The Evolution of Hitmaka — KOLOR MAGAZINE

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If you're a millennial or older, you know Yung Berg from a slew of late 2000 hits from "Sexy Can I," "Sexy Lady," to "The Business." But today, as one of the most sought-after producers in Hip-Hop, Hitmaka has spent the last six years dominating the charts as a producer, molding artists as an A&R, and staying out of the limelight. We sat down with the music producer to talk about the Chicago music scene, his BET Hip Hop Award for Producer of the Year, and consistency.

You recently won the Producer of the Year Award at the 2022 BET Hip Hop Awards. Do awards like that mean anything to you? Or they're just kind of part of the job?

It meant a lot to me because if you think about it, in my whole career, I've been nominated for a Grammy nine times and have never won a Grammy. People put so much emphasis on the Grammys, but to be acknowledged by my people at BET was a big thing to me because the Grammys get political, but for BET, like for the culture for black people to throw me that salute and give me them flowers, that was big for me.

People my age would know you as Yung Berg first, then Hitmaka. Do you have any advice for anybody who's planning a rebrand?

Yo, I'm not going to lie. I wasn't plotting a rebrand. In my career as a rapper, the guy that signed me to Epic Records got fired. Shout out to Charlie Walker; I love him. He told me, 'I'm going to leave this job, but you're going to be great because you know melody.' I'm like, "Who the fuck? I don't know that girl you're talking about." But in reality, he was telling me by knowing a melody and having an ear for melody, I would be straight. So from there, I moved to Miami. I was at work and with my guys in the studio. I was doing a hook or whatever, and I said, "Hitmaka." I didn't plan to change my name to Hitmaka or anything. I just randomly said Hitmaka at the beginning of the song. I was just like, damn, I'm going just use that as my new persona. And it came to fruition because it's pretty "ballsy" for people to know me as Yung Berg, have three real bonafide hits, and go from there to go through what I went through and rebrand, and just from the first thing I say, I'm calling myself Hitmaka. That's why it's weird when people say, 'How are you doing 'Hitmaka?' I'm still Chris or Berg, You know what I'm saying. Hitmaka is just the brand.

What are the biggest challenges you face executive producing on a project?

The biggest challenge is I'm so creative in my world that I don't want to be overbearing to the artists I'm executive producing. Of course, I love them as an artist, so I want to collide the different worlds and amplify whatever they do to the 10th power. When I work with Tink, who I love as my artist, I like locking in with her. She has her vibe, fan base, and following, but I amplify it and turn it up a notch. The hardest part is being on the same page because sometimes people might have a vision, and yours might not be in the same space. You got to dial yourself down and know that you're in a service business. Being a producer, and an executive, I'm here to serve the people. I'm blessed to be a blessing.

Do you have any thoughts or opinions on the music scene in Chicago?

It's amazing! A lot of Legends have spawned out of [Chicago] there. There weren't young kids [rappers] when I was growing up. I think I was the first "kid rapper" from Chicago, and I was around legends. No ID and Kanye West produced my demo. I was around all these different people. That spawned from there to Chief Keef, Tink, Dreezy, Lil Durk, G Herbo, and everybody coming up. And not only that, I've worked with every artist I just named, so it's important for me to be in a position to go back and tap in with Chicago talent.

In an interview with DJ Booth, you talked about not being in the spotlight now that you're a producer and not wanting to go back. But nine Grammy nominations and a BET Producer of the Year award later, people obviously know your face. Do you feel back in the spotlight, and if so, how is it different from being "the rapper"?

People don't know I started my executive journey in 2016 when I became a Vice President of A&R at Atlantic Records. From there, I worked with all their different artists and sold 40 million records with them in four years. So to me, it's more that I didn't do a press release when I got that job. I didn't put it on blast. I didn't hire a publicist because I thought niggas would hate on me, so I wanted to stay low and keep shooting. In the last 12 months or eight months or whatever, I've been more visual, you know, and hired PR and different things because ultimately, it's really like, 'ha, the joke's on you.' I'm still Berg, but I've established a different brand. I've been able to lead three lives in this music industry. I was Iceberg signed to DMX on Def Jam Records. I was Youngberg signing Epic Records, and now I'm Hitmaka, the executive working with every record company. Nobody is doing it the way I'm doing it right now.

In this era of streaming, do album sales --that number--mean anything?

I think sales do matter, depending on what you're looking for. If I'm working with A-List artists like Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar, or any of these different people, I believe the sales don't matter as much to them because they're legends. With new artists, they put a lot of heavy emphasis on that. I want to inspire everybody not to think about a short-term goal. Think about the long-term goal. What is the lifespan of this project? Songs come out, and it might take eight months for people to know. When you have great energy and records, it stands the test of time. And that's all I'm trying to create.

I've heard Fat Joe and DJ Khaled, and you talk about the formula for making hits. Is it really a formula for making a hit song you know will catch?

Yea! When I set out to really like all my journey --you can find this tweet, I probably said this shit five years ago- I said I'm about to be the Puff Daddy of this generation. I'm about to redo every song I grew up on, on 106 & Park, that I love. So there is a cheat code where I do a LaKeyah featuring Latto, "Mind Your Business," and I sampled the icons. Then I did 2 Chainz featuring Ariana Grande, "Rule The World," another platinum record. All these records got plaques that I'm talking about too. I redid Amerie's "Why Don't We Fall In Love." That was just something. All these songs are near and dear to my heart, so I'm redoing them.

Do you currently mentor any artists or upcoming producers? And if so, what is the best advice you've given them?

The best advice I can give anybody is one, keep God first, and two, outwork the competition. If you really work, it might not look like money on the ground and might not look like you're making money. You might sit in the studio for eight months and not make a dollar. You might not get one track place. But those eight months and what you've learned in that process will be what you can really base your whole career around. Don't think about a moment. Focus on the journey.

One thing that you always mentioned is consistency and staying in it. Do you feel like artists today or people coming up lack consistency? Is consistency something that people are really grasping?

It's hard for me to say that because art is art. You don't know how the Mona Lisa was created. He could have done a couple of strokes with the brush, chilled, then come back six months later and 12 months after that. You can't put a time limit on art, but for me personally, I don't ever want to feel like working is a job. I'm blessed to do this job. I don't feel like I have a job. I go, I have fun, and I turn up. It's about a feeling. The most important thing to me is when I feel like I'm working, I'm leaving. When I feel like I'm forcing it or I'm trying to do something, the key is to go in the studio, smoke your weed, have a couple of drinks, lead to door cracked and let God him and go off a pure filling because that's what the people are going feel when they hear your record for the first time how you felt while creating it.

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Photographer: Ammar Thomas @iam.ammarjamal

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Location: The 9 Studios

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