf Club?

Hit-Boy: “You got me, then you got Chase N. Cashe, Kent M$NEY, B. Carr, Chili Chil, Stacy Barthe, and Young Ry. I knew B. Carr from Pasadena, our families have known each other since before we were even born.

“Me and Chili Chil have been friends since we were about 15. And we started making beats around the same time. Kent M$NEY was just a cool guy. We would just kick it and play NBA 2K all day and then we made one song. After that I was like, ‘This dude is amazing.’

“I met Stacey Barthe on Myspace. She’s from New York and we ended up linking in Atlanta and we just built a bond. She has written for Rihanna, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and a whole bunch of pop projects. Chase N. Cashe had a relationship with Young Ry and that’s how he got down. He’s got some dope beats.


 

Everybody who has joined Surf Club since me and Chili started it, it’s been this unspoken bond. We were just making all this great music together. - Hit-Boy

 

“Everybody who has joined Surf Club since me and Chili started it, it’s been this unspoken bond. We were just making all this great music together. We just decided that we were gonna form a click and then he started repping, so it just keeps going.”

Chase N. Cashe: “I met Brandon Carr the first time I met Hit-Boy. They were in the car together. I passed him the beat CD and he had a blunt rolled and was like, ‘You smoke?’ I said, ‘Yup.’ I had a blunt and they were like, ‘Your beats hard nigga!’ Hit doesn’t smoke weed so Brandon and I would be smoking weed together.

“Since Brandon was Hit-Boy’s [friend], we were always around playing ball or making beats. We did a record together called ‘Lay Back Chill & Be Free’ by Tiffany Evans in our early days. I was practically living with Hit because I would always be over there making music.

“Then I met Chili Chil. We all started making music together and the chemistry was crazy. It just all came together. We just had a feel for each other and a feel for what everybody wanted to do. Bring a new style to the game and everybody had their own unique style.”

Who Is Hit-Boy

Not Available Interstitial

Who Is Hit-Boy? Who Is Chase N. Cashe?

Hit-Boy: “I’m 24. I was born in L.A. but I grew up out in the Inland Empire in the Fontana area. All I use to produce is Fruity Loops. It’s so visual to me, that’s why I love it so much. I’ve done work for Jennifer Lopez, The Pussycat Dolls, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem.”

Chase N. Cashe: “I’m 23 years old. I was born and raised in New Orleans. I’m an artist, producer, songwriter, and I’m a marketer. I’m a creative brand overall. My whole thing is me being Chase N. Cashe, I want to make it a James Bond thing where I can hand off to someone else and they could follow the same footsteps. No matter who plays Bond, it’s still the same shit. That’s what I want my brand to be. I want to capture everything I grew up being influenced by.


 

I’m a Katrina kid. I graduated high school in 2005 and then the hurricane happened. I moved to California in 2006 when I was 17, and I started running around Hollywood. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I’m a Katrina kid. I graduated high school in 2005 and then the hurricane happened. I moved to California in 2006 when I was 17, and I started running around Hollywood. I was promoting myself and doing music. I used to do a lot of ghosting [Ed.—Ghost producing]. I’ve lived in New York, L.A., Atlanta, New Orleans you name it, wherever my music took me.

“Katrina changed my life and the life of everyone around me. For me it was a pivotal point because it put me at a crossroads like, ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ What else was there to do with your life besides take a risk?

I couldn’t go to school because the schools were fucked up. It wasn’t like I was going to go to college right away and my parents had no job and I didn’t have a job. I was like 17 years old and the only jobs I’d ever had were working at Foot Locker and Kids Foot Locker. It was just a crossroads.

“I lost family members in Katrina. We lost our house because a tree had fallen on it. Then I lost my grandmother. I literally sat in the house everyday and watched my grandmother pass. So it was just like I was at a crossroads and my life told me to take a risk. So I just saved up enough money and moved out to California.”

