An artist with deep roots in southern hip-hop, Bolo Da Producer has also made a name for himself on YouTube, where he regularly posts gear reviews, advice videos, and original songs.
One of Bolo’s most impressive attributes is his eye for talent. Throughout his career, he’s found success partnering with artists who have the skill and charisma to blow up. One of the earliest examples is the song “She Got It” by rapper Two Pistols. Originally produced by Bolo, the song caught the attention of singer T-Pain, who contributed vocals, and re-released it in 2008, when it peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
That song rose Bolo’s profile, and he soon made the move to Atlanta.
“When I got here, I realized how much better I had to be, because I was kind of a big fish in a small pond in Florida and Tampa,” Bolo said. “And I quickly found out there was a lot of people that were in the field. There were a lot of good producers, engineers, writers, managers, lawyers — everything was better here.”
Another early break came in a partnership Bolo formed with Alabama rapper Doe B. The two worked together producing several songs, and with Doe B signed to rapper T.I.’s label Hustle Gang, the future was looking bright. Sadly, however, Doe B was shot and killed in December 2013. Still, Bolo’s work with Doe B caught the ear of 16-year-old Richard Lamar Hawk, who contacted Bolo via Twitter, requesting the chance to work together. In the spring of 2014, they began working together on songs, with Hawk performing under the name Silento.
“And throughout the summer he kept telling me, ‘I got this song that I think it’s going to be really big.’ And I’m like, ‘whatever.’ Like, ‘OK, we need to do these songs I’m telling you to do,” Bolo said.
But over time, with Silento’s persistence and a lack of sleep after the recent birth of twins, Bolo eventually gave in and agreed to work on Silento’s big song.
“So I was like, ‘OK, listen, we got 45 minutes. I’m gonna make this beat. You go ahead and put this hook or whatever you think is gonna be dope on it. And I need to get on out of here,'” Bolo recalled.
It turned out the song did have potential. But Bolo saw that one major change needed to be made first.
“It was “Watch Me Nae Nae, Watch Me Whip” first. And he had a totally different cadence and everything to it,” Bolo said. “And so when he put it down, I was like, ‘hey, we need to switch that.’ And then when he switched it and when I made the beat for it, it kind of made him sing it differently. And then when I heard it, I was like, ‘oh shit, he might have been right!”
With the time crunch on and various equipment failures happening that day, Bolo took a no-nonsense approach in finishing the song, encouraging Silento to drop the rapped verses in favor of fun ad-libs. This was going to be a dance record. Bolo called Silento’s improvised instructions encouraging listeners to “do the stanky leg” a work of genius. He used the best takes of these and other dance instructions to flesh out the song. After it was completed, the two sat on the song for a while, but once it was released to Silento’s SoundCloud page in December of 2014, it quickly took off. 100,000 streams became 500,000 in a few days. A few days later, it was up to 1 million. They released the song on YouTube on Silento’s birthday, and from there, things exploded. A contract with media company DanceOn led to 50 popular YouTube dance content creators promoting instructional videos for the song’s namesake dances, and in short time, “Watch Me” was a viral sensation.
One thing that’s clear after talking to Bolo is his work ethic and his refusal to stay complacent, even after scoring multiple hits. He’s continued to produce music and collaborate with young artists and producers. On top of that, he’s entered the video arena with his own channel on YouTube boasting nearly 170,000 subscribers. Now a partner with zZounds, Bolo sat down with me to discuss his early days, starting his channel, and more. Read on to learn more about him, and be sure to follow Bolo on YouTube and Instagram.
If you’re shopping for gear and have found Bolo’s videos helpful, why not shop his personal gear list on zZounds? Creators earn a small commission on gear sold through that link, so it’s a great way to show your support! Plus, you get all the zZounds-exclusive perks like interest-free payment plans and fast, free shipping!
zZounds: How did you get started producing?
Bolo: I went to college to play football. But I had a lot of injuries and then I just kind of lost the love for it. And then I ended up going to a school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, by the name of Stillman, it’s a historically black college. And I met a kid from Iowa. He ended up being one of my best friends, and he introduced me into music. And from that point, from spring of 2000, all the way to now, I’ve just been stuck doing music.
