Photo courtesy of Lewsr/Instagram
Mike Giegerich stays on his playlisting grind. His latest: 24/7 lofi hip-hop beats to send pitches and pray for responses to.
Gunslingers might have been out of style by the early 2010s, but rap’s Wild West was alive and well. Unorthodox flows were enough to make an old head quick draw on internet forums without hesitation. At the center of this inflammatory zeitgeist was Lil B, one of the four horsemen of the hip-hop apocalypse. As the incarnated flesh of the Based God, he laid waste to traditional rhyme schemes with stream-of-consciousness stylings. There was Kitty Pryde, Tumblr’s resident obsession who rapped with irresistible inflections and took the blogging platform by storm. And there was of course RiFF RAFF. Flowing with a flippant Texas twang, he had a rolodex of boasts that included diamonds on his fourth-grade binder.
At the intersection of these artists and their rejection of established conventions was a common denominator: beautiful lou. Based out of San Antonio, Texas, the producer provided the subversive hip-hop movement with beats ranging from depressive cloud rap meditations like “Today” with Western Tink to upbeat escapades like “SNYL” with Main Attrakionz. Consistently challenging boundaries, he was the guiding force behind Kitty Pryde and RiFF RAFF’s kaleidoscopic “Orion’s Belt,” the studio scientist of sluggish samples underlying intense cadences on Lil B’s “Illusions of Grandeur Remix,” and the figurehead of Adult Swim’s woozy “Long Pinky” with RiFF RAFF and Action Bronson as he emerged from the booth to center stage.
While he was helping send internet forums into a frenzy, beautiful lou was also one of the essential figures behind a groundbreaking mixtape in the hip-hop canon: LIVE.LOVE.A$AP. There’s a symbiotic exchange of stylistic flavor between regions today, but it was a shock to the national scene in 2011 as Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky imbued his music with unmistakable Texas flair, channeling beautiful lou’s chopped-and-screwed beats into a poetic fascination with drank that read like religious reverence.
Led by the druggy crawl of “Trilla” where smokey guitar licks drifted through a haze of screwed-up smoke, it’s fair game to proclaim that beautiful lou also orchestrated the peak of the legendary mixtape: “Kissin’ Pink.” Introducing the scene to the dynamic duo of A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg, he helped show this wasn’t just one sovereign, but a whole mob. beautiful lou’s production also embodied the holy union of “Sprite and codeine” as his prismatic synths shimmered with sedative luster. Held together by head-nodding drums, he imbued the instrumental with forward momentum through a swamp of purple-hued ooze. It was the signifier of a seismic shift in hip-hop, one that would reverberate through the scene as the diametrically opposed North and South blended together with the stir of a double cup.
Over a decade later, beautiful lou is still challenging rap’s expectations as a producer and solo artist. You can catch him flipping Outkast’s seminal “Ms. Jackson” into Deep South sludge on “10 things i hate about u…,” hitting self-referential pockets on “society doesn’t make much sense soo why should i,” and rapping teetering rhythms across a tightrope on “none of this means anything without u…” While the hip-hop landscape has continued to morph through an endless array of trends across the past decade, beautiful lou has stayed true to an experimental ethos with music that’s certainly his and his alone.
In the midst of a prolific run with over 15 singles and music videos only halfway through 2022, we caught up with beautiful lou for a wide-ranging discussion on his storied production career, his forthcoming full-length album via GMG/EMPIRE, and his brand new single “def jams how 2 b a player” alongside Western Tink which we’re exclusively premiering today via POW.
And then when FL Studio — we called it Fruity Loops back then — came onto the scene, I felt like I was the first person to bring it to my neighborhood. Everybody was just coming to over my house and we’d all try and figure this thing out, and then it just kinda grew from there, and it kind of really gave me the confidence to start doing it because…people were really accepting my ideas as far as like making the beats and stuff, even though they didn’t sound very good, they were still hard, we were making it. So, it all just came together like that really [laughs]. Have to shout out Fruity Loops, shout out Swishahouse, shout out everybody in Dallas who kinda showed me love.
So I would say that’d be about like 2009, 2010, you know, [that] era right there when Tumblr I feel like was really heavy in connecting all these like minded people. And it was just really cool, it was just really fast, how you can just kind of like meet everybody and just go onto the next thing that would link to the next and the next thing. I was just really grateful for that website because without them, I don’t really think I’d be able to get in contact with people like A$AP Yams and Squadda B, Lil B, stuff like that.
