At the beginning of December, information circulated on the internet that Polish music producers produced a track for Kanye West’s new album. One of them was Hubi, who told me a bit more about this unusual collaboration but also about his entry into the music market, sustaining himself from his passion, and his trip to the United States. I invite you to read.
Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about you in the context of collaborating with Kanye West. Have you felt any increase in popularity?
I must admit that indeed, my popularity has significantly increased during this period. Shadow and I have been working together, and we’ve received congratulations from many people, for which we are grateful. Of course, we also received congratulations from individuals who hadn’t responded to us before. The response, in general, has been substantial; the media also played its role, but I believe it’s well-deserved, as we have accomplished something truly significant.
I’m glad about your success because you’ve been working on it for a really long time. I remember your first tracks, like “Incepcja” with Żabson.
Lately, I even went through my old tracks, and I’ve been making music for about 6/7 years now. It’s hard for me to determine exactly, but now I’m 25, and I started before finishing high school.
Did you not have any contact with making music before? It’s hard for me to believe.
Not at all. In junior high school, maybe I made one attempt; back then, I downloaded FL Studio with some ready-made project by Martin Garrix, but literally after 40 minutes, I uninstalled it because I thought it wasn’t for me. At that time, my main passion was graphic design and video editing. A more serious second attempt was around the time of my high school graduation. Instead of studying, I started making music. Currently, I also work in FL Studio, but I’m at a stage where I want to learn Ableton. I observe how Shdow works on it and see that it has many more possibilities. It really encourages me, although I can’t get down to learning it. I’ve been using FL Studio for so many years, and I know it like the back of my hand, so it frustrates me when I can’t do some basics in Ableton.
Okay, but wait. You’re saying that you started making music around the time of your high school graduation, yet you released “Inception” with Żabson at the end of 2017. A big player noticed you quite quickly, although it’s known that Żabson wasn’t as popular back then.
With him, it was actually such a situation that during high school, various events were organized in my city. I designed the ticket graphics for an event where Żaba was supposed to perform, and a friend got me backstage. There weren’t too many people there, so I talked to him for a while, and we added each other on Facebook. Shortly after that event, I started making music, and not even 2-3 months passed before I sent my beat package to Żabson. I don’t think it was a good idea to send my stuff so quickly, but in the end, Żabson got hooked on one beat, and he invited me to Warsaw to arrange the whole thing together. In the end, we also made the track “Bingo,” and that’s the whole story of my, actually, second musical collaboration. The second one because a bit earlier, PlanBe posted on Facebook asking for beats to be sent to his email, and that’s how we made the track “Nie chcę.” I also had a big problem because I started sending my beats so quickly, lacking the necessary skills. After these two collaborations and beats that happened to fit so well, I had almost a year without any released tracks. Starting from such a high point, a year-long break is really quite long.
Have you ever been in a situation where you were working on a track with a rapper, and they asked you to implement certain techniques or elements in the song that you were completely unfamiliar with?
Yes, and it was precisely with PlanBe that I had such a situation. He asked me to arrange the track I sent him, and I had no idea what he meant. I asked a friend who explained to me that it’s about aligning the lyrics with the beat. However, I still didn’t know how to do it at all. Then came sending the beat in tracks, which was also a completely new concept for me. In these circumstances, I had my first encounter with professional music production. There were many new terms related to this industry that I had to learn. I even briefly considered the idea of music school, but in the end, I remained self-taught.
Do you sometimes feel a lack of having theoretical knowledge about music?
Currently, I don’t miss it anymore.. Paradoxically, the fact that I didn’t see anything from theory at the beginning gave me a significant boost for self-learning. In general, I think theoretical knowledge can often hinder the initial development of producers because it somehow limits their creativity. They might avoid doing something simply because theory doesn’t permit it. On the other hand, when someone doesn’t know theory, they rely solely on their ear, and then they have unlimited freedom in making music.
And was anyone in your family a professional musician?
I don’t consider anyone in my family to be a professional musician, but, for example, my dad played drums as a hobby back in his school days. So, you could say I’m the first in the family when it comes to the profession of being a musician.
How did your parents react to this then?
At first, they saw it as my hobby, similar to how people view, for example, computer games. They started changing their attitude when they saw articles in which I was mentioned or when they heard from friends that they knew tracks I had produced. The crucial moment was when I dropped out of college to dedicate myself 100% to music. Fortunately, it was also a time when I was already able to sustain myself somewhat from music, so it was a bit easier for me to take that risk. In the end, it turned out well, and I think it will only get better.
