Quotes from Kenny Beats

Rap music's the only thing that ever mattered.

I'm a very self-sufficient person, much like a lot of people I work with.

Idles are the best band in the whole world.

I started making beats in high school.

Since he was 17 years old in Atlanta, I think people always knew that there was something different about Key. He's obviously been able to adapt to so many sounds and time periods in his own way, which is clear from the long list of collaborators; but he has always retained an effortlessly weird perspective.

Lil Jon was definitely a pioneer for some of the punk-rap acts we see now. He showed you could scream on a song and still have a hit on the radio.

The real producers back in the day didn't sit there and play every single instrument. They made sure the record had the best performance out of everyone involved possible.

The biggest thing Rick Rubin taught me is that you don't get any extra credit by doing everything yourself.

Being in the EDM world taught me that nothing's impossible.

Making assumptions taught me a lot as a producer, because it's something I never do now.

I think a lot of people make a big misstep when they assume what an artist is going to be interested in, so I try to just take that out of the equation and make sure whenever I'm talking to people about their music, I'm getting all my context clues from that - and then we go to work.

You go to a Rico Nasty show and there's gay people, trans people, white people and black people all in the mosh pit together, and it's beautiful.

There's a difference between a beatmaker and a producer.

People will go through 50 beats from a producer and pick the best ones, go make a song on that beat. That's cool, but someone coming to me and hearing what I've been working on, picking out pieces of all of that, and then adding some of their own ideas is way more exciting.

Most of these producers have an agenda of what they want to push or what they think will be hot for someone. I don't have an agenda. My agenda is to take someone and bring out their dreams, what they're hearing in their head.'

I've never seen Key think about how he was going to act on a song. He just is whoever he is that day.

I heard Idles and was like this is all I want to work on, this is all I want to do, these guys are the best. I got into their DMs and told them that and luckily we got to meet and the proof is in the pudding.

You need to make people think about society in a less literal and more primal way. It's about using the least amount of sounds to make the most amount of noise and energy, and making a bass stab really feel like you've been punched in the face.

Greedo is one of the most important California artists of our generation.

When I make a lot of really good music with someone, I want to let the world hear it right now; unfiltered. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that.

I am friends with the most amazing musicians that can do pop, rap, punk and jazz.

The point of '777' is for the world to hear adult Key. Your favorite new rapper's favorite rapper, grown up. My job was to lay any canvas he needed at any given moment.

I feel like I wasn't making music that meant anything to me until I was 26 years old, so I'm realizing that sometimes it takes three years or five years to understand what the point of even making music together is.

Every time I'm working on something, I'm extremely excited about it.