How’d you get that Lil Baby placement? ft/ Harto

Harto co-produced “Hey.” The interesting part of a story like that is never the beat, it is the route the beat took.

Placements travel through people

Placements almost never travel in a straight line from producer to artist. They move through people: an engineer who keeps a folder, a producer already in with the camp who needs something to finish a session, an A&R who remembers your name from an unrelated conversation eight months ago. The beat is necessary and it is not sufficient, which is why two producers of identical ability end up with very different credit lists.

What networking actually means

That also explains why the advice to “network” is both correct and useless as stated. What it actually means is narrower: be the person somebody thinks of at the specific moment they need something. That requires them to know what you make, which requires you to have been consistent about it long enough to be legible.

The route this one took is in the video at the top of the page, from the Producer Room interview with Chris Legrett.