Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

Prolific producer Zaytoven had some interesting comments about his working relationship with Future and the mindstate of Hip-Hop fans these days.

In an interview with DJ Vlad, Zaytoven revealed that he and frequent collaborator Future have recorded enough new music to drop an entire mixtape to follow up to their 2015 project Beast Mode.

“I was with Future maybe three weeks ago,” he says. “He was saying like, ‘I wanna keep recording songs, but if it came to it I need to drop right now, we done. I’m confident in what we got right now to drop another Zaytoven-Future project.”

If you can remember, Beast Mode came out during Future’s epic 2014-15 run where he dropped three mixtapes [Monster, Beast Mode, 56 Nights], a solo album [DS2] and a joint album with Drake [What A Time To Be Alive] in an 11-month span.

We hadn’t seen a phenomenon like that since Master P‘s No Limit Records dropped at least two albums a months from 1997-1999. Back then, people were calling No Limit’s success into question stating that the quality albums from artists like Mia X, C-Murder, Fiend, Mac and Mystikal were heavily outnumbered buy average or just outright wack albums from Skull Duggery, Lil Soldiers, Big Ed, Magic, Gambino Family and numerous other artists we’ve forgotten about.

“Quantity over quality” was a phrase that was used to describe the label’s time in the spotlight. Especially after artists like Silkk The Shocker revealed that they were recording and completing albums in less that three weeks at times. Love it or hate it, No Limit found a formula and ran that tank until it ran out of gas.

According to Zaytoven, it sounds like Future, Gucci Mane and the other artists he produces for are adopting the same philosophy.

Zay says:

“I don’t think we’re trying to create timeless songs. We just trying to, we got so much in us that we wanna get out that we just wanna keep letting it out. Nowadays, I don’t think a song means as much as it used to mean. One song can’t last you a year no more. You can’t have a hit record and it’s gonna last you all the way throughout the year. That song might last two months. So you gotta keep coming with the content. Nowadays, I don’t think we know what the hits are, the people are choosing the hits. We might put out two mixtapes and get one song out of those mixtapes that was actually a hit. That’s how it goes.”

Zay’s honesty makes you wonder about a couple of things.

On one hand you can see it as artists and producers using the power of technology to get out as much music as they can to keep their fans satisfied, even if the music really isn’t good. Or you can look at it as where they are actually empowering fans by having them choose what songs they like enough to share, buy or demand be performed at concerts.

Zaytoven does have a point about songs not lasting two months. But is that because artists are flooding the market, or because fans attention spans are really that short?

Maybe it’s case-specific to the kind of music he and his partners make? Remember J. Cole “went Platinum with no features” and no radio or club hits.

Check out Zay comments for yourself and tell us what you think.