Meet FNZ, the Australian Production Team Behind Denzel Curry's 'Zuu'

Their discography also includes tracks with A$AP Rocky, Big Krit and G-Eazy

Australian production duo Finatik N Zac
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Australian production duo Finatik N Zac

Australian production duo Finatik N Zac

Finatik N Zac, sometimes credited as FNZ, worked with A$AP Rocky on both Testing and At.Long.Last.ASAP. They produced for Big KRIT, G-Eazy, and Jaden Smith, and contributed the bulk of production to both TA13OO and Zuu for Denzel Curry. They’re also from Perth, but nobody in Australia seems to be talking about them. Here’s your chance to get familiar with two of Australia's greatest exports.

How long were you in Australia for before you made the move to the US?

Finatik: We moved to the US in 2011. We'd been making music together for years before that, then we moved to Miami and signed a publishing deal with a producer named Jim Jonsin over there.

I can see that your Twitter account goes back to 2009, so you're presumably making music together prior to that as well? Can you tell me where this started before Jim Jonsin and the move to the US?

Zac: I was always into music. I took piano lessons when I was a kid and stuff like that. And then when I got to high school, I started getting introduced to different styles of music. My friend Martin put me onto what a producer actually was. He put me onto the Neptunes, Dr. Dre. We started making beats on FL and Reason, we were the only people in school making beats, and I never really stopped after that.

Finatik: I grew up on a lot of Gangstarr, Mobb Deep, A Tribe Called Quest all that kind of ‘90s hip hop. I had a fascination for crate digging and then got into DJ'ing at a really young age. I bought my first set of turntables when I was 12 and then started battling when I was 14. A couple of years later I placed second in the Australian DMC Finals. Then I was like, “Man, I’m kind of sick of this shit,” I felt like I had hit the ceiling at that point and wanted to focus strictly on making music.

I bought an MPC 2000 after I saw that other producers I looked up to used one. I started crate digging and sampling, and then it eventually lead to meeting Zac and us working together on the weekends when we weren't working our day jobs.

Were you guys making beats for local acts at all?

Zac: Not really. Nothing that came out anyway. We kind of just had our sights set on working with American artists at that point. There weren’t that many artists in Perth to work with. It might have been a different story on the east coast.

Finatik: Dazastah from Downsyde helped mentor me a little bit for a good one or two years. He had me scratching on Drapht’s album and doing cuts here and there. He [Dazastah] was showing me how to use FL Studio at the time; showing me how to manipulate samples and program drums. I was doing that with those guys but I was soaking in everything I was learning from Dazastah in terms of making beats. His drums were crazy. And I was like ‘ah my drums sound like shit compared to his!’ [laughs].

I've known quite a few Australian producers who have gone on to produce for acts in the United States. Whether it's someone like M-Phazes or Styalz or whoever else, they all start out working with local acts. It's amazing to me that you were able to bypass that and just go, "Nah, fuck that. We're going global."

Finatik: Yeah, it was kind of set in stone to do that. It was our goal. And we definitely got laughed at a lot. A lot of people didn't believe in us, especially back home early on.

Finatik of production duo Finatik N Zac competing at the Australian DMC Finals in 2001

So how did it go from making beats out of Perth to making that connection with Jim Jonsin in Miami?

Finatik: That was through a mutual friend of ours who was managing us at the time named Joel. He was running a radio show on a local radio station. He'd been interviewing all these US producers, guys like Nottz and Scram Jones. And at that time, Jim was really blowing up over here [in the US]. He had “Unpredictable” out with Jamie Foxx and Ludacris and a whole bunch of other big songs at that time. Joel interviewed Jim, and then at the end of the interview, Joel asked, "Hey I've got a couple of guys that I work with, they're really close friends of mine. They make some pretty crazy shit. Do you mind if I send some beats?" And Jim was like, "For sure, send them through." Joel sent him a folder of beats of ours. Now, looking in hindsight, the beats were so bad back then, but it got us that connection.

