Ryan Lewis: “I’ve Never Looked at Myself as a Beat Maker”

For any artist, having a solid creative partnership is key. Michael Jackson had Quincy Jones, Guru had Premier, Frank Ocean has Malay, and Macklemore has Ryan Lewis. But much-much-much more than a musical cohort, Lewis' role expands into numerous realms. He's Macklemore's DJ, producer, photographer, designer, co-director for music videos and so on. To sum it up, Macklemore as we know him wouldn't exist today, if it wasn't for Ryan Lewis. The duo's independently released project The Heist is almost Gold, and their overly infectious, worldwide chart-topper "Thrift Shop" has so far sold four million copies, making the Seattle champs two of the industry's most talked-about figures of 2012.

So Macklemore is a household name now, but who is Ryan Lewis? How did he get involved with the Seattle MC's career? And what actually went into the creation process of "Wings," "Same Love," and "Thrift Shop"? These are all questions answered by the nifty creator in his own words. Discover the "other" architect behind the biggest indie success in years. —Jaeki Cho (@JaekiCho)

Started from the Bottom:

"I started playing in bands. Since I got my first guitar when I was ten. Did the whole band thing into kind of my early teens. And even back then I took it way more serious than rest of the band. I ended up getting kicked out of one band for taking it too seriously. And it was the beginning of realizing the whole world of entertainment. It was just fascinating to me. And in middle school I made a band’s website, make t-shirts, kind of different variables that helped push the doors. And then I moved to Seattle when I was in my sophomore year. I went to Roosevelt High School, which was a pretty dramatic culture shock. Like a lot of teenagers I was into a specific kind of music and everything else kind of sucked. When I moved my interest and taste opened up. I started listening to a whole bunch of different shit.

"I was into metal. Drastically different than my taste today. For a while I was very into technical music. I was very into electric guitars, amps, and different type of textures. I was also very into computers. Into web design, photography and music production. So music production started at the same time. And I pirated a bunch of software and like anybody else I started fucking around. That's how I discovering producing, which is so different than being in a band. Like hip-hop is one of the only genres other than maybe electronic music, you’re creating music, and producing music, and mixing all at the same time. As opposed to a band, writing the whole album and going into the studio. As much as I like to write music, I like to kind of craft music, and mold sounds. I was getting into photoshops for the first time. Going from shooting on film to shooting digitally.

"I graduated a year early from high school. It was right around the time I realized I had to tell people that I was serious about the beats I was making. [Laughs.] Whether they suck or not. And I met Ben [Macklemore] right around then. He came through my parents' house, and I think I had a sample that he liked more so than the beat that I had. And I showed him a whole bunch of photography and it was the beginning of our friendship. It was a totally different time in life than when we started working on like The VS. EP. It was before he has gone to rehab. It was '06 or early '07. For the next two or three years, started doing a lot of photography for him and we would do show posters together. He had put out The Language of My World, and that whole three year period was him figuring out what his next project was going to be, and figuring out if he could keep going. He’s been rapping at this point for seven or eight years, and it was kind of that, 'Do I need to get a different job? Or do I keep pursuing this?' It wasn’t until 2009, actually in 2008, we thought we were going to do a mixtape. I had this idea of flipping pretty recent samples. Like post-2000 samples of indie rock group, and kind of have a theme to it. And then that turned into working together for nine months, and making The VS. EP. And realizing that neither of us were wired to crank out a shitty mixtape. [Laughs.]"

Getting Caught with the Recession:

"I graduated high school in '05, and then I went to college essentially for philosophy and that kind of threw an interesting piece in the mix. We started working in late 2008, and I went to study abroad for the first six months of 2009. So a lot of the records on The VS. EP were made in Mexico or South Africa. And kind of sent back to [Macklemore]. Actually a couple records off The Heist were actually made when I was on that trip. It was interesting, but that was my senior year. I was at the tail end of it. I was doing my thesis that summer, and then we were almost done with The VS. EP, but I was like, 'Fuck, I probably got to get a job.' I was applying for jobs, and it was the beginning of recession, so I didn’t even get any interviews. And then I realized maybe we could do something with this."