I made my first beat on his computer in the dorm room on Cakewalk. And then from that point I was completely stuck on it. There’s a lot of people from our school that ended up being platinum producers and we all hung together. So he ended up being the first one to get a record deal. He actually had a song called “Tatted Up” with the artist Fabo that came out in 2005 or 2006. That song went globally and I think it went gold or platinum. Then my other friend who worked with him, he worked with Young Jeezy during that time. He was his engineer and so he ended up getting a couple of platinum plaques with that as well. We had another kid by the name of M16. He ended up becoming a multi-platinum producer in 2007 as well. I have another guy who went to school with us. He ended up managing another kid who works for Lil Baby and he’s like six or seven times platinum. So we had a lot of talent and we all kind of stuck together.
But I started in school. I started putting out acts early in school. I kind of found a formula of just finding popular people that had a look that could somewhat rap or sing. I was pressing CDs, you know, burning CDs all night because it took 15 minutes to burn one CD at that time. So we would do shifts at night and we would burn CDs and sell the CDs for ten dollars a pop and we made a ton of money doing it. I was recording people, and that was pretty much my life.
zZounds: What about other producers? Did you look up to anybody at the time? Or still do?
Bolo: Oh yeah, I was a huge Mannie Fresh fan, huge Timbaland fan. I was a huge fan of Tim and Bob, the R&B producers. And of course, you know, the Dr. Dres of it all. I love stuff Warren G was even producing. So I was a West Coast, East Coast fan, plus Just Blaze, pretty much anybody who was hot.
zZounds: Timbaland beats just stick with you. I don’t know what it is about him; you know more than me, but he seems to have something special going on.
Bolo: He’s a genius. Even when I talk to him from time to time, he’s really just a genius guy. He’ll hit me up on IG and we’d talk or if he has anything I can always pull up. So he’s always a good guy, really good guy.
zZounds: What about younger producers today — are there any that you’re listening to and like what they’re doing?
Bolo: Yeah, a lot of the younger producers — well younger than me — a lot of them they actually would come by my studio and I’ve known them before they got big. Producers like Sonny Digital; I remember before he got big he was producing for artists I was working with. He was phenomenal, like one of the best producers I’ve heard. Another producer by name of K-Major — he’s 23 times platinum right now and is also a songwriter. 808 Mafia, love them. Metro [Boomin]. You know, I was around Metro right when when he first got his first hit. And he’s just a beast in the studio, he just works. You know, Honorable C.N.O.T.E., is one of my best friends. We talk on a daily basis, we go walking together. You know, we try to keep ourselves accountable on nutrition. (laughs)
zZounds: What in your mind are the qualities that make a good producer?
Bolo: Work ethic. I don’t think that it’s necessarily a talent thing. I think it’s a worth ethic thing because if you keep working at something long enough, you’ll get better at it. And a lot of times, like even with me, I might make three or four beats a day, just to get my day started. And I know those three or four beats might not ever see the light of day. But it’s pretty much like you’re in the gym taking jump shots. I might make three or four beats to kind of prime myself. So when I’m in the studio with somebody, I pretty much know I can go this way or that way or do this and do that. So I’m practicing every single day, even while still doing YouTube and affiliate stuff. That’s taken over a lot of my life right now. But taking those jump shots, being very active and just staying on it is better than just being a talented person.
zZounds: What about gear? You mentioned Cakewalk. Was there anything like that in your early days that you gravitated towards using?
Bolo: I started off on Cakewalk of course, but then I moved over to Reason. That was the first thing I really heavily produced on. I would make the beat in Reason at the time and then rewire it into Cool Edit Pro and record vocals in that. And, from that point I went straight to Nuendo, which is still a phenomenal program.
And then during that time, I ended up working on MPCs. I started on the MPC 2000 XL. Somebody found it. And I bought it off him. It was beat up, it was bad. But that was my first introduction. I went on to the MPC 1000, then into the 2500. And then I got into Pro Tools around 2006. And from there, I was mostly on the MPC and Logic. I made most of my biggest songs on Logic. And now I do a lot of stuff, just strictly MPC, or with MPC keyboards and stuff like that.
zZounds: Yeah, I see most of your videos have got an MPC of some sort.
Bolo: Oh, I got all of them, yeah. (laughs) I got the X, the Live II, the One, the Key 37. I’m very fond of Akai. They’ve made me a lot of money over years producing (laughs).
zZounds: What’s your process like?
Bolo: Well, the main thing is just getting up out of bed. One thing I can say is when you have a really big hit record, one that that sells good, but also does really good with Sync, and a lot of companies like to use the song, you can get kind of complacent with yourself, because you’re seeing these enormous publishing checks come every time. So you kind of like ‘I’ll chill for a second.’ But me, I kind of want to continue to keep going. So even past that record, I ended up doing a few other records that went gold as well.