Sean Kingston

Not Available Interstitial

Working With Sean Kingston


 

He came and picked me up, my equipment, and my clothes and took me to his apartment and gave me a room. This dude was like 15 years old turning 16. Him and his brother just rocked with me when Sean was working on his debut album. - Chase N. Cashe

 

Chase N. Cashe: “While in California, I ended up becoming friends with Sean Kingston. This was when Sean was just trying to get a deal. I used to send him beats. One day out of the blue the day, Sean calls me and is like, ‘Some of those beats, I used them and I wanna fuck with you. I got a deal with J.R. Rotem. Where you at?’ I’m like, ‘I’m actually in Hollywood and I’m about to move out of my crib.’ He was like, ‘You got somewhere to go?’ I was like, ‘Literally, right this second? No.’

“He came and picked me up, my equipment, and my clothes and took me to his apartment and gave me a room. This dude was like 15 years old turning 16. Him and his brother just rocked with me when Sean was working on his debut album. After a while, they started to see that I was capable of doing my own thing and they started encouraging me to do it. He gave me an opportunity like, ‘You’ve always had an ear for dope music. Pick out some beats for me.’”

Meeting

Not Available Interstitial

Photo by Don Morris.

How Did Chase N. Cashe & Hit-Boy Meet?

Chase N. Cashe: “I had a Myspace ad for beats. Hit-Boy happened to see the bulletin and sent me some beats. He sent this beat called ‘Concrete Jungle’ that had a Bob Marley sample and that shit was so crazy. I gave it to Sean and everybody was scared to use it because of the sample [which we knew wouldn’t get cleared.]


 

I had a Myspace ad for beats. Hit-Boy happened to see the bulletin and sent me some beats. He sent this beat called ‘Concrete Jungle’ that had a Bob Marley sample and that shit was so crazy. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I loved the beats so I had Hit-Boy send me more. Sean liked them, but he felt it didn’t fit him. But I was like, ‘Man these are some of the hardest beats I’d ever heard.’ I hit him back and was like, ‘Yo, you’re dope.’ And he hit me back and was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been hearing about you too.’”

Hit-Boy: “Around November of ‘06, me and Chase N. Cashe had been hearing about each other through mutual friends. I went to his Myspace page and checked out his beats. I just sent him a message telling him that I was feeling his beats.

“We started talking via AIM. A week later I went to go scoop him and we went to my studio. We made crazy beats the first time we ever met and after that it was a wrap. Later, we did a deal with Polow Da Don and moved out to Atlanta and rose up through the ranks.”

Polow Da Don

Not Available Interstitial

Working With Polow Da Don

Hit-Boy: “I met Polow on Myspace maybe a few months before I met Chase. Polow sent me a message and it was crazy because I had just heard Fergie’s ‘London Bridge’ and I wanted to know who did it. I Googled it and found out it was him and then added him on Myspace. I didn’t think anything of it.

“I left the crib for a couple of hours and when I got back, I had a message in my inbox from Polow Da Don saying he really liked the beats that I had on my page and that he wanted to link up.

"The next day we go to Record Plant studios out in Los Angeles and I played him maybe like 60 beats. He sat there and listened to all of them and said, ‘Yo, I wanna sign you.’ Right there on the spot. This was like August 2006 and I didn’t actually sign with him until January of 2007.

“That’s when I introduced Chase and Polow and then Chase ended up signing a deal as well. We signed separate deals, but we were an entity of Hit-Boy and Chase N. Cashe. In the summer of 2007, we moved out to Atlanta because that’s where Polow was based.

“Me and Polow never really worked closely. But I was able to hear a lot of his music and it definitely influenced me from him having the style that he had. I definitely got to study on my own, but I wouldn’t say that he sat there and showed me how to do certain things. But just being around him, I learned a lot.


