Can you introduce yourself for anyone who’s unfamiliar with your work?
I’m a music producer and composer who goes by T8ko (pronounced like “Tateko"). People mispronounce it all the time, and a lot of my friends just call me Taco, which is where the name originally came from and it kind of stuck. Most people know me through my production in the underground and my work with Destroy Lonely and the Underworld sound.
How did you first get into producing and making beats? I’m assuming your first interaction with making music wasn’t just opening FL Studio one day, right?
My dad DJ’d house music, so growing up I was always around different genres and loud music in the house. I was in school band from elementary through middle school into high school, so I already had some music foundation. Senior year I took a computer class where they introduced Ableton, and I convinced them to install FL Studio on the school Macs instead of just using GarageBand. Once FL was on the computers I basically cooked up for the rest of the year, making beats every class, and I ended up getting a 100 in that class just off making music.
When you were in high school and started making beats, who were some of the producers you drew a lot of inspiration from, and do you think that’s changed over time?
T8ko's production is recognizable by the ambient atmosphere in these beats
T8ko's production is recognizable by the ambient atmosphere in these beats
A lot of people probably know you from your work with Lone. How did you first start working with him?
The first time was through a collab with my friend Tired, who’s also in Underworld now. This was before Underworld was officially a thing. We got a song with Lone that dropped right before “Bane.” It wasn’t even super ambient—it was more like a fast-paced plug beat. Later on, around 2020, I hit Lone directly like, “I can send you more beats,” and we started locking in. Then one time he went live and said all his producers needed to tap in, so I tapped in with 4me, Clayco, all of us. That moment of everybody connecting and sending him stuff is really where everything started for me with Lone.
If you’re a producer trying to work with bigger artists, do you think it’s mainly about getting lucky, how good your beats are, or a mix of the two?
It’s definitely a mix of both. You need good timing and the right relationships, but your sound has to actually work for the artist. With Lone, I had to change my sound to get more placements—he kept telling me my beats were too slow, so I had to speed things up and adjust the whole swag and bounce. Once I did that, I started getting a lot more songs. Lone is also one of the only artists I’ve worked with who will send specific references and give me a clear sound direction, so once you can adapt to that, it’s easier to hit the mark.
Have you mainly worked in the studio with artists, or do you mostly just send out beats and loops?
I’ve done both, but some of the best moments were in the studio, mainly through Clayco, since he was Lone’s main producer. After Lone signed to Opium, there were a lot of studio sessions in Atlanta where we’d be in there from like 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Just making beats, eating, chilling, and locking in. It’d be Lone, Clayco, a bunch of producers, and those sessions were really where a lot of songs and ideas were born. I was in Atlanta too, which just made it easier to pull up whenever they had sessions.
What’s a beat you made for another artist, on a song that actually released, that you think is really underrated?
One is a track with Apollo Red that dropped under my boy Souljaspirits’ album. He sampled a track from my project “Synesthesia,” flipped it into a beat, and Apollo rapped over that. Hearing my own song turned into a beat and then a full track was really cool. Another one is an older song with Black Kray—he basically took one of my beats off YouTube, chopped it up so wild that the beat structure almost doesn’t make sense anymore, but I still really like that beat. It’s one of those deep cuts I still feel is slept on.
A lot of people don’t understand how producers get paid. When you get a placement on an album, do you get a check when the album drops, monthly checks based on streams, or something else? How does that work after the album releases?
It depends on the artist and label. For big artists like Playboi Carti who are signed to majors, everything runs through the label, and you need a lawyer to make sure your splits, royalties, and percentages are correct. With independent artists, it’s harder to get a clean 50/50, and it can get grimier—you might only see some money from BMI or ASCAP, and even that might not reflect the full value of what you did.On the label side, you usually get an advance first—that’s the big one-time check up front. With Interscope, I got my advance for a placement in about a month and a half, which is fast; some people wait close to a year. Then you have royalties, which usually start paying out about a year later, once the label has a full year of data processed. On top of that there are performance royalties, publishing, sometimes engineering credits—different buckets of money. I haven’t even fully maximized all of those yet, but between advances and the main royalty checks, that’s where most of the money comes from when everything is set up right and the label actually pays.