A Different Musical Approach:

"If I can only make a beat and send a track out, I don’t think I’d be interested in that. And I don’t think Ben [Macklemore] would be interested in that being his producer. I think it develops the whole interest of him wanting to work with me. That’s not the way both of us want to make records. Even though it’s super unconventional in the hip-hop world, it is conventional in other genres. Other genres that allow more composition. Rising and falling, and Ben is so naturally the type of MC that really rises and falls with his tone. And the way that he raps that it just makes sense that the music caters towards that.

"I was super hungry and particularly in the beginning phases in '08, [Macklemore] has gotten out of rehab, and getting all the momentum he’s gotten from...it was just the right atmosphere to be motivated and to go in to make some shit that’s really different. It’s important as opposed to 16 there, and 16 there."

The Creation Process for The Heist:

"I've switched to a Mac early on. And then once you do that you're just like, 'Okay, this is a fucking no brainer.' And I use ProTools, I do use Reason mostly just to work instruments. I didn't even know how to sequence on Reason, but Reason just has so much good sample base. So generally I just use a lot of plugins in the mixing process, and texturing stuff out. And the last year and a half, I tried to expand my analog side of it. Mostly focusing on having specific tools that digital world doesn't offer in terms of shaping vocals. And it's kind of a cool to work with just one vocalists for so long and often. If I was a trumpet player and also a producer I'd probably be buying a whole bunch of equipment to really shape the trumpet. I think working with Ben for so long I've been getting a lot of equipment, and really just trying to shape his voice. So I have analog equipment as well. You know like The Heist has no real sample. Of course, there's drum samples and stuff like that, in terms of making beats that are contingent upon sampling records that wasn't the route that I wanted to go with The Heist. So what that meant was you know a lot of amazing musicians that surround us in Seattle. So my process is really sitting right in the middle of a lot of the digital resources that most hip-hop producers use and then working with incredible musicians that sort of either take a beat I have and expand upon it or offer their own ideas as well."

"Wings":

"'Wings' is actually a good place to start. I’ve had something like 95 or over 100 ProTools sessions of 'Wings.' In terms of opening it back up, and continuing to work on it and make changes. It was a song that Ben originally wrote as an acapella back in the day. It was just called 'Nikes.' Until this day we often just refer to it as 'Nikes.' That’s for like a number of songs. 'Same Love' was kind of like that, too. And The Heist consists of songs that Ben already wrote, which I don’t think is very conventional in hip-hop. I had to go in and make beats to Ben's songs. What’s cool about that process is somebody gets beats and evokes an emotion out of them and write a song, I think the same thing can happen on the flip side of that, which is you hear somebody’s acapella and you imagine the variety of tones you can put underneath that and really shape that out.

"If you YouTube it, there’s clip of Macklemore doing it acapella at this coffee shop, and it’s back in like '07 or '08. I kind of had a reference when I started making it. There was this violin piece that Andrew Joslyn had made. We kind of made a more chill production to it. As I kept working on it I was trying to make it feel bigger than that. And to take something as mundane and simple as being a sneakerhead and kind of set a tone that’s going to make you look at what that means a little bit more seriously. And so I did so much shit. I had a choir singing on it, I had a string section, and there’s a horn section. And I took a sample from some band playing live during this drum solo. But they were so spaced out that half the crowd just stopped clapping. And so it was this scattered, almost fade in clap in a way. And it felt like a gymnasium to me. So I used that in the beginning, it’s kind of this creepy accent. And have a violin piece come in at the chorus. And when I first did it, I wasn’t going to metronome. I wanted to make the beat around a live performance. I wanted the whole thing to not feel like it’s super loft into anything. I spent way too much time on that song. Partly because we knew that we were going to shoot a video for it. And Zia Mohajerjasbi, who’s actually the brother of Sabzi from Blue Scholars was going to direct it. It was one of our first videos. And he was going to try and recreate classic Nike commercials. It was all these plans around, and I just wanted it to be amazing."

