MBW’s World’s Greatest Producers series sees us interview – and celebrate – some of the outstanding talents working in studios across the decades. Here we meet TM88, the co-founder of 808 Mafia, who has already worked with some of hip-hop’s greatest but who insists he’s only just getting started. World’s Greatest Producers is supported by Hipgnosis Song Management.
When Bryan Lamar Simmons was first starting out on his music career, he found himself essentially homeless.
His mother had moved to New York, but the young Simmons, now much better known as TM88, elected to stay in hip-hop hotbed Atlanta to pursue his producer-writer dream. Which, at the time, meant crashing on a lot of friends’ couches.
“I’d wake up, wash their car, take the trash out,” he reminisces. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to have somewhere to stay. I always believed in playing my part – if you’re going to get somewhere, you’ve got to bring something to the table.”
It’s a philosophy he’s also brought to a stellar production career that has seen him alter the DNA of rap production on multiple occasions via his work with the likes of Future (Puffin On Zootiez), Drake (Way 2 Sexy), Lil Uzi Vert (XO Tour Llif3), 21 Savage (Drip), DJ Khaled (Beautiful) and Travis Scott (Nothing But Net), to name but a few.
“You’ve got to earn your keep, man,” he shrugs. “That’s just how the world was built. Before everything was all about money – and I’m pretty sure it’s been about money since way before we were born – everybody did something to help. Whatever you decide to do in life, it should help the next person. If everybody pulls their weight, the ship is going to sail. If one person don’t paddle, it can mess the whole ship up.”
These days, of course, TM88 could travel by private yacht if he chose to. But he still laughs modestly at the thought of joining MBW’s World’s Greatest Producers pantheon (“I know we did a lot of great things,” he says, “But once you get to thinking you made it to the top, that’s when you fall short of everything you worked hard for. So, I’m one of the greatest students of the game…”).
He credits the burgeoning 1990s/2000s Atlanta hip-hop scene for giving his career lift-off. A music obsessive from childhood, his cousin taught him how to make beats aged 12. In 2010, he and fellow Atlantans Southside and Lex Luger formed production and songwriting collective 808 Mafia and TM soon earned his first major placement on local star rapper Waka Flocka Flame’s Lurkin, earning $7,000 in the process (“I cried and called him five times to thank him!”).
Since then, paying the rent has not been an issue for TM88. His enduring collaboration with another hometown rapper, Future, has proved particularly productive. He once created more than a dozen beats for Future in a single night after his laptop, containing all his music files, was stolen – and the rapper powered through them all. The partnership also yielded their first No.1 with Drake and Young Thug on 2021’s Right Said Fred-sampling Way 2 Sexy.
Sony Music Publishing-signed TM has made a habit of cooking up good beats for bad times, essentially inventing emo-trap with Lil Uzi Vert on XO Tour Llif3, built at a time when the producer was recovering from the trauma of being caught up in a mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport.
“I’m trying to go Dr Dre level. That’s my next step.”
He’s also expanded his reach beyond production, via his Crash Dummy Records producers collective (which, he says proudly, was behind a new song a week during Q4), and tells MBW of his plans to become “one of the biggest tech moguls in the world in the next five years”.
“I can’t speak about it now, but I’m going to create something,” he enthuses. “I’m trying to go Dr Dre level. That’s my next step. I do a lot of things in music besides making beats…”
In the meantime, however, he still has production jobs stacked up around the block, including one project with a pop superstar that, if it makes the finished album, could see him expand his power base way beyond hip-hop.
Now, though, it’s time for him to wind down from his brutal-sounding workout by talking MBW through Drake, AI and, er, Billy Ray Cyrus…
WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND CRASH DUMMY?
We’re crashing the world with knowledge and beats! It means a lot to me because, to get in the game, we had to kick a lot of doors down.
You go in this game, you don’t know what’s going on and you learn a lot during the process. Producers meet us, they’re getting knowledge and swag. Crashing the world, that’s the motto – kick those doors down and don’t let nobody hold you back.
IT’S USUALLY QUITE COMPETITIVE BETWEEN PRODUCERS…
Everything is competitive. It’s like sports – basketball or football and when I talk to my guys, that’s how I explain things.
