Bugg.
via the artist.
Bugg was 16 when his dad told him to drop out.
“Every day after school, I would leave and go to the studio,” the now 22-year-old artist recalls. “My grades were horrible. Never doing homework, studio every night – my parents saw it.”
Despite the unorthodox paternal advice, the Chicago-born, Atlanta-based producer and painter says his parents weren’t totally hands off. “The deal I made with my parents was if I drop out of school, I need to be out of the house after my senior year summer, quote-unquote. So we had to figure out a way to get to Atlanta.”
Over the past four years in Atlanta, Bugg has produced for plenty of hip-hop’s brightest rising stars (Nino Paid, BabyChiefDoIt, and Pradabagshawty) and more established rappers such as Lucki and Glokk40spaz. But he’s perhaps best understood as one of Chuckyy’s go-to producers, shaping the rapper’s hypnotically menacing signature sound. From Che collaboration “NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE” to spring single “Lamb Chop,” Bugg has been behind the boards for plenty of The FADER’s favorite songs from the Chicago MC.
As a fan of his sound before I even knew Bugg’s name, I was surprised when he told me he’d first found success as a visual artist. The son of two multidisciplinary artists, Bugg fondly remembers drawing and painting on sneakers, selling them to his schoolmates for a little extra pocket money. As he got into music, Chief Keef producer 12Hunna took Bugg under his wing, helping the beatmaker develop and refine his sound. Meanwhile Bugg’s childhood love of graffiti eventually led him to cover art design, which the budding 14-year-old used as a way to build relationships with musicians, though he quickly tired of commissioned work.
“I was running around with my skateboard friends and spray painting the city. My mom found out I was doing graffiti – she wasn't too happy,” he laughs. “She understood, but she was telling me, Start putting this stuff on canvases and you won't be paying fines. You could be making money doing art.”
That was December 2021. Bugg bought “a whole bunch of canvases” and set to work. “I had an art show that ended up funding my first 9 months living in Atlanta,” he says. “And I took that same regimen – I would make paintings for artists to build my relationships with them. Hey, you want a six foot painting? Because it’s a bigass painting, a lot of people will gravitate towards it. After that, I’d be like, yeah I make beats too.”
Bugg stopped by The FADER offices near the top of July to chat about his creative partnership with Chuckyy, establishing himself in the competitive Atlanta music scene, and the new music he’s been working on with Nino Paid and Bby Kell.
The FADER: About four years ago, you moved to Atlanta. Talk to me about your first year or two in the city and how you got plugged into the scene there.
Bugg: Before moving to Atlanta, I knew nothing about Atlanta. It just felt right, understanding what came out of Atlanta and what artists are from Atlanta, and just as a producer hearing, “Atlanta, Atlanta, Atlanta.” I’ve heard about LA, I've heard about New York, but everything seems to come back to Atlanta. I just knew it was a very hospitable place for networking and people working with each other. There's like a sense of southern hospitality.
So me and my homie Xotik, I remember we were 16 at the skate park – when we turn 18, let's make something happen. Let's just move to Atlanta. He didn't drop out of school, but he went to a different school so he could graduate early and handle what he was doing at the time. So we looked for the cheapest house we could find – didn't know anything about the neighborhoods, ended up getting a three bedroom crib for $1,800 a month in Riverdale. And they used to have shootouts behind our house every night. That shit was crazy. But we were there and we were driven to make our dreams come true type shit.
Once we got there and got our shit moved in, our homies that had a little more motion than us from Chicago would come down and stay with us. And then we would run around with them and meet the people that they're around and kind of build off those relationships. And I remember I had one conversation with 12Hunna after being out there for three or four months, like yo bro, I can't get in any studios out here. I don't have any relationships out here, no one's really trying to cook up, I don't have a name. Cause at this point I have no real placements. I got that one song with Boss Top and Lil Gotit – everything else I have is in the vault. There's nothing to have people gravitate towards me.
I remember vividly: he said, “bro, you got something going on with the art. Really? Fuck the music. Like, if you want to do music, you could do music, but you got it on the art side of things.” At the time I was like, bro, music is my love and my passion. I just do the art to facilitate the music shit. But he was like, “nah, bro, lock in on the art, it'll all make sense.”
At this point, since I had moved to Atlanta, I kind of took a break from art. This is four or five months of no art. So I went in my garage, started painting again. I had the idea like, okay, boom, if I'm trying to get in studios, how do I get in studios? It's like, pay attention to the producers I want to lock in with, give them the painting. So I made a painting for DY Krazy and I made a painting for Yung Icey, and just off of those two paintings all of my relationships bloomed and branched out. I remember dropping the painting off to Young Icey and he was like, bro this shit raw as fuck, I want you to make a painting for TM 88. Boom, I made a painting for TM88 and made that relationship. But really doing those paintings and showing up to those studios and all the other people that were in the studio helped me to get in the mix in Atlanta real quick.
When did you and Chuckyy first meet?
