In our final segment with Illmind, our spotlighted Producer CEO talks in-depth about effective networking, translating personal relationships into mutually beneficial monetary ones, as well as staying busy and how perfecting your craft is the first and most important part of building your brand. We definitely want to thank Illmind for taking his time to contribute to this series and to all of you for watching. Hopefully you were able to take away something to benefit yourselves or an upcoming producer you might know.
I’d like to personally thanks John Public for coming to me with this idea and putting everything together for this series. We thinking about who to hit up next for our Producer CEO series. John has been working hard at getting to DJ Premier, but hasn’t been able to get him to commit yet. What producer would you like to see next in this series?
Through Parts 1-3, we’ve gotten to know a little about Illmind, his influences, some of his favorite things about the hip-hop culture and it’s music, the gear he uses and a few details about his life outside of producing. But here, Illmind opens up about the industry. Topics in Part 4 of our Producer CEO series centers on how Illmind has been able to bring his talent for beatmaking and build a brand around it, from giving away free music, networking, be on top of trends and a few other crucial details that could put you in the same spot.
With Part 3 of our exclusive series, we wanted to know what Illmind was using to build the music at the core of his enterprise. Here, he breaks down his equipment, software and some of the techniques he uses to achieve his uniquely organic, but still very hard, sound. He also talks about executive producing Pumpkinhead’s next album, being in the studio with clients and a few other lab notes. Class is in session!
We continue with Part 2 of our exclusive Producer CEO series with Illmind, and here, he gets open about his experience teaching music at the Harlem Children’s Zone, science and some of the more interesting projects he’s undertaken. Producer’s are usually cerebral people, and Illmind’s love of Music Science isn’t surprising, although it’s definitely interesting to hear about his own experiences “seeing sounds” when he’s behind the boards.
We got a new exclusive series for you all premiering tonight called Producer CEO. This particular series has been a work in progress for a couple of months now and started when my homie John Public hit me up and said he wanted to do some interviews for the site. This series looks specifically into what makes a successful producer and CEO. Huge shouts to John Public for making all this come together; this really was all him.
We kicked things off this week with Jersey beatsmith Illmind (credits include 50 Cent, Eminem, Little Brother, Emilio Rojas, Skyzoo, LL Cool J and many others), a man that has found a way to balance independent and major success, teaching, science and mixtapes with the music industry relationships necessary to take his craft to the next level. In Part 1 of 5, we looked into how he got his start, Kriss Kross, J Dilla, which album he’d need on a desert island and a few other nuggets to help unlock the mind of one of hip-hop’s brightest young producers. A very special thank you to Illmind for being our first guest in this series and helping make this an extremely interesting interview. Check for parts 2-5 to drop each day this week!