It’s always good to have friendly competition because you might hear a beat and be like, ‘Oh snap! That’s crazy. Now I’m going to make the craziest beat you ever heard in your life…’ And when somebody else gets a placement, it should make you want to go get a placement. Competition is the greatest thing you can have, because you’ll never get lazy. And if you do get lazy, then it wasn’t meant for you, or you just didn’t have it in you.
But you don’t have to cut people out of deals, because there’s a lot of money for all of us out there. If producers stuck together, it’d be better. A lot of rappers and artists stick together on publishing and rights, but as producers we never stick together, it’s always this man against this man.
But really, we’re all working towards the same common goal and that’s keeping hip-hop alive. I want younger producers, and the producers my age that are still stubborn, to know that we can share the knowledge and make sure we put hip-hop in a better place. It’s suffering at the moment, because everybody wants to do the same things and work on the same type of beats. Nobody wants to push the needle. This goes for me as well, because I get comfortable too.
As producers, we’ve just got to stick together and come up with a plan to make sure we’re taking hip-hop to the next level, and make sure it’s not falling off because of us.
IS HIP-HOP FALLING OFF THEN?
I don’t want to sit here and sound like one of those guys. I like rap, I like hip-hop, I just feel it can be more versatile.
We need the music that’s out now, but you have to have an abundance of other stuff too, not just for hip-hop. It’s a balance when you’ve got rock, country, rap, R&B… As producers, we’ve got to push ourselves to make different stuff.
“I’ll still push the needle forward, because that’s just what I do.”
I’ll still push the needle forward, because that’s just what I do. But I don’t want to be the guy that’s bashing hip-hop, when I love hip-hop. I’ll be the help that hip-hop needs to change.
YOU HAVE HELPED COMPLETELY CHANGE THE SOUND OF RAP A COUPLE OF TIMES. DO YOU GET THE CREDIT YOU DESERVE FOR THAT?
A lot of people don’t give us the credit, but 95% of some producers’ sound today is because of us. We don’t get mad or anything, we just know. You don’t get any cookies or awards for being the first to do some shit.
I’m not saying it’s not cool to copy; you copy to get your own style. I copied so many producers to get my sound today.
But when we first came out [as 808 Mafia], everybody was copying our sound. We had to change our sound two or three times a year. We’d have a whole new sound by the time their song came out, and it made us better.
IT’S ALWAYS SEEMED LIKE MAKING BEATS ISN’T JUST TECHNICAL FOR YOU THOUGH, IT’S EMOTIONAL TOO…
Yeah. I’m very spiritual. I pray all the time, but I also feel connected with the earth. My Grandma passed away a few years ago and she was a soldier; I can feel her when I’m making certain beats.
I was making the beat for Future’s Puffin On Zootiez and I felt my Grandma there with me. I put so much emotion into that beat and the fans can tell, it’ll make you feel some type of way when you hear it. The best writers and the best musicians put their emotions into it. Everything you’re putting out on music should be a feeling, you shouldn’t feel like a computer.
DID YOU ACTUALLY KNOW WHO RIGHT SAID FRED WERE BEFORE YOU SAMPLED THEM ON WAY 2 SEXY?
Oh yeah. I was born in ‘87, so as a kid I was watching VH1, when VH1 was actually playing videos! You’d see I’m Too Sexy, you’d see everything. That timeframe – late ‘80s, ‘90s – is just undefeated. That’s why a lot of my aesthetics are based off the ‘80s and ‘90s, maybe early 2000s, because it’s cool.
Right now, everybody wants to see everything, it’s so clear, everything is 4K, 8K, 20K whatever. What happened to the grit, the grimy badass, dark wavey stuff going through the screen? That shit is cool. One song that you might not think that I know about – do you remember Achy Breaky Heart [by Billy Ray Cyrus]? I used to love that song, bro! Oh my God!
WOULD YOU EVER SAMPLE THAT FOR A HIP-HOP RECORD?
[Laughs] Ah, nah, nah man. For my childhood, I don’t want to be the one to taint it!
WHAT DOES A RECORD AS MASSIVE AS WAY 2 SEXY DO FOR YOUR CAREER?
