Who’s the hottest producer right now?

Some would say that’s 18-year-old Steve Lacy.

You might know him from The Internet’s Ego Death. And you definitely know him from Kendrick’s DAMN. He produced Track 7, PRIDE.

And you know how he makes all of his beats?

On his phone.

How’d that happen? Well, according to a new interview with Wired, it all started back in grade school, when, like so many of us, Lacy made beats with erasable pens for his friends. Things escalated from there, but Lacy didn’t have a laptop. So he used what he did have: a phone.

“I literally had no f*cking idea what I was doing,” Lacy said, “And from that, I got a Grammy nomination. So I’m like, okay, this is my life.”

That Grammy nod was for Ego Death. Things progressed naturally on that album, the producer told Wired, so naturally, that “when people ask how it felt to know you’re co-producing an album, I’m like, ‘I didn’t know.’”

That ease carried over to Lacy’s collaboration with Lamar too.

He’d made a beat with Kendrick collaborator Anna Wise, and had it — along with every other beat he’s made — on his phone. When his friend DJ Dahi “brought me in to see Kendrick just to make some beats with him,” Lacy didn’t think much would come of it.

Lacy played a few things; apparently few people looked up from their phones. But when he played the Wise beat, Lacy said, Kendrick “goes, ‘Yo, put your number in my phone.’”

When you’re a bright young producer, and Kendrick says, ‘Put your number in my phone,’ you put your number in his phone.

Lacy didn’t hear anything from Lamar for a long time after that. So, he sent a light check-in. Lamar responded that he’d been busy wrapping up his new album, and sent Lacy the tracklist. “Lol,” Lamar wrote, “’Wasn’t There,’” Lacy’s Anna Wise beat, “Is Track 4.”

Lacy says he responded like you or I would, with screams of joy.

A Grammy nod and a Kendrick co-sign — keep an eye out for this young producer: we have a feeling he’s got many hits to come.

Ego Death

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