How Young Nudy picks the best beats in the game

The Atlanta rapper explains what he looks for in an instrumental and how he picked the beats on Slimeball 3.

Photographer Nate Shuls
August 09, 2018
How Young Nudy picks the best beats in the game

Young Nudy's 2016 mixtape was the first time I, and I'm sure many others, ever heard a Pi'erre Bourne beat. As the Atlanta rapper explained in a recent interview with The FADER, the two started their musical careers together. "When I wasn't taking the rap shit seriously, but I might slide through the studio every now and then to rap — that's how I met Pi'erre," Nudy said. "When I was starting to take shit seriously, this nigga wasn’t in the studio I was going to and I couldn't find his ass. It took me about six months to find that nigga."

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Eventually, Pi'erre would produce the large majority of Nudy's first three mixtapes and the two developed their distinct styles together: Nudy with his conversational tone and understated humor, and Pi'erre with his bouncy, video game-inspired beats. Nudy said he was drawn to these sounds from a sense of nostalgia and his ongoing love of cartoons. "I might hear some Power Rangers sounds, I might hear some shit that I haven't heard since I was a little kid, it might just be certain little noises in there that I like," he explained. "I be liking shit with different weird noises, because I know how to bring me out to those sounds."

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On Nudy's most recent project, Slimeball 3, he diverged from the formula: Pi'erre Bourne only has one credit, while other bigs names like Maaly Raw and Metro Boomin contributed to the project alongside newcomers like KidHazel, jetsonmade, and Tasha Catour. "Some of the beats that I got on there are by some independent niggas," he said. "I wanted to do some shit different, all the way down with my beat swag. The production on the project remains next level, and Nudy finds different pockets over these new sounds.

But if you want to get a chance to produce for Nudy, there's a multi-tier system and anyone who's not about their business isn't getting through. "I got like four different beat emails. If I feel like you taking it serious, I give you my good email," he said. "You coming at me talking about making beats and all that shit, I'm going to go look at your Instagram and everything. I'm going to go see is you really taking it serious. Boy, I don't see you taking it serious, shit, nudybeats@gmail.com. I'll send you that one."

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How Young Nudy picks the best beats in the game