There’s just a small catch here because when you start making a living from your passion, it can be a bit stressful at times. You know that you ultimately have to earn from it.
Absolutely, but I had the comfort of having a financial safety net that allowed me to approach it with the mindset that if it doesn’t work out, I can just do something else.
(…) The snippet of Kanye West’s track generated more hype for me than the six years of producing music combined.
And do you remember the stress that accompanied you when entering this industry, meeting people you had only known online so far?
Yes, and what stressed me even more was that these were people I had listened to before. However, the more I met these people, the more I became convinced that they were people like everyone else, only with a bit more popularity and some smaller or larger success.
Did you feel like rappers were looking down on you?
Definitely. I think that many rappers still have this habit of looking down on people. I’m not saying everyone does, of course, but it’s definitely happened to me. Also especially because at that time I was a kid who had not achieved anything in this industry yet. Now this is no longer the case and we always treat each other as equals. Recent events have also made people approach me with a little more respect.
It’s interesting that in society’s understanding, how good you are is defined by who you work with, and not by, for example, the fact that you recorded the album of a lifetime.
Exactly, and I’ve been making songs for 6 years, sometimes with bigger ones, sometimes with smaller ones, but the snippet of Kanye West’s song made me more hype than those 6 years of producing music combined. You know, Kanye is one of the greatest rappers in the world and I think that probably no one from Poland has managed to reach such nicknames yet. Szamz collaborated with Pop Smoke, Fivio Foreign and Nicki, recently Nejdos had a track with Quavo, and there were a few more collaborations that I can’t remember now. However, I think that our cooperation is the largest so far, so I am even more proud that I took part in the whole action.
Exactly, and what was the whole cooperation with Kanye like, so that you will finally have a track together?
Starting from the beginning, it was Shdow who once sent beats to Timbaland, who ran the BeatClub producer platform. At one point, Timbaland’s manager invited him to a stream and asked him to send more beats. It all actually started in October, when, after hundreds of beats were sent to Timbaland, he replied to them with fire emoticons. Of course, it’s hard to take it seriously, but it’s still nice that he reacted to it at all. After a month, he wrote to Konrad that Kanye really likes your beats, so send more. We got really excited, so we made more beats and Konrad sent them straight away. One day I got a message from him that we had a number with Kanye West. They were even planning a listening party in Italy for November 3, because the album was to be released before the new year. It so happened that during this period I was supposed to be in Italy, specifically in Rome. You can imagine how euphoric I was when I flew there, because I thought I would go there to a listening party of one of my favorite artists, with whom I did a song that I hadn’t even heard yet. Ultimately, nothing came of it, because the album’s premiere was postponed. Two weeks later, I was at the theater for a performance and suddenly I received several messages in a row from Shdow, because Timbaland called him and gave him our number. However, I turned off my phone and only during the intermission I watched the video of Timbaland playing this song with Kanye. It was too much, total euphoria. Additionally, thanks to Timbaland, we did another number for Kanye with Playboy Carti and Quavo. Here the situation was that Timbo called that the guys needed a new acapella beat. It was around midnight then, so Konrad and I immediately got to work. We sent the final version around 5 a.m. and we were extremely pleased with the result. Less than 12 hours later, Kanye flew to Miami from Saudi Arabia, because he had technically finished his album there, entered the bar and played his new song in our version. Videos of this event are circulating on the Internet. Additionally, a day later he posted the tracklist of his new album on Instagram, which includes two songs that we produced together with Shdow and Timbaland.
I can imagine the euphoria.
I’ve never felt anything like this. I love music and I always will, but this is the first time something like this has happened to me. Especially since he is also an artist I have been listening to since I was a child and I could easily put him in my top 5 favorite rappers. I’ve always identified with his music, so I’m very happy with this collaboration. It’s actually not easy to do something with people from the United States without being there. If someone had told me six months ago that I would have a song with Kanye West, I probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously.
When I talked to Shdow once, I found out that you learned a lot during your trip to the United States.
Yes it’s true. We were in LA at the time because we had arranged a session with some producers. We wrote to each other on Instagram for some time, sent each other things and even did some things together. So we lined up to meet them, but unfortunately in most cases we kissed the doorknob. We learned then that just because someone writes to you on Instagram that you make great music, it does not mean that it is profitable for them and that they will want to meet you. Ultimately, this trip was a half-and-half musical-holiday trip, but we definitely learned a lot because we managed to meet several producers with whom we are still in contact today. It was, for example, Mike Hector, who made beats for Kendrick Lamar and Doja Cat. He told us a lot about the entire music market and how it works. Additionally, we managed to do a lot of sightseeing and generally see what life is like in the United States.
