Shoutmouth Spotlight: Arnaz "The Nazty One" Smith

Welcome to Shoutmouth Spotlight, a new-ish feature where we'll be focusing on artists who are grinding their way up in the world. Hopefully we'll be able to turn you onto some new names while also taking a look at what, exactly, it takes to make it in the often-insane game that is the contemporary American music industry. In the immortal words of Jay-Z, "you can't knock the hustle."

When Young Jeezy and friends Blood Raw and Slick Pulla put out Cold Summer, their debut as U.S.D.A., last month, longtime fans of the Snowman might have noticed a new name in the disc's production credits.

The group kept things largely in-house at their Corporate Thugz Entertainment imprint for the release, and turned to up-and-coming Atlanta producer Arnaz "The Nazty One" Smith for four of the album's 13 tracks.

Shoutmouth sat down with The Nazty One in the wake of the disc's release to discuss why he's bringing live instrumentation to Southern hip hop, coming up in ATL and finding that perfect balance of talent and business sense.

Shoutmouth: Where'd you get your start producing?
Arnaz: I started in high school. I had a rap group called Country Mist. We wanted to rap, but we didn't know how we was going to get beats. I grew up a musician, playing piano and drums in church and I figured if I can play then I guess I can produce too. We did the little rap group thing and then I kinda started my own label, where I started getting artists out of my neighborhood. Eventually I had a friend of mine, Nick Love, who was actually at the time one of my artists - he was a singer- he told me, "man you should start trying to sell beats," and that's how the whole situation came about.

Shoutmouth: You said you got your start in 1996-1997, when you were still in high school. In the last ten years Atlanta has really blown up as a scene. What influenced you at the time?
Arnaz: To be honest... Outkast had just started getting hot in what, like '94, '95? Really at the time when I started wanting to do music it wasn't even Atlanta that made me want to do it, because we only had but a few artists. I was listening to people like Wu-Tang and Nas. I was listening to a lot of New York rap back then and a lot of West Coast rap.

What really caught me - what really made me think I could do this -- was when Master P started shining because he was from the South, but he had that whole gimmick that all you gotta do is print up records and sell them out the trunk. That's what really got me motivated because I knew I could produce records myself.

After that I started paying attention to different producers who had their own label and were starting their own situations. Like Swizz Beatz, actually went to school around the corner from me. He's from Stone Mountain and I went to school in Lithonia. He went to Redan High School and I can remember he used to DJ our parties - like we used to have little parties and he'd be the DJ. And then when I saw him blow up, I mean that really blew my mind. This is the same guy who went to school around the corner. Like, I looked up and I saw La La, she started making it on MTV and stuff, she's from my same neighborhood too. And then Sean Paul from Youngbloodz, he's from the same area. Really, what got me was to see all these people from my side of town to actually start making it. People that I used to see when I caught the school bus.

Shoutmouth: How did you get hooked up with Young Jeezy and Corporate Thugz Entertainment?
Arnaz: One of the guys that was part of the label that I had started, the guy Nick Love who I was telling you about, he decided to give up on his little singing career and to pursue marketing, because he was already a marketing major in college. He's the guy that told me that I needed to produce anyway for other people, so we tried to start a little production company called Lit Up Productions. It was slow motion because we had the beats, the beats was hot, but we just didn't have the connections so Nick started doing this interning and all this stuff as far as marketing -- going out in different locations and promoting different artists and stuff like that, which opened up the connections.

Eventually his marketing led him to get a job at CTE (Jeezy's label) as head of marketing and promotions. He gave me a call and said "one day I'm gonna call you and I want you to come in here with some beats, but it'll be a minute."

He was working for them maybe like maybe four or five months and I thought he got Hollywood and left me alone. And he called me about four months later and just told me, "Look [label co-founder] Kinky B. wants to meet you on Tuesday, come through." I came through and Kinky B. didn't want to meet me. He wasn't there. I was like "Oh man, he's lying to me, whatever whatever." So he told me to come back on that Friday, so instead of me giving up, I just went back again. Nick brought me into his office and told Kink that I was sitting in there and locked us in the office and from there I just talked my way up into him listening to my beats and when he heard them, I mean, it was on from there.

Shoutmouth: Every artist has to, in some ways, be a businessman. Is that difficult or did that just come natural to you?
Arnaz: To be honest with you, like I said, I started in '96 and the problem with me was, because I grew up a musician my whole life my talent's been what took me to the top. Even when I was just playing music, it was the talent that got me jobs, like other musicians would come in and be like "yo can you play with me at this club and yo can you play with me in that club." I was playing in clubs before I was old enough to get in clubs. Back then I thought my talent would take me to the top, but when you're in producing in the hip hop and R&B world, it's not about talent to get you there. It's talent to keep you there, but it's really business sense and hustle to get you there. Back then I think I focused too much on my talent. I didn't speak out enough I know like coming up so I feel like that's the reason that it took me so long to make it.

It's funny because I used to work at [well-known Atlanta strip club] The Gentleman's Club. A friend of mine was the manager and he told me if I valet parked there that I could meet people in the music business and let them hear my beats. I worked there for years and would see people, but I didn't know how to talk to them. Even when they pulled up, I still didn't know what to say. So, I'm bumping into people, but like half the people that I used see when I worked at the club still don't even remember that I used to work there because I was so quiet.

I feel like business - having that hustle, having that business sense -- is the first key to making it in the music business even before the talent. I know some non-talented people with a nice mouth piece and they keep getting placement as far as producing It's all about relationships to me.

