This past September, heavyweights across hip-hop were mourning the passing of a man named Seth Firkins. Future posted a heartfelt message on his Instagram and there were many other tweets and posts directed towards someone fans were not too familiar with. Seth Firkins was Future's engineer and worked with him on hundreds of records, including most of what we heard on Super Slimey.
His loss was a big hit to hip-hop and while we had Alex Tumay in the office we were able to get more insight on Seth's impact, Young Thug and Future's collaborative project, as well as Tumay's own approach to working with Young Thug.
Who is Seth Firkins?
Seth really was one of the more genuine people I knew in the music industry. We didn’t get along at first, he was like my nemesis when I first met him. I felt very threatened by him. We didn’t really know each other, he just came in the studio and one day and began working with one of my clients. I was like, “Fuck this guy, I really don’t like him.”
Within six months we were texting every day and giving each other advice. He’s one of those people where the person he presents himself as is exactly who he is.
What did he mean to you and all of the people who you both work with?
I think he left an impression on everybody that worked with him or had anything to do with him. He always had my back, even when he shouldn’t have. There were times where people tried to pit us against each other or would say something about me behind my back and he’d be like, “You can’t talk about Alex like that, that’s just not true.” I think that’s how he was with everyone. When he passed over 40 people reached out to me about him. Nobody saw that coming.
What roles did you both play in the creation of Super Slimey? Did you work together on it?
He did everything. I didn’t do anything on it, he recorded the whole entire project, I believe, and then MixedByAli and Jason Joshua finished it.
What was your last interaction with Seth?
We were talking about Super Slimey and he was saying that he really wanted me to mix the project with him. He thought it would be dope if I did all of Thug’s parts and he did all of Future’s and we collaborated on the beats. We both do a lot of post-production with our artists’ vocals. You’ll know Seth did a Future mix because there’s always some sort of extra outro or intro where he takes an old hook or scratched vocal and throws it in. That’s all him, his ideas, the little extra things he used to do to songs.
I do the same thing with Thug with the harmonies or creating an outro. We were going to do a lot together because we know we both have very unique ideas and thought it could’ve been cool. I think it was about two days before he passed that we talked about it.
Do you think the role of an engineer has changed over time with music?
It’s definitely evolved. I think engineers are now vocal producers and in a lot of ways take on the traditional roles of production as far as directing how things go. With how fast-paced rap has become, it's important for engineers to be more hands on. Engineers used to just sit and kind of get told what to do, now there’s no one telling us what to do anymore.
What’s something you think gets overlooked as far as an engineer’s role in the creation of music?
I think people think that engineering is way more technical than it actually is. It’s technical for sure but it’s a technical art. You can’t just approach it technically because you’ll be terrible at it and you can’t just approach it artistically because you’ll be even worse. You have to know the technical side to be artful with it and you have to have good taste to get anything to the point where people want to listen to it. If you have bad taste and you’re really technically sound you’re still a bad engineer.
What was the moment when you feel you put both sides together and it started clicking for you?
For me it kind of clicked when I stopped being afraid to take risks. I started off doing whatever anyone told me. I just wanted to make the songs sound as good as I can. Once I got comfortable with that part, I moved on and started trying shit. When I did that and people liked it, I understood that maybe I had an ear for this. It could’ve been anything, it could’ve been luck.
When I started to put myself out there people like Metro or Thug would say, “Keep that, that’s crazy.” One time Birdman asked us to record to see if he wanted to stay in the studio to do the Rich Gang stuff and I did this crazy effect on Thug’s voice that I now use all the time. Birdman came in while we were recording it, left, and then came back when it was finished and when he heard the song he booked the studio for 90 days straight. From there it was like, “Cool, I know what the hell I’m doing.”
The song’s still not out so I can’t say the name but it’s the first song we ever did for the Rich Gang project. London produced it, Thug’s on it by himself, it’s like five minutes long and the hooks are insane. Each hook is different, it’s the same words but he re-performed it every time. The first hook is four bars, the next one is eight bars, and the last one is twelve bars. It’s a crazy song.
What do you think is the key to a relationship between an engineer and an artist?
It’s all in trust and you have to be on the same page creatively. I’ve never played Thug a song where he was like, “This is fucking trash turn this shit off.” It could be any genre of music and he’ll say, “What is that?” That’s actually how he jumped on that Jeremih song ["Pass Dat"].
I played him that song in South Africa one morning and that’s all he listened to for the entire flight back. It’s a 17-hour flight and that’s the only song he listened to. When we landed he had Jeremih send him the song and jumped on it.
What do you think establishes that trust?
I think it takes time. It’s all just working with someone, obviously you have to not fuck up long enough for them trust you but that goes back to what I was saying about taking risks creatively. You have to know that you and the artist are on the same page before you go out on a limb. Stay down and keep working until you prove yourself.
