We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chandler Sherrill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chandler, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
The biggest thing about being a producer is learning the craft. I took a long time of diving in and learning the craft before I decided to pursue it as a business. Hip-hop is all about culture and to be successful in it you need to know the history, what it stands for, and WHY it is made. If you don’t do this people will sniff out that you aren’t in it for the correct reasons.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into the industry in college. I used to be a rapper, and I would tour with artists doing merch for them at concerts. I would go to the venue, set up merch tables, ect. On the road I met the artist Canon and he took me under his wing. I learned to produce and then over time I learned to love the production more than the rapping. I diversified my production overtime. I’ve had music in videogames like NBA 2k, and then had music in TV Shows like “Love Island UK”, “Boomerang” and “Your Honor”. I’ve also produced for huge artists like Rxseboy, Snøw, Sik World, and tons more, but ontop of this I also release my own music. I release collabs with singers and rappers, but I also release my own instrumental music. Whether it is lofi beats, drum and bass, or ambient music I got a lot of different stuff happening.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I knew more about how quick people are ready to scam some money. When you get into music production you just want placements. You want to work with people that work with your favorite artists. So you want to work with people, so you pay money to collab with a producer, or pay an artist to use your beats, but not all producers and artists are like that. Some of them just want to scam you and get some easy money..
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to unlearn caring about people’s opinions. when I first got into the industry I posted a video of me rapping an original verse to Chris Brown’s look at me now. It got 2000 views but not because it was good. I was in middle school, so the comments were saying absolutely horrible thing about me. From there I tried to make the music people said was “better”. I always changed my music to how people said, but overtime I learned how to make good music on my own and I didn’t need help. So I made a big change and started experimenting. Some people weren’t happy with it but it made it way more rewarding for me to truly make the music that I wanted.
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