- Collaborate
For the first fifteen years of my musical career I was a singer. As a singer, I had to find people to collaborate with. Guys who only sing need partners. Take Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Slash and Axl, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. You can relate those guys to Slug and Ant, Guru and DJ Premiere and Drake and Noah “40” Shebib. Just like singers, rappers need to collaborate. Singers need instrumentalists. Rappers need beat producers.
If you’re a rapper you might want to find someone who makes beats and create a partnership to help achieve the success you dream of. Look for someone you can create a strong musical bond with and have open discussions about what it means to you to be an artist and in business together. Collaborate, make music together and sell it together. Be a band!
- Pay Someone to Make Your Beats
Another way to find a rap beat is to pay someone to create a beat that fits you. If you know someone whose style you like, go and talk to them. Arrangements to buy beats can come in many forms. You could take one of their existing beats and have them customize it to your song (breakdowns/verses/choruses). You can sit in a studio and come up with new ideas together. Or you can just buy a beat “as it is.”
Some people lease beats, but I’m not going to go into that right now. It’s complicated. In my opinion you’re better off finding someone who is willing to sell you a beat outright. If your song becomes a huge hit, you don’t want your newfound success to be tainted with a lawsuit. So always get something signed that says you legally own the beat. If you can’t afford a lawyer, look on legalzoom.com for a quick contract you can use in this situation.
- Buy or Lease Online
Finally, there are many sites that will allow you to buy or lease beats online. You can scroll through thousands of beats and pick something you like. For me though, this is my least favorite way to find a beat. The best ones are very expensive. And if you lease a beat without exclusive rights, other people could be rapping on that exact same beat and releasing it at the exact same time!
When people come into my recording studio in Minneapolis, with a leased beat from soundclick.com or somewhere similar, I find there is a generic quality to the end result. It’s hard to find a true connection between the beat and the lyric. I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s just because the beat producer and the rapper have never even met. That magical musical connection was never formed.
So, rappers go forth! Find a beat; write a lyric and get yourself into the booth!