Funnily, people think, ‘Oh he’s going to charge $100,000 for a beat now’, so it scared a lot of artists away from working with me.
But Way 2 Sexy still catapulted my career and gave me and Future our first No.1. It put us on a whole another level.
I’d had the XO wave when it was emo trap, you had the kids going crazy to it. So, to have a fully adult song was perfect. And to have a No.1 with Drake, Future and Young Thug, three of my favorite artists, that was legendary.
DO YOU HAVE TO BECOME A DIFFERENT TYPE OF PRODUCER WHEN YOU WORK WITH ARTISTS YOU DON’T KNOW AS WELL AS FUTURE?
You always have to do things a little differently. It’s like being a football coach. You can’t coach every generation the same. [Laughs] Some generations, you can’t yell at them too bad, you’re not going to get the best out of them!
You’ve got to figure out the way to get the best out of each person. I come in, being nice, have a conversation first, and then I figure out where they’re at, what’s their headspace, what do they want and do I have any beats in that space? Do I have to go create this or do I have it on me?
It’s different for every artist, like Travis Scott (pictured). He’s hands-on with a lot of his music. When you work with him, he pulls the best out of you, there is no mediocrity coming in the studio working with Travis Scott. You have to bring your ‘A’ game.
Working with Future is easier because he can rap on anything, but you challenge yourself to give him the best of the best, because he’s going to take a seven beat and turn it into a 20 with the lyrics.
Working with DJ Khaled is different; he’s always on your line, he’s always got ideas, he’s painting this picture and you have to put it all together on the canvas.
“It proves to me that nobody’s on my level. You can hear my beats and feel like you’re on my level, but you’re not.”
It’s challenging but I respect it, this is what I live for. It makes me better at the end of the day, and they make me want to be great.
It proves to me that nobody’s on my level. You can hear my beats and feel like you’re on my level, but you’re not. I’ve got a lot of toys in my bag. I’m humble, but I also want the game to know, when you come barking up this tree, you need a big ladder. We’re trying to win championships around here. We’re not trying to do the bare minimum, we’re trying to change hip-hop.
HOW INTERESTED ARE YOU IN THE INDUSTRY SIDE OF THINGS?
I’m a CEO, so I’ve been through a lot. I’ve kicked down a lot of doors and I’ve met a lot of shitty people, but I’ve also met a lot of great people. The industry is the industry. It’s just like high school or college, you’ve got to figure out which circle is good for you and what you want to major in.
DOES THE INDUSTRY VALUE PRODUCERS IN THE WAY IT SHOULD?
Nah. We get the short end of the stick every time. But people like me, Metro [Boomin], Sonny Digital and Mike Will [Made It], we go out and take our respect. We’re not sitting back waiting for the industry to tell us if we’re good enough.
We do a lot behind the scenes, building up artists, even building the culture in Atlanta; we get the love from Young Thug but, as far as the labels go, they always try to give the producers the least of the percentages and the advances and that’s why it’s messed up.
“Everybody’s got to stick together and say, ‘Enough is enough, y’all got to give us respect or we’re not doing anything, no music or anything’.”
Artists now don’t take advice from producers that often. But I look at the guys who are taking advice and they’re having success.
Everybody’s got to stick together and say, ‘Enough is enough, y’all got to give us respect or we’re not doing anything, no music or anything’.
Maybe one day that’ll happen, maybe not. Producers get more love than engineers, engineers get more love than DJs, but we’re all in the same boat. We’re the ones that curate the music and help it go around.
WHAT IMPACT WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAVE ON THE ART OF PRODUCTION?
Who knows? We’ll see. I have seen some stuff get done and I was blown away by it, but it’s dangerous, for sure. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but with anything good, there’s always bad that comes with it. You eat too much candy, you get cavities, you know what I’m saying?
They want to do weird things like put out an album and say it’s Drake like, you’ve got a whole Drake album out here that’s not Drake. On the producer tip, I’m not worried, because you can’t buy my emotions. You can’t AI this, this is how I really feel. AI didn’t experience the things I’ve experienced in life but, if an artist wants to go AI, that’s on him – I’m going to go work with somebody else.Music Business Worldwide
