Shawn Setaro
[The great producer !llmind recently sat down with hip-hop personality and SOHH correspondent Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems he dropped during the Q&A.]
On working on Supastition’s Chain Letters album:
“My experience working with Supastition was definitely a benchmark for me, because it was my early experience of actually producing. So I went from making beats with no real regard for arrangement or song to now, okay, let me go ahead and be a producer. That album in particular was my first experience of being a real producer.”
On whether being in the studio with an artist results in better music than not being in the same place:
“It’s case by case. Sometimes magic can happen just from J. Cole hearing one of my beats, and being touched by it so much to write an amazing song. Other times, we can get in the studio and build from scratch and really flesh out ideas… To me, there’s nothing better than that human-to-human connection you have with someone.”
On Madlib and J. Dilla:
“Those two guys are master diggers. They find the most obscure records that you’ve never heard before. I can never pinpoint where they get their drums, because they’re just so good at finding rare shit. I was always inspired by that, like, if those guys can find those samples, then why can’t I?”
On sampling:
“I believe there really aren’t any limits to the creativity in sampling, depending on how well you can transform that sample. It’s like cooking. It’s like transforming a fruit into a sauce. Layering different sounds and instruments on top of samples is all part of the process. It’s all art. It all depends on how you flip it.”
On first getting to know 9th Wonder in the early 2000s:
“Me and 9th Wonder used to e-mail each other beats all the time – actually, it was through AIM. I remember leaving my AOL AIM screen name signed in, and I’d come home and see 10 mp3s on my desktop from 9th Wonder. And I would send him beats. On my old computer, I have probably five or six hundred unreleased 9th Wonder beats, just sitting on the hard drive.”
