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Producer St/i/z•z•Y releases “Easy Mode” a smooth R&B/Soul production

St/i/z•z•Y is a producer from Montreal who started 4 years ago with a friend using FL Studio. The eighteen year-old producer is dedicated to improving his craft. He currently produces Trap, Trapsoul, Hiphop, and some Trap electronic. 90’s R&B will always be remembered as the golden era of R&B, but there was something unique about the millennium.

Hip Hop and R&B at this point were essentially interchangeable and when it came to the beats many producers attempted to take over both genres at once. Remember Lil Jon’s crunk sound or Kanye West’s soulful sound? You had so many producers that were in demand and everyone brought something fresh to the table.

St/i/z•z•Y
St/i/z•z•Y

On “Easy Mode”, St/i/z•z•Y attempts to go even smoother with his R&B/Soul production. Beatmakers draw inspiration from a variety of music forms and sources. And it should probably go without saying that each of those sources has both a direct and indirect influence on the way in which a beatmaker constructs their beats.

Hip hop music shares a rather strong kinship with soul music. Of course, with many of the soulful-less hip-hop music that permeates mainstream, it’s hard to see the relationship between hip-hop and soul music. But the truth is, there is a deep, fundamental and undeniable connection between these two genres, which St/i/z•z•Y captures in “Easy Mode”.

For starters, the most basic drum patterns in beatmaking are actually simple modifications of drum patterns laid down in soul songs, plus the repetitive groove structures that characterized most soul songs during the 60s and early 70s are the same structures that underscore the most fundamental arrangements in beatmaking. And this is exactly what St/i/z•z•Y has achieved here – proving that you don’t need overelaborated layered arrangements and sounds if you get the basics of the genre right in your mix.

St/i/z•z•Y then perfects his R&B/Soul style by making the non-drum musical elements fit together into a velvet groove that fits the rhythm nicely. He does this with luscious vocal-type samples which wash over the beat. The only fault I can find here is that the track is too short, clocking in at just over two minutes, which doesn’t give St/i/z•z•Y the time to fully develop the track to its fullest potential. But hey, at only eighteen his got a whole lot of time to fully develop new tracks! We’ll be keeping a close eye on his progression into the beatmaking business in future.

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