I got a homie named Fox, Big Drillz. I met Chuckyy very briefly at Fox's birthday party in Chicago. This would have been my second or third year in Atlanta; I kind of forgot about Chicago music. I was strictly focused on what was going on in Atlanta. Had songs with Baby Drill and I was like, this Atlanta shit is turnt. So I came back, I'm in a car with Fox playing my own releases from Atlanta. And he's like, bro, you think this shit is hard? Wait till I show you what I got going on.
This is the spring of 2024 before that whole new wave out of Chicago blew up, and he's playing all the unreleased. So it's my first time hearing Chuckyy, it's my first time hearing BabyChiefDoIt, it's my first time hearing VonOff1700 and MAF Teeski. Like I knew about Teeski back then a little bit, but hearing the new shit. And I'm like, damn this shit just fucked my whole head up. After that Chicago trip, I was like, okay, I need to tap back into my roots, the Chicago wave.
So I met Chuckyy briefly at that birthday party. He had seen my art before. He wanted a painting, so I was like fuck it, I'll get you a painting. Fast forward, I did the painting and it had been done for two or three months and he still hadn't got it. Saw him post one night like “need cameraman in Atlanta.” I used to shoot music videos a year and half before this, but I stopped. I was like, fuck I want to get Chuckyy his painting, and his music, this was my favorite artist I was listening to. Literally only Chuckyy, every day all day. I’m like, fuck it. Swiped up on the post like, “What you need?” He’s like, “I need a video shot tonight, pull up.” Ended up shooting the “Poured It” video. It was him and I remember YTB Fatt was there, Doodie Lo was there. And when I dapped [Chuckyy] up, I was like, “I still got this painting for you. I also have a home studio if you feel like recording.” And I didn't know this at the time, but Chucky is a very reserved person. He doesn't really like to be around a lot of people. So he was like, “You got a home studio? Perfect, I'ma hit you.”
About a week later, he pulls up to my house and he recorded there. He's like, okay bet, I'm gonna start coming over here a little bit, and after that, for like a good year and a half, he was only recording at my house. He ended up just pulling up back to back to back, and through that, creating an environment where he felt comfortable to make the music he wanted to make, we were making a whole bunch of beats together. He would direct a lot of production – still does to this day – but that all came off of that one video shoot
Bugg with his painting of Pradabagshawty.
Was there a specific moment or song you guys did during that period where you realized, oh yeah, we're locked in for real?
Maybe by the second or third time he came to the crib I was like, We've got a kind of situation, we've got a routine now. He's just gonna pull up to the crib every day and we're just gonna make music. So it was pretty fast and all the really great music we made, happened in a really quick time. We made all types of shit within three months. But I think a lot of it was that he had ideas of where he was trying to go sonically, and I was able to understand his language when talking about creating music. And I think he was drawn to that a little bit because he started a wave in Chicago, I feel like, and he feels this way too, that a lot of people started biting. And he wanted to experiment and go a different route and make his own sound. And just I ended up being the person that clicked with him for it and we were able to kind of create a new landscape.
I really loved you guys' single “Lamb Chop” earlier this year. What was the session like?
There's this song from before we even really locked in, an unreleased song on SoundCloud called “X-Man” that my old girl had showed me, and it was just one of the craziest songs I heard ever, because he just ran that bitch. There's no real breaks in the song, and the beat was so simple. A lot of times when he comes to my house I go through a whole bunch of beats and nothing is sticking, so he'll want to make something from scratch. This was one of those days [...] That's how all of our best songs are made, and he was like, I kind of want a beat like that “X-Man” song. I was like, “perfect, I love that song. I could do that.”
The thing about him is, I'll always want to add more. But he's always like, is it done? I'm ready to rap. Is it done? I'm ready to rap. So that song is the same four to eight bar loop for the entire song. But that's how that song came about.
What made you decide it was time to start dropping singles with BbyKell and Nino Paid under your own name?
Ever since I started making beats, I never wanted to be a background player. I want to really creative direct, and I feel like I'm not just one thing – I want to build an entire world myself when it comes to clothes, art, music videos, everything. So after me and Chuckyy turnt up, or Chuckyy, you feel me, turnt me up a little bit or a lotta bit, I felt like my name holds a little more weight. I was like, you know what? I can kind of direct people a little bit and have people gravitate towards my ideas because I have something to show for it. After “My World” did really well, “Free Smurk” did really well, people kind of saw what was going on a little bit.
It really was the past six to eight months, just hearing people come up to me and be like, “damn, you made this, I fuck with this.” This is my first time really experiencing people really fucking with my music. Me feeling that gave me a little confidence to be like, okay, I know what I'm doing now and I have something to show for it. Let me see if I can have people step into my world and trust me with my vision. And I'm grateful enough to have friendships and relationships with the artists that I work with, because I believe people work with their friends, and I'm worried about the friendship first and the music second. A lot of people are comfortable stepping into my world, stepping into my vision, because I'm just trying to create the best thing that can fit their world and blend our own ideas into one. The artists that I've got in my corner that fuck with me have been kind enough to trust what I have going on.