Do you think a lot of producers avoid using samples because they know it’s going to take away from their cut or make getting paid harder?
In some situations, yeah. It really depends on the sample, the label, and the artist. If you sample a band that’s broken up or where the rights are messy, clearing that can be a huge headache. The label might have to go through a bunch of hoops to track everyone down, and some labels don’t even have the power or budget to clear certain samples.A good example is Nettspend sampling a Deftones record on That One Song—his songs were going up, but then they got taken down because of sample clearance issues. They took multiple videos down purely off the sample not being cleared. So yeah, samples can delay or kill songs, and that obviously affects how and when the producer gets paid. Some people still take the risk because the sample is too hard to pass up, but you’re always betting against paperwork.
What level do you think you have to be at, as a producer, to quit your job and do this full-time?
You can really build your own world as a producer, and it doesn’t have to revolve only around big placements. If you have steady clientele—artists who consistently buy beats—you can just trap out beats and that alone can cover a lot. If you’re selling beats for like 150 dollars and moving them regularly, that adds up quick.Then when you combine that with placements, snippets going up, and being locked into a scene or group so you’re not getting pushed out, that’s when it becomes realistic to go full-time. The key is having back-end money (advances, royalties) and front-end money (direct beat sales, custom packs, loops) at the same time, so you’re not relying on a single source of income.
With artists like Lone, it probably wasn’t just you charging per beat in the studio. How is it different between bigger artists like that and other artists you might work with?
It’s definitely different levels. With certain artists, you’re investing in the relationship and betting on the songs going up later, so you’re not worried about charging for every beat in the moment. You’re building a long-term situation with them and trusting that everything will work out. With other artists where you don’t see that kind of future, you might just sell the beat on the spot and keep it moving.With Lone, he was already developed and signed, so it made sense to build and trust the process. We’d have sessions where me, Clayco, Y3, Farsight, Cade and others were all in the studio making beats. That’s how albums like “If Looks Could Kill” came together because almost every song had multiple producers on one beat. It was a fun environment, and because there was a real label structure behind it, it paid off later too for sure.
Have you had that same kind of locked-in studio relationship with any other artist, or has it mostly just been Lone?
It’s mostly been Lone. Those long, in-person studio stretches where we’re going all night, constantly in sessions—that was mainly through Clayco bringing me in. Lone and everyone around him already knew me and liked my beats, so it was a good fit. I’ve worked with other artists, but just never as much with anyone else other than Lone.
Is there a song you produced that leaked and kind of bummed you out because it never got an official release?
Your really dark, ambient beats are super recognizable. With your recent stuff touching different genres, is that ambient sound something you’re trying to move away from?
Not really. That dark, ambient trap sound is still a huge part of my identity and I’m not abandoning it. The other genres I’ve been messing with are more about fun and growth. A big push for that was PinkPantheress—for a while I had her email, and she was actually opening the beats I sent. One email got opened like 17 times, so I’m convinced there’s gotta be at least one song in her vault with one of my beats.To send her stuff, I had to make more pop-leaning, lighter, garage-ish beats, which forced me to get better at those styles. Once I improved there, coming back to trap and ambient beats felt way more evolved. Branching out just made me better overall, so when I return to that original sound it’s on a different level.
Did you get PinkPantheress’s email before or after that song she did with Lone, or was it around that time?
It was around that era. I found her right before she really blew up, when she still had an email on her SoundCloud that she actually checked. I was sending beats there and watching the read receipts, seeing how many times she opened them. I think that email is probably still visible, but she definitely doesn’t check it the same way anymore.
If you could go back five years to 2020, what’s one piece of advice you’d give yourself, and what’s one thing you would’ve done differently?
Who is an artist you’re trying to work with right now, or artists you’re currently locked in with?
I’m still sending stuff to Opium and staying tapped in with that camp. Outside of that, I want to branch out into more genres and mainstream spaces—artists like PinkPantheress, and others in that realm. There are a lot of names I could throw out, but overall I’m focused on cross-genre and mainstream artists, not just staying locked into one sound or one scene forever.