 

I had a message in my inbox from Polow Da Don saying he really liked the beats that I had on my page and that he wanted to link up. The next day we go to Record Plant studios out in Los Angeles and I played him maybe like 60 beats. He sat there and listened to all of them and said, ‘Yo, I wanna sign you.’ - Hit-Boy

 

“When I moved down to Atlanta, we had a studio so we would have different artists and writers that would come through. We were also going back out to L.A. to do sessions. We were producing Pussycat Dolls stuff and we went through that whole pop phase. Just being signed to Polow and having those relationships and having my publishing deal over at Universal helped make that happen. My publishers would link me up with different writers.

“At the time, Rich Boy was doing his thing and so was Keri Hilson. We were working on various projects out there. We got to really just experience a lot and we’ve been rising through the ranks since then. I definitely appreciate what Polow did for us and helping me get my career started, but now I’m moving on to new endeavors.”

Chase N. Cashe: “Polow actually reached out to me through Myspace as well. He wanted to buy one of my beats. He asked me how much I charged and after that I didn’t hear from him again until he reached out to Hit-Boy.

“Hit-Boy sent him some of the beats we did together and Polow heard him and was like, ‘Okay they’re dope. I’m coming out to L.A. and working on Rich Boy’s album. I wanna meet y’all.’ He came out, we met up with him, and Hit-Boy played him beats. He was feeling them and he told us straight out, ‘I want to sign y’all.’

“So we did the deal and that led to us moving to Atlanta and working there for two years. We did songs for Pussycat Dolls, Rich Boy, G-Unit, and Flo Rida. We got the chance to work with the legendary Berry Gordy at like 17 years old.

"We just had a whole lot of work from 2007 to 2009. After that phase, everybody moved back to L.A. That’s when me and Hit-Boy decided to branch out and do the Surf Club full time.”

Ghosting

Not Available Interstitial

Chase N. Cashe On Ghost Producing

Chase N. Cashe: “The first record that I ever ghosted came through my boy Kevin "Khao" Cates. He was a producer on Grand Hustle and at the time produced T.I.’s ‘Why You Wanna.’ We met and I got his contact and he was like, ‘Send me some beats.’

So me and my boy sent this beat we had that was sampling Tweet. That song ended up being the title track on R. Kelly’s Double Up album. That was the first track I ghosted with Khao. The second track I did was Yung Joc’s ‘Pacman,’ and I did that through Khao too.


 

Khao was my entryway into learning the business. A lot of people might hear ghosting and say, ‘Oh but you ain’t get no credit.’ I got credit on everything. He gave me my first thousands for a beat. I got like $5,000 for the beat. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“Khao was my entryway into learning the business. A lot of people might hear ghosting and say, ‘Oh but you ain’t get no credit.’ I got credit on everything. He gave me my first thousands for a beat. I got like $5,000 for the beat.

“I got drum programming credits and he always reached back to me. He got me more work and he would always buy beats from me even when he couldn’t get them placed. He just liked my work ethic and my sound and wanted to tutor me on the business side.

“Like, ‘This is how you’re gonna get your start. You gotta work your way up. Yeah, you might want the placement on the rip, but you really want that leverage. You want people to see that you’re a workable person.’ So I did all that and after a while we kind of lost touch because I just started getting on my own shit.

Diddy

Not Available Interstitial

Working With Diddy

Chase N. Cashe: “Me and Hit-Boy had a chance to go to New York and work with Diddy on Last Train To Paris [around 2008]. I don’t know if he ever told nobody, but he never heard ‘Swagger Like Us’ until I introduced it to him. We were in N.Y.—it was 9/11 actually—and we flew out there to work. And he was just starting up the album and that’s right when ‘Swagger Like Us’ dropped and he had known nothing about it.


