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Lex Luger Beats Do Not Take Very Long To Make

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Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 11/05/2011 at 3:45 PM News

The Popdust Files: lex luger

It’s Saturday afternoon, and you’re reading Popdust, right? You’ve got ample time to also read this fantastic New York Times Magazine profile of hip-hop megaproducer Lex Luger. You’ve at least got as much time as it takes Lex to make a typical beat.

Specifically, writer Alex Pappademas was with Luger for a day of beat-making, Ustreaming, transactions of herb (Luger’s, that is), and the first part took about 20 minutes per. Like so:

The whole thing was done in less than half an hour. Lex saved the file and took a bite of pizza, and six minutes later he had another beat in progress, with the “Star Wars” light-saber-clash sound buried somewhere in it. I clocked this one on my iPhone. It was done in 22 minutes. I relayed this to Lex.

“Twenty-two minutes?” he said, incredulous. “Pssssh. I’m gettin’ old.”

The next one took 18:58.

Feeling the schadenfreude yet? No? Maybe when you get to the part about Luger’s rise to fame–Myspace messages, essentially, at least as much luck as skill. But schadenfreude’s about the least interesting part of this. There’s his rise out of the “country-est” of country towns in Virginia and the cluster of people turned producers once someone in town got a copy of Fruit Loops; the artists he’d like to work with; the following track, which you may well hear someplace at some point:

Sounds blared from the speakers at hair-curling volume. Synthesizers that sound like water dripping on a live circuit board. There’s a weird melody line, part flute and part digitized ghost choir. When the drums come in, it sounds like Lex; before that it all sounds new.

“I play this for artists all the time, and they don’t want it,” he said, skipping to another track — this one cold and melodramatic, like the Vangelis cue that underscores Rutger Hauer’s death scene in “Blade Runner.” It sounds like a computer sobbing. It seems to demand a Waka Flocka with more ice in his voice than flame. It sounds, frankly, amazing.