Shoutmouth: Speaking of talent, one of the first things I noticed about you production work is how full your sound is. Do you work with live musicians?
Arnaz: Well, I'm a live musician myself. Pretty much every instrument known to mankind I can play, but certain instruments I really, really can play. I specialize in drums and piano, keyboard, organs, stuff like that, but I can play bass guitar, I can play lead guitar, I can play trombone, I can play trumpet. I can play pretty much anything on a producing level to get out what I want. I utilize a lot of that in my tracks, because I know that's something that a lot of people can't do, so I try to be the one to do it. So if I get an opportunity to blow a horn on my track: oh yeah, I'm gonna get my horn out and do it.

You know how like in the South most producers they carry they tracks by using drums? They feel like, "OK if I come up with a drum beat then I can just put anything on top of it." I'm taking a different angle. I can remember, back in about '97 [Atlanta radio DJ] Greg Street used to live around the corner from me. Me and my little rap group at the time went to his house and let him hear some beats. I can remember him looking at me and saying, "Man, the tracks is garbage." Man, he looked at me and said "You got too much organ, too much music going on. Ain't nobody like that right now." When I see him now, I always joke with him. As long as I stick with what I know, it's going to eventually turn around. Instead of me trying to be Lil Jon at the time and flipping it to just drum beats and little synthesizer on top, I just stuck with what I knew and what I knew was music. I just always build my tracks around real instruments. If a live band can't play it I really don't even want to produce it, because I feel like that stuff stands around for years. You look at the music from the seventies and they still sampling it.

That's pretty much my thing. A producer without his own sound gets caught up in the rubble, You don't even know he's there.

Shoutmouth: What are you listening to right now?
Arnaz: As far as producers that I'm listening to right now: Nate Danjahandz, I love him and Polow Da Don. I'm thinking of new producers, up-and-comers that I like. Of course I like Timbaland, of course I like Dre, of course I like Pharrell, but I'm still an old-school RZA fan. But as of now, those new producers like Polow and Danjahandz, because, to me right now, they're doing their thing. If I could trade anything that I'm doing I'd want to do what they're doing.

Shoutmouth: Like I said, I think the thing that most stands out about your work is that full sound, which is pretty different from the South in the last four or five years. It's been mostly kind of a spare, sort of 808 sound and I think what you're doing and with some of the stuff DJ Toomp's done, you can almost hear things changing a little.
Arnaz: Toomp, that's somebody else whose sound that I love. Because Toomp's sound to me is a full sound. My whole goal, and what I really try to do with the hip hop scene in the South, is to take both levels and mend them together -- the musical side along with the hard-hitting 808 and package it all in one. I don't feel like there's enough of both going on. I was placed with exactly the right artist for that, because Jeezy, that's what he wants.

Shoutmouth: What's it like working with him and the other U.S.D.A. guys?
Arnaz: The first track they picked for the album was "Pam." That was just [from] a beat disc. They was really feeling the song. They were like, "OK, we got something here."

Every other song, I did the beat away from them, but I did the beat in mind of them. We kind of collectively put the song together. With "Corporate Thuggin," the way that came about: I was in the studio the day before and I could tell Jeezy kept saying "Man, I need a big anthem. I need something. A big song." The next day I was at the house and I went in my studio at home and laid the track and when I took it to them that night, all three of them, as soon as they heard the track, they just went crazy. That's why [Jeezy] kept writing and writing and writing. The verse is so long because he just didn't know how to stop. Working with them is a beautiful thing because all three of them, like a lot of people don't know a lot about Slick and Raw, but those two guys, just by hanging around Jeezy for so long, they really know music. They ain't the typical rappers, you know like, "Gimme the beat, let me just rap a verse or two and ask the producer, ‘what do I do, what do I do.'" They know what they want to do before they even listen to the beat.

Working with them, I learned a lot. Like I learned a lot from Jeezy. I give him credit on that. Because I've learned a lot just watching how we worked together on the U.S.D.A. album. I'm sure he learned from me at the same time I learned from him. That's what it's about.

Shoutmouth: What future projects do you have lined up?
Arnaz: Well of course I gotta talk about my own label. You got Blood Raw's album coming out next. I'll probably end up with three joints on that album. I know I'll end up with two on Blood Raw, but you know, the third one, we'll probably slide that one in too. Slick Pulla is coming out November-December-ish. I'll probably do about half of his album. So that's going down.

I'm working with Bo Hagon and Capone because those are people that I dealt with in my neighborhood. When Bo Hagon moved up here from the country he started hanging around in my neighborhood. Chris and Neef, Young Gunz: I've been working with them. I'm dealing with them and Roc-A-Fella. For the most part, I'm just making my rounds. Vawn: I'm doing his second single, "Ain't Running Away" with Rock City. Rock City are Akon's new group and I'm gonna do about two tracks on their new one. We do a lot of writing together. They all part of the family.

Shoutmouth: Any dream collaborations?
Arnaz: I hate to be so typical man. I can put multiple people together? My dream collaboration would be to do a song with Jay-Z and Lauryn Hill... [laughs] featuring Jeezy. I grew up, of course, listening to Jay-Z and Lauryn Hill and like I mean, it's so typical because we got the Def Jam affiliation, but I mean I'm really a Jay-Z fan, ain't no bullshit. I would like to work with people who are outside the box. I would like to work with Kelis. I like different stuff. I would like to work with Gwen Stefani and Fergie and all of them because I want to get into pop stuff too.

Bonus Beats: Here's some footage of Nazty in the lab, courtesy of U.S.D.A. TV on YouTube.