Photo courtesy of Lewsr/Instagram
I mean, it sounded kind of like what Kilo Kish was kind of [doing]… but I just liked her original take on it, and she wasn’t trying to be like a gangster rapper, trying to like, not be anything to who she wasn’t, you know? She was just a kid working at the mall, but it didn’t sound corny to me, it sounded like she was really talking about love and having crushes and stuff. And I’m always looking for just different people that are just coming at rap from different angles, because I feel like you can rap about whatever you want, rap is so young. It’s such a young genre that I felt like it still needs to be explored through just different avenues, and I was always looking out for that.
I just reached out to her through there and got on her Tumblr also, and I was like, “Yo, let’s make some music,” and we just started going and it really took off. FADER picked it up, New York Times and TIME Magazine…I wasn’t expecting any of that, I guess it was just a kind of perfect timing where I was just coming off the A$AP Rocky buzz, and I guess people were just checking for whatever I was doing, and that really was just kind of making music with her and Western Tink at the time.
And, you know, I knew people that knew of him just hanging around Houston malls and painting cars, so it was instantly, to me, it was just like, I got to work with this guy. So I reached out, he liked that I was from Texas. Just like Kitty, his visual representation, he had lots of videos way before “Orion’s Belt” and that really helped people see his unique look. And even if you didn’t like it, it was still interesting, still drew your eye, you had to listen to what this guy was gonna say, ‘cause it just came with this whole package.
Shoutout RiFF RAFF, we got new music coming out, should be coming out soon. We’ve always stayed in touch and everything. And “Orion’s Belt,” I think that was the first video he got over a million [views], that one and the Chief Keef one were the first ones that broke a million. I’m forever grateful for working with him and shout out everybody else.
Blogs and internet stuff, like they need to come back, shout out to y’all for staying so consistent and doing what y’all do, ‘cause I mean, a lot of it fell by the wayside and I don’t blame ‘em, but I mean, it just felt really cool. As far as magazines are dying out, at least you had the websites, and then now you don’t have the websites so much anymore, it’s just like, yo, you need to keep some stuff alive I feel like.
He really put Lil B into a context for me that I was all like, “Okay, let me dive deeper and deeper.” And I don’t think I would have done that if I just came across a random Lil B video, I wouldn’t have gone further, you know, having somebody put it into context, like, “Yo, check this out, check this out, check this out” it’s easier to digest I guess.
I felt like that was in my lane and I never heard anybody really rap like that on it. And then he had that credibility ‘cause he felt like he was still a mainstream artist, still from the “Vans” era, The Pack and everything. So to have a mainstream type of artist experiment so wildly like that, I just never heard anything like that before. I just always thought that, “This is it, this is the next evolution, so I gotta send this guy music.”
And funny enough, this other producer that was in my neighborhood, his name was The Franchise. I was going through Lil B’s music and I heard his tag on one of the beats and I was like, “Oh, it’s over man. He’s attainable.” You know what I’m saying? Like he’s willing to rap on beats from anybody, so let me get his email and let me send it over, and he picked “Cocaine” [which] was the first beat we did, and I just jumped out of my seat when I heard the song. I felt like I was in, you know what I’m saying? After me and Lil B did “Cocaine,” I was like, “This is my ticket, my key into the industry or into just doing music with anybody…” I was excited, man. Forever shout out Lil B for giving me that chance. Lil B and A$AP Yams, man. I wouldn’t be anywhere in the rap game without them, so shout out them.
So I felt like, I don’t know, maybe from his perspective, he brought in a Texas producer, you know, when it’s going to make more sense, you know what I’m saying? So he reached out to me. I sent him the most Texas shit I had but still on that experimental cloud tip…I feel like we made a masterpiece and I’m forever grateful for being a part of that project. I always tell people, that’s my Jurassic Park, that’s what people know me as, and I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m not known for anything else. At least I contributed to something that people really loved.
And he was really excited about those, and of course they got the deal, and they’re saying they’re gonna work on the whole project, so I just sent everything I could and we ended up doing that. He would ask for my opinion on this and that with the album and everything like that, so I guess I helped shape a little bit of the record, but, you know, shout out to them for making it.