“Same Love”:

"That’s a record that probably two years ago Ben wanted to write a record revolving around gay rights. And he didn’t really know how to do it. He only had the first verse, and he wrote the second verse a little later. But it was one of those things he had a piece of music similar to 'Wings,' where he had something he’s written and I remember once I heard it, the piano keys I made for 'Same Love,' I made not too long before. It’s not a unique piano piece. It’s probably been played in a different key in a different song. But what I found super fitting is that it felt really like Americana. It kind of had that old American, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s period feeling. It reminded me of the ‘60s, and a lot of the songs that came out of war and civil rights, and just an era when musicians really being a voice for social change. I liked that tone. So we went with that. I made it out, but I didn’t play it very well so I got a better piano player to get in the studio.

"Production wise I didn’t think it was an opposite of 'Wings.' It didn’t need to be complicated, the drums could be minimal. The real focus was going to be the message of that song. We had the whole song made within probably two months. We were trying to figure out a chorus and not getting a job during the recession, I think we lucked out a little bit. We weren’t in a good position that point to get credible features. But we tried, and sent request to different people like Aloe Blacc and Charles Bradley. And it’s a super bold song for somebody to get on. So, we kept going through different ideas, I tried out a Diana Ross sample, which we would never be able to clear. And then through a friend of a friend, we opened up for Mary Lambert’s music pages online. And I thought, 'Damn, this girl’s got a cool voice.' And she’s lesbian, and she’s also an award-winning spoken word artist, and neither of us had heard her. At the time she had a very small career in Seattle. And that day I said, 'Fuck it, let’s hit her up.' And when we hit her up she was super excited to get on the record. She wrote the hook that day, and she wrote the ending part that day. And she came into the studio.

"It’s truly just for us to start the dialogue. I think even the dialogue that’s happened in my own life based around that song and people's thoughts on the whole subject has been incredible. Going around the country to classically conservative places like Texas and Idaho, hearing a new generation of young people singing super loud to that song has been incredible. To me The Heist is just full of features. And only two rappers. But a lot of vocal features, most of which nobody really knew who they were. Similar to Mary Lambert. That’s what I think made it special. You have Wanz coming in singing about thrift shop, and murdering it. We’re kind of like strangers. Or just friends of friends in Seattle. And knowing that Seattle has a whole bunch of incredible musicians and singers, just taking a risk and sort of looking out."

"Thrift Shop":

"For the last six months it’s so many things that are amazing, you just got to kind of stop and shut down for a second and really celebrate. It’s a huge part of my career. Something anybody would aspire to do. It was completely unexpected. I mean The Heist doing 80,000 units first week was completely unexpected. The reason why we chose that as the single was because we put out the 'Same Love' music video and we thought that we needed to counter balance such a heavy video with something more fun. And we liked the 'Thrift Shop.' And neither of us were like, 'Yo, this shit’s going to go mulit-platinum.' Nobody would’ve guessed that. But you know, once it goes platinum you look back at it, and you try to make sense of it, it’s a super fun record. It has a catchy-ass chorus, and it’s fitting right in that middle ground of having a swag to it. It’s not like too clowning, but at the same time, it’s fucking clowning. It’s just fitting in that middle rare ground. That you can take it seriously, but it’s obviously not a very serious song. So it’s like how does that feel? It’s a mind fuck. Like I can’t even wrap my head around that at all. It’s a little bizarre.