 

Me and Hit-Boy had a chance to go to New York and work with Diddy on Last Train To Paris [around 2008]. I don’t know if he ever told nobody, but he never heard ‘Swagger Like Us’ until I introduced it to him. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I pulled the shit up in the studio and he was like, ‘They made a ‘Swagga Like Us’ without me?! I’m the king of swag! How the fuck niggas gone make that?’ He made the blog and that was the first time everybody seen me and Hit with Puffy on the Diddy Blog. And he did his own version of ‘Swagga Like Us.’ I was there when he was in front of the webcam dancing in the lounge. I witnessed it.

“I got to be around him and he gave me and Hit priceless knowledge about this shit and how to move. He never shunned us. It was a point where he had asked to manage us and it was like, ‘Man, we don’t really know about that. We really wanna ride it out with Polow.’ And he was respectful of that. He was like, ‘For sure. I support y’all. Anything, y’all wanna do.’”

Drake

Not Available Interstitial

Chase N. Cashe On His Relationship With Drake

Chase N. Cashe: “I was on Myspace and found Drake’s page and heard ‘City Is Mine.’ I thought it was so dope because he was somebody my age whose rap was ill. Then I heard ‘Do What You Do’ and some other songs. I hit him up because I actually did a chopped and screwed version of two of the songs which I sent to him. He was like, ‘Man this is dope. Let’s just build.’

“But we never really got to build like that because he was still doing his Degrassi thing and that was slowly coming to an end and he wasn’t really running around the states like that yet. That’s when he decided he really wanted to pursue [being an artist]. He was in Atlanta working with Don Cannon. Don Cannon happened to be a good friend of mine. When me and Hit first moved to Atlanta, Don Cannon took us in.

“So Cannon brought Drake to the studio to meet me and I met him. And this nigga was so shy and quiet. I was just like, ‘Yo, my nigga, you’re the shit.’ Drake was looking at me because me and Hit-Boy were working with everybody at the time. We were really popping in the A and Polow was the hottest nigga at the moment.


 

I sent Rob Walker some songs and he was like, ‘Yo he is dope as fuck. I’m gonna play them for Pharrell.’ Played them for P and P didn’t want to fuck with it. He was like, ‘Well, we got Chester French and Teyana right now. We’re kinda busy, but I’m fucking with it.’- Chase N. Cashe

 

“I was telling Drake, ‘Whatever you need man, I got you. If you need beats for anything, it’s nothing. I got you.’ And we’ve been talking ever since. He went from a stranger to becoming my brother because I never met a person who never took what I was saying and doubted it. Everything that I told son, he listened to it.

“I knew Drake could be something. A lot of times with a singing artist, their records are coming from someone else writing and producing them. But this kid was on his own. This was before 40 was around all the time. It was just him and he was out here moving by himself.

“He was throwing himself out in the world and he was getting criticized like crazy and he never let that shit fuck him up. He had people calling him a wannabe Kanye and I was like, ‘Yo, this nigga is the next Fresh Prince.’

“There was one point where he had been offered a deal from Lenny S. I knew Rob Walker so well since he was mentoring me. I told Rob Walker, ‘Yo, I got this kid Drake. You need to check him out.’ I sent him some songs and he was like, ‘Yo he is dope as fuck. I’m gonna play them for Pharrell.’ Played them for P and P didn’t want to fuck with it. He was like, ‘Well, we got Chester French and Teyana right now. We’re kinda busy, but I’m fucking with it.’

“So I was telling Drake, ‘You really need to just be your own man. You got Boi-1da and 40 now.’ The next thing I know Boi-1da and 40 start getting better and shit just started happening. This was around Comeback Season and that’s when I knew it [he was gonna be big].

“So Drake came to L.A. and I took him to Interscope. I walked this guy Drake in and he’s wearing all Prada black premium. No one is noticing this but me, and they’re trying to tell me he’s not a star. He’s dressed head to toe like a fucking star!