I’ll probably just go maybe a year or two straight or just making beats, and then one night maybe I’ll be like, “All right, I’m going to rap.” So I’ll go through like 200 beats and then be like, “Okay, this is the one.” And I’m gonna just take it out, rap to it, and probably [in] the next couple of days make the video. Shout out my brother and my girl, my manager Selena, she’s also my girl, or my fiancé, but, um, we’ll just go out, we got the camera equipment, we’ll shoot wherever we’re at, or we’ll find an interesting space. And I try and either show some space in Texas or, you know, Dallas, San Antonio, or out west Texas anywhere. Just kinda show it off, shoot the video, edit it, and throw it out.
And then if anything pops, you know, we’ll put some more promotion behind it, but you just have to put it out because otherwise it’ll just sit there and I don’t like it. I don’t like music just sitting there, like, you know, some people have all these hard drives full of music…but I was like, man, you have to just put it out. Otherwise you’ll get sick of it. And you won’t even like the song anymore.
Those are both ‘80s synth bands that I flipped for it to do that, and I felt like that kind of gave me a kind of my own lane. I feel like a lot of people still don’t do that, even though, you know, they still sample ‘70s soul or they sample other stuff like that. But as far as sampling German New Wave bands, I feel like I kinda like, that’s my thing, I guess [laughs]. But yeah, shout out Depeche Mode, man, Depeche Mode was like my ultimate favorite band. So I feel like them and Prince are the reason why I’m drawn so much to these synths and these vocals that sound like that.
You know, the ones that you like, we’ll whittle it down a little bit. And we’ll throw it out there with some backing, do some promotion, we’ll work with EMPIRE.” And so we just signed the deal and I went ahead and did that. It’s going to be in that album with an option to do Mobbin’ No Sobbin’ 2 with Western Tink after that, when we release that later this month. Even though I’ve worked with a lot of major label artists and done stuff like that, I’ve never really been signed to anybody but Mishka, did some work with Fool’s Gold and stuff like that, but I’ve always kept it independent, so I’m kinda just seeing, “Okay, let’s just try something different, let’s see what they’re about.”
He had fam in Austin, so we’d link up during SXSW, and that’s when we first started doing more music. Then he said that he got this look from Mishka [that] reached out to him first off the strength of his album ‘cause he had got mentioned in SPIN Magazine and he was like, “Yo, you want to do this collabo album together, all your beats?” And I was like, yeah man. I like the way he works, ‘cause when you send beats to certain artists, they’ll sit on them or they won’t even use the beat for a while. But as soon as you send the beat, he’ll turn it around, flip it, send you the music right back, you know? So I was like, yeah, let’s knock it out.
And even though it took a minute because I was working with other artists and I was waiting for other stuff to drop, we recorded the Mobbin’ No Sobbin’ album very quickly, but it took the right time to time it to 2013 before, once I released Kitty Pryde stuff, LIVE.LOVE.ASAP and everything came out after that.
And when we did the Mobbin’ No Sobbin’ one which got a lot of critical acclaim and, you know, people still talk about it, come up to me and ask me about it and everything like that. And then we kind of went our separate ways a little bit, you know, he started a family, I started doing my thing, [but] he actually started moving back, he moved to San Antonio actually, he started a family here, so we linked back up. We always did shows and stuff, we went on tour, but we didn’t just work on new music. And then we decided to link back up and we’re pretty much through with the Mobbin’ No Sobbin’ album. We’re going to do a few more tracks, but I wanted to put him on a few tracks on my album, so he’s going to be on that, “def jams how 2 be a player,” he’s on the album, you know?
As far as the producing, I don’t think very much has changed. I think if anything, I’m kind of getting a lot more loose with my style, trying to not be so technical. I feel like every producer goes through that and I feel like so cliche saying it, but it’s just like you go to that less is more approach. Like you don’t try to put as much in it. You kinda just kinda let the beat flow. You don’t try and chop it up into a million pieces or anything like that. It’s kind of going through the loops or doing whatever. So I don’t know. I just feel like I’m in that stage in my career where I’m just kinda like, just letting the beat do its thing and not so much me making the beat if that makes sense.
Photo courtesy of Lewsr/Instagram