"Ben wrote the first verse three years ago. A lot of people think it’s some bullshit, some smart song idea. Ben’s been a thrift shopper since I met him, and still is one. Oh, you go, it’s platinum now he’s going to buy some designer shit. He’s always been somebody who likes designer shit. That’s a portion of his wardrobe. But this dude has so many fucking clothes. He probably hits up over twenty thrift shops when we were on tour. It’s a key element to his style. That record he wrote a while ago, and he ended up tracking the first verse to skeleton drums. I did the drums first and like all hip-hop producers do and he tracked that, which probably made eight different beats out of those drums completely. It’s a song that’s super clowning, but you can take it seriously at the same time. I needed to find that mood. I hit a point where I hit up record stores, digging for samples which I haven’t done forever, and trying to find something old or even something with a melody. And failed, and failed, and failed. But I got bits and small pieces along the way. And everything was feeling too sinister, and I’ve gotten like all the little adlibs and idiosyncrasies that make that song started to pick up along the way. And I hit a point after working on it for a few weeks that I had this bootleg very small sample pack horns in Native Instruments. But it was just recordings of a trumpet or a sax, a trombone on the keyboard, but it was very limited. Like for each instrument you only have couple octave and you know maybe three different velocity options for each note. But I loved it because the pitches were just slightly going in and out of tune. And the raw recording was completely untouched as opposed to all the other plugins just feel like that horn sounds fake, that horn sounds fake. I pulled up the sax, and I just started fucking around and came up with that melody. And then I kept going and I found the sample for the beginning part, which always sounded like Kendrick Lamar’s voice to me, which I thought it was tight. [Laughs.]"

"I got all the different shits and I sent it to Ben, and he was like this is kind of fresh. And I kept going with it, and I liked it a lot. So then it got to the point of figuring out the hook. We were both like, 'We need somebody who sounds like Nate Dogg.' So I hit up a mastering engineer we work with called D-Fame. He knows a whole bunch of older rap dudes that are on some rap-rap shit. And he’s like, 'I got the dude.' So Wanz comes through at like 1 a.m., and we’ve already written the hook. He’s like late 40s or early 50s. We made like five different hooks, and ended up choosing that one. And then I spent a bunch of time mixing it. And it was just one of those tracks that had a lot of air and open space. You just fill with vocals and hella 808s, and then it was a wrap.

"Going into the video, which I co-directed and cut. So I took all the footage and co-edited. It was dope to do because we didn’t even write a treatment or a script to it. It was just us fulfilling the lyrics. So the video was a lot of fun to make, and we shot it for like three or four days, and then I cut it in about couple days, and then we put it up. Music videos in general have been the second half of my job aside from the photography stuff, web design stuff and so on. It’s one of the most exciting parts. I think Ben and I shot, and we cut all the videos minus two of them. We all cut together sitting in front of a computer. To me music videos are so similar to composing music. You start something off, and building to a certain part, and creating a sort of a roller coaster. It’s the same objective. 'Same Love' took longer. I directed that. It took like eight days to shoot, and three days to cut."

Working as a Producer:

"I've been reached out by different labels and A&Rs. Some of which are interesting. But I spend a long time making shit. I’ve never looked at myself as a beat maker. Which is so how the industry kind of works. And maybe that’s why I wasn’t super interested. One of the ways to get out there is by label A&Rs who are trying to generate a pool of beats their artists can go buy out shit on. And if your beat gets chosen, your beat gets chosen. And in a shitty way you get your beats taken on a mixtape.

"Putting myself out there hasn’t been my process. Mostly because I’m not somebody who makes beats and just sending them out. I’ve never really done a beat snippet. I’ve always been working on a project or making a song and redoing it. Getting it to an actual good record. Neither Ben nor I has ever put on a song that we felt was just okay. We always wanted to make sure it’s dope. And you know that process if you’re working with A&Rs it’s just not afforded to you. I think they just take what they take, oftentimes it’s mixed by somebody else, and you’re not sitting in the writing process that hasn’t really been my route. At the same time, when you get hit up, and it’s a super credible artist, an artist you like, and they’re looking for…

"For instance I got hit up last night. It’s a pretty big artist who has to wrap up his project in a month, and the label doesn’t think he has a single, reaching out see if there’s something he can make it as a single for that artist. And if I have something on deck that I thought was super fitting for them, and it seems like a reasonable thing that can actually happen, and then I would pursue that. But I’m not going to send him 20 beats, and see what happens. I’m also very much not confined, and secluded to hip-hop. I loved to work in a variety of genres, I loved to get into film scoring. I think that’s a huge passion of mine as well. I think Ben’s pretty much the same way. And Ben’s getting super hit up with a lot of dollar signs for features on different stuff. I think you can always get open to that, but you can be selective and just make a good song. I think he’s interested in acting. The number one focus is to continue investing in the collaboration of music. The people actually love. And I think working on top of that is secondary."