My other favorite rappers are Lil Wayne, Lil B, Juelz Santana, and 50 Cent. I've tried to reach out to him on Twitter but I haven't been able to get in touch. Pitchfork: Are there any rappers that you'd really like to work with?ĬC: Number one is probably Cam'ron.

Because people tell me to save something for them and then they never rap on it. Honestly, that's one of the things that makes me want to do instrumental stuff, too. We were supposed to do a whole mixtape together but it never happened. Though, around Christmas, Lil B texted me like, 'Soulja Boy wants you to send some sample beats through.' So I sent three beats and Soulja put them out. Pitchfork: Have any more well-known rappers hit you up for beats recently?ĬC: Not really. Now, all I want to do is put out instrumental stuff. I don't really listen to instrumental hip-hop at all I have RJD2's Deadringer, but that's probably it.

I didn't even really think about just putting the instrumentals out until I did this mixtape. Pitchfork: I went back and listened to some of the songs on your mixtape with the rappers on them, and I liked the instrumentals better most of the time.ĬC: Yeah, I hear that a lot. I had no idea who the artists were or anything. To find things to sample, I used to just type a random word- like 'blue' or 'cold'- into LimeWire or BearShare and download the first 10 results. Like, my beat 'Realist Alive' samples the song 'Hometown Glory' by Adele- it's not a weird source, but I just make it sound weird. 'I just do it for a hobby,' he told me in a recent phone interview. After making beats in his spare time in high school, he started messaging MCs on MySpace in 2007 and simply 'sent beats to whomever answered.' He's currently interning at a hospital full-time and doesn't have any big rap-producer dreams.

It's an intoxicating sound that recalls singer-producer How to Dress Well's Xanex'd approach to R&B (though Volpe has never heard HTDW's music).Ĭurrently residing in Nutley, New Jersey, Volpe is the son of a musician father and started playing drums at six. The recent mixtape highlights his signature style, which combines thick, East Coast snare and bass hits with blurry, almost-new-age-y samples. But he's been chopping drums for about 10 years, first for fun and then for an increasingly high-profile group of rappers including web sensation Lil B and Soulja Boy. Hip-hop producer Clams Casino- aka 23-year-old physical therapy student Mike Volpe- just released his first beats tape for free online.

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