A biography for Kenny Beatshasn’t been written yet.
“I played guitar since I was 9 years old, drums since I was 11.”
“People will go through 50 beats from a producer and pick the best ones, go make a song on that beat. That's cool, but someone coming to me and hearing what I've been working on, picking out pieces of all of that, and then adding some of their own ideas is way more exciting.”
“I've been doing music in some form since I was seven years old.”
“I feel like I wasn't making music that meant anything to me until I was 26 years old, so I'm realizing that sometimes it takes three years or five years to understand what the point of even making music together is.”
“Key! is the greatest rapper alive. I honestly, truly believe that no one is as effortless, weird, and creative, and themselves as he has been for years and years.”
“I think a lot of people make a big misstep when they assume what an artist is going to be interested in, so I try to just take that out of the equation and make sure whenever I'm talking to people about their music, I'm getting all my context clues from that - and then we go to work.”
“Idles are the best band in the whole world.”
“Being in the EDM world taught me that nothing's impossible.”
“I never was able to pay any type of bill doing the music that I was instinctually was making 'cause I loved it. I had to kind of pivot into doing the stuff that someone had taught me about to really get on my feet.”
“I get hit up all the time from every verified rapper with 1,000,000 followers like, 'Yo bro! You got the sauce right now. Send me beats!' Naw, that takes everything away from what I do.”
“Greedo is one of the most important California artists of our generation.”
“By the end of high school, I was interning for no school credit, no money, no nothing, for Jonny Shipes. He was my first entry into going to XXL, being around rappers, meeting Yams and A$AP.”
“I've never seen Key think about how he was going to act on a song. He just is whoever he is that day.”
“Many times you make music and someone decides to try and pick the best of everything. But if you wait, you sometimes fall out of love, or a song doesn't speak to you anymore, so you lose the moment.”
“I was working for Johnny Shipes in New York when I was 17 years old, getting beats off.”
“You need to make people think about society in a less literal and more primal way. It's about using the least amount of sounds to make the most amount of noise and energy, and making a bass stab really feel like you've been punched in the face.”
“Every time I'm working on something, I'm extremely excited about it.”
“Most of these producers have an agenda of what they want to push or what they think will be hot for someone. I don't have an agenda. My agenda is to take someone and bring out their dreams, what they're hearing in their head.'”
“I had to learn how to bring the best outta Key! by learning what's going on with him. That's how I approach every artist I work with, period.”
“You go to a Rico Nasty show and there's gay people, trans people, white people and black people all in the mosh pit together, and it's beautiful.”