Recently signed producer Swiff Tha Gift is an Indianapolis native making his way in Atlanta. As Swiff works alongside Grammy-nominated producer ATL Jacob and the Wicked Money Family record label, his skills and talent are being crafted and developed to new levels.
Swiff spoke with rolling out about his love for music, and what makes a good producer.
Where did your love for music come from?
Just growing up around my dad. He made music as well and taught himself how to play the guitar and the piano. He also played in church. At first, I was just an artist. At that time, probably around 6 years old I wrote my first rap. Years later, I started dibbling and dabbling with his keyboard. While he’d be making music, I’d go over there and try to test all the keys. He died when I was 14 years old, and he left me his keyboard. From that point, that’s when I turned into the producer and I was selling beats to literally everybody in the school or around the neighborhood and the city. So [I] kind of started there, like my dad. I also knew this producer named Pyro, and she was a female producer. She mentored me as an artist and taught me how to count the bars and she was making beats, and I [would] be over there just soaking up everything.
What’s one of the biggest things you’ve learned over the course of your career?
Build with an artist rather than selling beats to people. You can sell beats to somebody, and they go off and do their own thing with it and they’re just playing it for their homeboys. Maybe that’s the quality of the music and it only needs to go there. But then if you build with artists, and they allow you to produce them, I feel like you get better results because now we’re kind of using our brains together to create a record and it comes out better. Now it has the potential to do something amazing. Sometimes, I feel like artists need to let producers produce and I feel like it helps the songs out much more.
What do you think makes a good producer?
You have to have range. Don’t be in a box and be open-minded. Don’t be scared to play the stuff that you don’t think they’d like because that may be the one. Lil Wayne told a producer “play me something that you think I wouldn’t get on.” And he ended up using it. I would just say don’t be afraid to play the stuff you think they won’t like. Don’t just go for the typical Future beat. You wouldn’t think that Future would rap on “Wait For U” because that’s not his typical beat. But he did it, and that’s a massive hit.
