Mike Will, Producer of ‘Tupac Back’ Talks Production Techniques; Work with Rick Ross

(AllHipHop News) AllHipHop.com recently sat down with Atlanta based producer Mike Will, the producer of the Rick Ross/Meek Mill hit song "Tupac Back,” which is featured on Maybach Music’s Self Made Volume 1 project.

The record, which the pair performed at Tupac's recent 40th birthday celebration, pushed Mike Will into a well connected circle of top rappers in the game.

“I mean ‘Tupac Back’ was really like a blessing and at the same time it’s a good sign about how the hard work pays off," Mike Will told AllHipHop.com. "Like I've been putting in a lot of work out in Atlanta, really working on the whole mixtape scene."

With his work load growing by producing for Gucci Mane, Shawty Lo, Rocko, Lil Boosie, Tity Boi, and having redeveloped and organized his catalog in the fourth quarter of last year, Mike Will believes the "Tupac" record will help him move to the next platue in his career.

“The one thing about Ross is Ross is a creator. He’s real good about grabbing a topic and making a movie out of it. One thing about Ross is if you give him one of those big sounding, dark sounding beats, he gonna take it and run with it,” Mike Will told AllHipHop.com as he spoke on the process of getting placed on a Rick Ross song.

“I submitted a couple of tracks over there and I wanted to show them the diversity of the sound and I really submitted a lot of dark tracks but one thing about the beat, is it sounds like a horror film or a scary movie and I didn’t even have to hear the song for real. They let me know the title and I knew what kind of record it was going to be, salute to Rick Ross and Meek Mill because they did the beat all the way justice.”

Mike Will started off on MPC, Phantom and Triton keyboard, but he noticed that the game started switching from the hardware to the software sound.

At that point he began using a host of software based programs to create the epic sounding beats heard on many of his songs.

“I started using Fruity Loops, Logic, Reason, and I like using everything to keep the sound different. ‘Tupac Back’ was actually made on Fruity Loops and that beat was really a simple beat to me. The thing about music is that simplicity works. I look at the lyrics as the last instrument to the beat. I kept it simple and went along with it.”