Jim heard it and asked more about us. We started sending him emails and built that relationship off of that. He was just talking about, "Would you guys be interested in signing to my publishing or production company?" And we're like, "Yeah! That'd be crazy." We had thought we'd made it at that point. We're like, "Fuck. We've got a ticket out of Perth, we can go to Miami and kill it."

But I think we spoke a little too soon. Months went by, and if you’re not in someone's face and they don't really know you, it's hard for them to keep in touch with you, especially when they're blowing up and having less time on their hands. So we just said "Fuck it. Let's just book a ticket, go straight to Miami and just tell him that we're here." So we did that  We took a risk, we went to Miami and just called him and told him we were there. And he had kind of freaked out but in a good way, "You guys are fucking crazy for flying all the way from Perth to Miami without me actually knowing."

That's great, man. Because every origin story, I feel, has that kind of leap-of-faith moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s an entrepreneur, an artist trying to make it big, or if it's Spider-Man, or anyone in between. It comes down to just trusting yourself and taking the leap. That's a real beautiful thing.

Finatik: Yeah it's crazy because we really thought it was set in stone when he asked if we wanted to sign with him. There was this whole period of time where we were wondering what was going on and waiting on a response. If we just waited for something to happen and didn't make that jump and fly to Miami, then everything wouldn't have happened for us.

You guys have been working with Denzel for years now. Is that a Florida connection there, with Jim Jonsin?

Zac: So, it kind of is in a roundabout way. It essentially happened through our manager, Rees, who also manages Denzel. But the way we got connected with Rees initially is because he was working for Jim’s publishing company, who we were signed to.

Rees was assigned to us on the publishing side, so he was setting up sessions for us with writers, and then that kind of organically just kind of turned into him being our manager. Denzel was the main artist that he was messing with, and then he approached us and was like, "I've got this kid, I'd love for you guys to help out on this project." That project was Imperial. That was the first time working with Denzel, and we kept that going ever since.

When I listened to Zuu I was blown away. Not only do I love the way that the beats sound, but it's also such a huge directional shift for Denzel. Was that something that was initiated on Denzel's end or is that something that you guys went to him said, "Here's a different sound. What do you think of this?" How did that all come to be?

Zac: It was kind of the perfect storm. Coming off TA13OO, our relationship with Denzel grew stronger. There's a lot more trust, which is natural, because it did well. So when we got in the studio again to work on this project, there was really no thinking. It was completely just having fun and making bangers. Halfway through it, it started to take shape as a project and then the Miami theme came into play. We did it in a fraction of the time that we did TA13OO. It just kind of happened, man. We didn't sit there and go, "Alright, this is going to be the new direction." No, it just happened and then it was what it was.



If we just waited for something to happen and didn't make that jump and fly to Miami, [it] wouldn't have happened for us


One thing I noticed was that Keanu Beats has a co-production credit on the first track. Obviously, he's another Australian dude. Is that something that was initiated by you guys or is that just sort of coincidence that it was two Australians on the track? How did that happen?

Finatik: Keanu is someone we reached out to at the end of the last year and then later found out we have the same attorney, which is crazy [laughs]. We connected and he’s cool as shit. He just sent us a bunch of crazy ideas and one of them turned into the intro on Zuu. He’s a young dude killing out in Australia.

Zac: Keanu is the man. Shoutout Keanu Beats.

Has any Australian media been in touch with you? Just along your journey, has the Australian media covered what you guys are doing at all or is it kind of a bit of a best-kept secret?

Zac: We always made little jokes to ourselves about that. Considering the amount of love that A$AP Rocky and Denzel get back home in Australia, it feels like no one ever just looks at the credits like, "Shit, some Australian dudes produced this.’ It’s all good though.

Finatik: There was one recently though on Triple J when they premiered “Ricky” a few weeks back, they gave us a shout out.

Zac: I didn't know that! That’s cool. A lot of it is on our end though because we weren’t focused on branding ourselves too much. We just stayed focused in the studio making music, and we always felt like the other shit will take care of itself. But that was a mistake. So that's why we're changing that now. We're trying to correct that.

Stay connected with FNZ via Instagram, and bump that new Denzel Curry if you haven't already. It's now a matter of national importance.

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