But my everyday process is I get up with the kids, take them to school first, get done with that, I go to the gym. I do about 30 minutes to an hour in the gym. I try to get home at least around 8:45 or 9 o’clock. At that point, got to get me some coffee. And then I make beats. So I make beats from usually about 9:15 to about 10, 10:15. And I knock those out real quick and then from there, whatever I get from
zZounds or if any company sends me anything from around 10:30 to around 12:30, I’m strictly learning.
So I try to learn as much stuff on whatever software or whatever hardware I get. And then from usually
around 12:30 to about 3:30 is shooting time. So I would do either videos or work on certain things like that. From there, I get the kids, take them to whatever the practice is at that time, have dinner and put them to bed. Then from there, 9:30 to about 12:30 I’m either finishing up on editing or whatever and I’m just finishing out my day, and I just repeat the process every day.
zZounds: What kind of trends are you seeing emerge with some of the new, controllers, software, and gear?
Bolo: The thing I’m starting to see that a lot of companies are really listening. Not only to the people who consume their products, but to a lot of influencers as well. But everything is moving at a very fast pace, and I kind of think that’s not a good thing. It’s almost like the SUV thing, like you might look and it’s like OK, this SUV looks like that SUV. Everything’s starting to be similar. So a lot of similar things are being integrated into these systems, whether it’s on a software system or even on a hardware system. You have to keep up with the times of what people really want or you are losing them. I’m starting to see a lot of producers actually go back to the old way of producing with actual keyboards and MPC stuff like that. People are buying hardware again, so that’s cool. And I think right now people are holding companies a little bit more to a higher standard, saying, ‘OK, you’ve done this for us, that’s great. But what are we going to get now?’ And I think a lot of companies are really kind of looking at themselves saying ‘we might need to step it up on a few things.’
zZounds: In one of your videos, you were talking about, how now you can just hit a preset and you’ve got an effect that, back in the day, you would have to create on your own, manually. Do you think that it’s a good thing to give access or do you think it takes something away?
Bolo: I think it’s great. Because you got to look at it like this: It’s not the hammer in your hand. It’s the person that’s using it, too. You can give everybody the tools but some people are just blessed more than others. You know, you can buy all the construction equipment you want but you can’t build a house. You know, it takes time to do that. So I think it’s dope that they’re taking a lot of this stuff and they’re wrapping them up as these nice pretty gifts as I call them, and then you can open it up and it’s right there. You’re ready to play with it. It’s like these new RC cars that back in the day when you bought the RC car, you had to literally put the whole thing together. Now they sell it done. And I’m sitting like, why are they doing that? It takes the fun out of everything because you customize, you can do your own thing. But with this, I like it because it makes the workflow faster. And then now you can take the guess work out. Now you have everything under the hood. You pay 30, 40, 50 bucks for it and it works. You know, people forget how expensive those Waves plug-ins were back in the day. So now you can get the whole Waves bundle for what one plug-in used to cost. So I think it’s a cool thing and I think it opens up for a lot more people to give feedback as well.
zZounds: Do you have any advice for young aspiring producers? And do you have any advice for young aspiring YouTubers or video content creators?
Bolo: For the young producers, I will say, if you’re trying to do this strictly just to make money, you’re not going to make it. You have to have a love for it and you have to have a passion for it and you have
to be willing to work. And then when you get to that point of being successful, you’re going to have to work even harder.
For YouTubers, the main thing that I say to a lot of people is just get started. If you want to do YouTube, don’t worry about the cameras, don’t worry about the lights, don’t worry about all this stuff. If you have a cell phone or if you have anything that records you to where you can upload it to YouTube, just start. Overthinking will stop you from doing a lot of things. Pretty much every single last one of us who started on YouTube, we can go back to our first couple videos and they’re all cringe-worthy. Even from the largest YouTubers to the smallest YouTubers, they are cringe-worthy, but a lot of new YouTubers, they have really good videos because there’s so much information out to where they can say, ‘Oh, I can do this camera, I can do that setup, I get my lights right and everything.’ For a lot of us, we didn’t have it. So what I say is just get started, then find your niche. It might take a year or two to find exactly what your audience likes. Find that and run with it. And then from there, you can kind of drop a few things outside your niche if you want to. Like me, most people look at me as the MPC guy and the producer guy, but I might go to somebody’s studio and record them or I might show the process of recording or going through some equipment or do some software stuff. So just find that and keep going, but the main thing is just start. Don’t overthink it.
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