(…) I can create both a catchy melody and a swinging percussion.
How do you establish cooperation with foreign artists? Is it just about writing on Instagram?
To a large extent yes. Alternatively, you look for their e-mails and follow them there. Nothing simpler, but at the same time nothing more difficult, because not everyone wants to read these messages. Well, that’s how I started and it’s really nothing complicated. I hit up anyone I could to get them to see my stuff. Most did not reply, but there were people who listened to these numbers and passed them on.
As we talk, you talk a lot about your joint songs produced together with Shdow. What does your cooperation look like?
We actually work together most of the time via Discord. He fires up his Ableton and I fire up FL Studio and we create in parallel and then exchange files. I think this is what 80% of our cooperation looks like. We also see each other in the studio from time to time and then we work together. We’ve been working like this for a long time, because our first joint song was released at the end of 2019 and it was “THC” by Young Igi and Włodi.
How did you meet in the first place?
A few years ago we were at a very similar point in our careers as we were just starting to make some moves on the scene. Konrad with Gedz, and I with Żaba. At some point we wrote to each other, I don’t remember who exactly. We started working together and there was such natural musical chemistry. Then we saw each other somewhere in the studio, we also liked each other privately and we still work well together.
When you work together, do you always share responsibilities to a similar extent?
It also depends on the mood or the beat itself, but lately I’m the one who starts the melody more often. Generally, I’m good at first ideas, choosing basic sounds, etc., and Konrad is a master, for example, at finishing beats. It often happens that he sends me 5 final versions, because he slightly changes some details or replaces the snare drum.
What’s interesting to me is that you’re so good at melody and you haven’t been to any music school.
There was a time when I couldn’t do it at all and I was more of a drum guy who produced mainly drums. However, 2 years ago I took up the melody, and I gave up producing drums for almost 1.5 years. I have created thousands of these melodies, learning something new with each one, and now I even know all the chords by heart.
What was the reason for this change?
You know, at the beginning, creating drums became more familiar to me, because in this respect I complemented each other very well with Michał Graczyk. He made the melody and I made the drums. This was our division. I got used to this role, and I think I had good bounce and sound selection of the whole drum. When I started to become interested in sending things to people from the United States, it was really difficult for me to get anything there with this perk. Usually melodies are sent to larger producers, so I decided that if I wanted to achieve something there, I had to start making my own samples and loops to make them at a high level. I decided on this, and after these 2 years I finally reached the golden mean and I can make both a catchy melody and a swinging percussion.
Have you thought about creating an account on BeatStars?
I had them for a while, but at BeatStars it’s very important to be conscientious and post new things every day. And firstly, I don’t make that many beats, and secondly, I don’t want all my beats and their components to be publicly available. I think that then the music loses its value. Additionally, there are often problems with licenses, etc. I posted things there for a while, but it never went well, so I gave up on the topic. I prefer to send personalized beat packs to people or make music with them in the studio. Then these bits are more exclusive.
And after 6 years of producing music, doesn’t some monotony creep in?
It often creeps in, but in the last year I’ve learned to take a break from music because I think it’s just as important as hard work. It used to be that if I didn’t make music for a day, I would get stressed and afraid for my future. But that’s not the point. What is meant to come will come at the right time and there is no point in forcing yourself to work like a full-time employee and having to do something every day. Now if I don’t do anything for a week, I don’t worry because I know I’ll make up for it when my inspiration comes back.
So, one last thing. What is your biggest dream right now?
One of them is definitely to work more with artists like Kanye West. I would like to keep this variability in my numbers because I have worked hard for it for several years. It is also important for me to enjoy the life I have earned. After all, not everyone has the opportunity to earn money from what they love.
It’s like when you do something you love, you’ll never have to work a day in it, right?
Exactly, that’s why I always approach it by doing what I love and not working in the literal sense of the word. I’m happy that I do what I like, I earn money from it, I also derive some other benefits, and the music itself is getting better and better. Of course, I also have worse moments, because last year I had the feeling that I didn’t see a place for myself on the music market. Back then, the leading music on the Polish market was at a very poor level, and although not much has changed now, fortunately, it quickly turned into a very good thing and I gained many new opportunities and collaborations. Ultimately, I can say that I am satisfied with my life and I hope it will stay that way.
IG: @realhubi