 

Drake gave the Surf Club his first shoutout. It was on the ‘A Milli Freestyle’ when he said, ‘Please comprehend, I’m the Surf Club general.’ We were gonna try to work something out, but I kept telling him like, ‘You are your own man. As much as I fuck with you, I feel like you’re a special person and that you should really start your own thing.’ - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I walk him in and they listened to the music and the first thing they do is like, ‘I think we want to get you to write on some shit.’ They look at me like, ‘Chase, get him some beats and he could write on them.’ I’m like, ‘Huh? This nigga’s the shit. I’m gonna give him some beats like he’s an artist. He’s not a writer.’ So they didn’t want to fuck with him and Interscope passed.

“After that Drake gave the Surf Club his first shoutout. It was on the ‘A Milli Freestyle’ when he said, ‘Please comprehend, I’m the Surf Club general.’ We were gonna try to work something out, but I kept telling him like, ‘You are your own man. As much as I fuck with you, I feel like you’re a special person and that you should really start your own thing.’

“I used to always tell him, ‘You’re the next Hov. I don’t care what anybody says.’ I always felt that way because when I first met him he was very observant, quiet as fuck, and well-spoken. He is the most business savvy person I’ve met in years. I feel like that came from his acting skills. He knows how to play off people. I realized that he wasn’t corny like everyone was talking about. He could actually make people laugh.

“And I started seeing bitches turn over. Bitches used to be like, ‘He is not cute.’ We would be in the A and these bitches would meet this nigga and they would be in a trance because he’s so fucking well-spoken and he words everything so perfectly that bitches were out of their mind. Once I started seeing that shit I knew he knew how to work everything. He never let the Kanye comparisons fuck with him. He never let that shit keep him from singing.

9 AM

Not Available Interstitial

The Surf Club Shoutout On “9 AM In Dallas”

Chase N. Cashe:“It started off with me going to Record Plant just to stop by. Boi-1da was in the studio and he was playing beats for Stat Quo. I always fuck with people who are my real homeys, so I always walk in the room and talk shit like, ‘Nigga what you got? Play me something.’ Drake had told me a few days prior that he was trying to wrap the album up.

“He had the ‘You Know, You Know’ joint and I was pressing him to put that shit on the album. But some shit happened where they couldn’t find the files and it was only the two track.

"So I was in the studio feeling the vibe from ‘You Know, You Know’ and was like you need something touching, something where you’re just venting and letting it all out. Something that’s touching, but acoustic because a lot of his shit was so moody and synthetic. ‘Fear’ was the only thing that I’d ever heard that was ‘in your face.’

“Stat Quo asked Boi-1da to play some beats and he played that [‘9 AM In Dallas’] beat. I didn’t say nothing, I just let it play. Stat Quo left the room and I was like, ‘I need that beat for Drake. He’s at Nightbird Studios right now. I’m about to go over to the studio. E-mail that shit. I’m about to go over here and tell him to ask you for this beat.’


 

He shouted me out and they thought I did the beat. I had to run around for the longest telling everybody that I didn’t do the beat. To me that just signifies how I get down with people. I just want to see my people win. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I left Record Plant and went over to Nightbird studios and got up with Drake. I walked in and was like, ‘Yo man, 1da got this beat that you need to rap on right now.’ 1da sent it, played it, and as soon as the pianos dropped and the base dropped, I just seen Drake’s face scrunch and he just stopped the beat and was like, ‘Yo, good look nigga.’ And, the next thing I know, I just ended up hearing it.

“When it dropped that morning motherfuckers just start hitting me like, ‘Man, you didn’t hear Drake shout you out?’ I was just like, ‘Nah, where did he shout me out at?’ And Drake was like, ‘Chase N. Cashe, that’s my brother from the Surf Club.’ He shouted me out and they thought I did the beat. I had to run around for the longest telling everybody that I didn’t do the beat. To me that just signifies how I get down with people. I just want to see my people win.

