Noah “40” Shebib Reveals His Production Process With Drake

With Drake's Views From the 6 due out next month, all eyes are on the OVO clique behind the project, including Drake's in-house producer Noah "40" Shebib. With that in mind, Native Instruments recently sat down with 40 in his Toronto studio to talk his production process and how he arrived at his signature sound.

"I built this out of passion I didn’t build this off a business plan. This place is here to make history, it’s not here to make money," 40 said of the studio. There is an advantage as well of working in Canada, he said, as big names don't often stop by, allowing them to focus and reveal their work all at once.

As for working with artists, specifically Drake, 40 said he caters his involvement to the artist's needs. "When it comes to Drake, my objective is to make the artist the number one priority at any cost. My goal is to make them happy. As much as I want to have integrity in the work that I’m doing, I want to make sure they’re getting what they want," he said.

40 then details how he arrives at his "underwater" sound, saying that he degrades the sample rate and removes frequencies from the top end, allowing the artist to occupy that top end completely, while the music sits below. He describes the process in a way that nobody else would do it.

"It was just me and Drake wanting to do something different and to make a sound that we felt like was unique and it really resonated with people," he said. "He’s also responsible for that simplicity and he’s also responsible for a lot of the sound that I’m heralded as creating but we created together."

Achieving that simplicity, 40 says, can be a challenge, though. "Simplicity with authenticity at the same time is so difficult. So to make something simple but good is extremely difficult. But simple usually translates to real. Because there’s not too much. It’s not overdone."

Peep the full video up top where 40 goes into greater detail about the hardware and software he uses.

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