“I used to be around Boi-1da and he would be like, ‘I’m trying to get my shit cracking.’ I would be like, ‘I feel you man, but the guy you’re working with is the guy that’s gonna be cracking for the next ten years. Fuck everybody and all the guys you wanna work with now. We all wanna work with Eminem, but this is something y’all really built from scratch from Canada. Y’all can literally be a legacy out of this shit and be big in your hometown. ’

“I just always wanted them to have a better perspective especially because they came up differently. That’s one thing about Drake I always try to tell people, they haven’t heard the music that we came up on.


 

Not too long ago Drake asked me for some albums to listen to. I told him to listen to Outkast’s Aquemini which he had never heard before. But to really sit there and digest Erykah Badu’s Baduizm and Outkast’s Aquemini and Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and all that shit because these guys are from Canada, they weren’t raised up on that shit. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“Not too long ago Drake asked me for some albums to listen to. I told him to listen to Outkast’s Aquemini which he had never heard before. But to really sit there and digest Erykah Badu’s Baduizm and Outkast’s Aquemini and Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and all that shit because these guys are from Canada, they weren’t raised up on that shit.

“So he hears this shit and he listens to it like a kid like, ‘Oh, this shit is real! Is this what y’all was on?’ I got Lil Wayne songs that I played before and he’s like, ‘Damn when this came out?’ I’m like, “Man, this was the squad when I was in middle school.’ He’s never heard this shit and this is a person that has bangers. You would’ve thought he knew Wayne’s whole catalog, but he didn’t and he’s learning everyday.

“Him being from Canada and coming over here, they really had to get Americanized. They didn’t know about no strip club lifestyle in Atlanta. They didn’t know about sipping no lean and smoking no Kush the way we really cherish that shit out here. I mean, they got free health care! That’s some real shit. They’re just different.

“Even in how they talk and when I first got around him it took me a while to figure what we could converse about. Like, these guys are Canadian! They’re literally talking about Poitín [a highly alcoholic Irish liquor] and other Canadian shit. I’m New Orleans, L.A. hood. I’m thinking about fucking bitches and they’re probably thinking about something completely different like, ‘What’s your mom doing?’ They just weren’t Americanized.”

Lil Wayne

Not Available Interstitial

Producing for Young Money, Lil Wayne, & Tha Carter IV

Chase N. Cashe: My boy KY [hooked me up with Young Money]. I was working at this studio called Zach’s and KY used to just be coming around a lot so by the time he ended up getting the job with Young Money, he was like, ‘Send me some beats.’

“So I sent him five beats and the exact five beats I sent they ended up using them all. We did ‘New Shit,’ which me and B. Carr carried together and then ‘Pass The Dutch.’ The beat to ‘Drop The World’ happened to be in that bunch as well. And that was was all because of KY.

“One didn’t make the album. It was some shit that Omarion was dancing to on World Star and then they cut him. Dead serious. That would be hilarious if it was true [that they cut him because of the video], but I think it was on some shit like he decided he didn’t want to sign with Young Money no more. But they announced his cutting the day after the video.


 

I’m gonna be honest with you, Wayne doesn’t even know me dog. I’ve done been around him multiple times, but I bet if you asked him who I was or who Hit-Boy was he couldn’t tell you a God damn thing. - Chase N. Cashe

 

“I sent the beats to KY and they liked them. I remember getting hit from KY one day like, ‘Yo what’s your information? You got a joint with Wayne and Eminem.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ But I didn’t know what beat it was. He just told me it sounds like some rock shit and it’s gonna be on Rebirth.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Wayne doesn’t even know me dog. I’ve done been around him multiple times, but I bet if you asked him who I was or who Hit-Boy was he couldn’t tell you a God damn thing. [Laughs.]

Hit-Boy: “I can’t get into any details, but I may have some things on Tha Carter IV. The ‘Tragedy’ joint that had leaked is not really called ‘Tragedy.’ It’s another joint that might end up on Tha Carter IV, but we’ll see. I did a couple of songs for it.

“That one song that had leaked with the Nicki verse on it actually came through Boi-1da. I had the track and I wanted him to beef it up and send it to Wayne. Wayne rapped on it ASAP. But nobody knows how her verse got leaked.”

My God

Not Available Interstitial

On Producing Pusha T’s “My God”

Hit-Boy: “One of my publishers linked me up with Pusha’s manager, Steven Victor. I was sending his manager beats that I already had, but he was like, ‘Yo, we just need that one [beat].’


 

I ended up going to Dubai and then New York with Kanye and Pusha. When we were up in New York, I was just stressing this record to Pusha like, ‘Yo, I’m telling you when people hear this record it’s gonna cause commotion.’ - Hit-Boy

 

“We were going through samples one day and came up with that and that’s just a jewel of a sample. I put it together and as soon as I sent it to him I told him, ‘This is the one.’ This was a couple months prior to Pusha getting on it.

“I ended up going to Dubai and then New York with Kanye and Pusha. When we were up in New York, I was just stressing this record to Pusha like, ‘Yo, I’m telling you when people hear this record it’s gonna cause commotion.’

“I have footage of Pusha writing the verses, which is crazy. He recorded it and the first time I heard it I was like, ‘This is about to set the Internet and the streets on fire.’”

GOOD Music

Not Available Interstitial

Hit-Boy On Signing To G.O.O.D. Music

Hit-Boy: “My boy Dolla hooked me up with Kanye’s cousin, Ricky Anderson. I was sending him beats for the longest. I was trying to get on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Rick would just tell me, ‘Ye really likes your beats, but he just doesn’t feel like this is the right sound for right now.’

“The night MBDTF was released—the same night Kanye played that little theatre in NYC—Ricky called me from there and was like, ‘Yo, I think Kanye is about to record a Christmas song to one of your beats.’ I’m like, ‘What? That’s crazy!’ I didn’t normally [think of] that beat as a Christmas song, but when he did [‘Christmas In Harlem’], I was like, ‘Damn, this is hip-hop history.’

“The signing situation came along two months later when we went to Dubai and New York. We created all this incredible music within about a three-week span and then Kanye approached me. He was feeling my whole vibe and wanted me to get down with his team.

“Kanye knows that I have my own thing with Surf Club. I definitely make that known with everything that I do, that I’m just still gonna be there to my own plan. But it’s definitely a blessing and an honor to be down with G.O.O.D. Music.

“I have some stuff with Pusha [coming up]. I don’t know how many joints on the album I’ll end up with, but we did work on some amazing joints. I haven’t completed any records with Big Sean or Kid Cudi yet, but we definitely did some super dope ideas out in New York so we’ll see where it ends up.

“After Kanye recorded ‘Christmas In Harlem,’ Kanye kept telling Ricky, ‘I need more Hit-Boy beats.’ So we did songs [for Watch The Throne]. We’ll see where they end up. I don’t really want to get into detail, but we definitely did some amazing stuff.”

Future

Not Available Interstitial

Chase N. Cashe On The Future

Chase N. Cashe: “I’m not signed to nobody. The last deal I had was resolved for. I’m completely Chase N. Cashe, Surf Club. My whole thing is to do what I gotta do and be independent for real. I got a publishing deal [with Universal] so I always got work.

“I’m going to continue my artistry, continue producing. Continue to show people that I’m not 50/50 anything. I’m 100% an artist, I’m 100% a producer. You might find me in Warner Bros. office chilling with Joie and my brother Dallas. Or you might catch me on the road with Drake, chilling. Or you might catch me in New York, working.

“What a lot of people don’t know is that anything I ever produced with I was hands-on with except for “Drop The World” and the ghosting shit. But anything else we did, we were hands-on.

“We contributed lyrics and a lot of the shit, but me and Hit didn’t really know the biz at first so, not to say we got slighted, but we didn’t know what to ask for. We didn’t know what to demand. Now we know how the shit works.”

Latest in Music