Behind The Beat: Salva

Last year, L.A.-based producer Salva became a household name in hip-hop circles by scoring collabs with a diverse list of artists that included Schoolboy Q, Young Thug, Freddie Gibbs, A$AP Ferg, Kurupt, Problem and E-40. With his all-over-the-place Peacemaker tape and its "Old English" single, the beatmaker gained himself a much larger following in the rap world, and so we had to hit him up to be featured on "Behind The Beat."

If you look at the discography section of his Wikipedia page, you may think he's only been messing with rap for a few years. His earliest releases listed, 2011's Complex Housing and the Yellobone EP, and 2013's Odd Furniture EP, are all knotty, fresh sets of earworming bass and house music with no hip-hop collaborations to be found, but in truth, the producer/DJ's history with the genre goes a long way back. 

“I really came up doing hip-hop," he says during a recent interview at SXSW, "I started DJing when I was like 15, and I was exploring a lot of different music, but I was playing rap records. Even early on, I was working with local groups and producing for young cats.” Honing his skills while moving around between Miami, Milwaukee, Chicago, The Bay and L.A. in his young adulthood, Salva's first noteworthy collaborations with rappers came in the underground/indie scenes of the various cities he inhabited. 

“The first notable rapper I ever worked with was Oh No, Madlib’s brother, way back in the day, like 12 years ago. I worked with P.O.S. from Rhymesayers, Mac Lethal from Kansas City, and mad other weird, unknown people too."

Eventually, he emerged from those underground beginnings, but as he says:

“My whole career’s been kind of like a slow burn, so I never really got put on the map or anything like that, but I’ve just been in and out [with the hip-hop stuff]. I guess my latest project, Peacemaker, was a statement of like, ‘This is what rap music sounds like when I make it.’”

That sound is eclectic, hard-hitting and constantly in conversation with cutting-edge electronic strains of music, making Salva a unique and in-demand presence in hip-hop. Read on as we get the scoop on his work with Problem, his Peacemaker project, his hugely successful remixes and his future plans. 

Of all the rappers Salva's collab'd with, Problem seems to give him the call most often. Salva first remixed his song "Like Whaaat," and as the producer tells it, that led to future collaborations:

“I kind of had the idea of, ‘Remix who you want to fuck with, and it might happen,’ because when me and RL Grime remixed “Mercy,” Kanye got a hold of it and shit. So it’s like if you do a hot remix, they’re gonna notice it. So with that one, Problem was like really popping in L.A. at the time— I saw him play at one of Power 106’s big concerts at an arena, and he had that whole place going crazy." 

Eventually linking up, the producer and MC discovered they "speak the same language," according to Salva, and their chemistry has led to some truly extraordinary tracks. Last year, they did "Drop That Bitch" and "Motivated" together.

Kicking off with a high-pitched melody that recalls Eazy-E's "Boyz N The Hood," "Drop That Bitch" is one of many Salva beats that pulls from an older era of L.A. rap music, but outfits it with new-fangled frills in order to keep things dynamic and interesting. Cunningly enough, he splices in sound effects that sound like the hydraulics on Cali lowriders-- it's these small touches and nods to history that alert you to Salva's deep knowledge of old-school rap. He managed to get a guy from that era, Kurupt, on the track, as well as the younger stars Schoolboy Q, Problem and Bad Lucc, and wound up making one of the best Cali posse cuts in recent memory.

Elsewhere, Salva pulled from the prevailing sounds of the L.A. scene to make "Motivated."

This time, it's the modern, DJ Mustard-dominated L.A. that Salva chooses to mess with, making a beat that follows the same formula as most of Mustard's minimal tracks, but sounds a hell of a lot more progressive. The thumping bassline, pitch-shifting hi-hats and flashy synths are still there, but they're deployed in a much more haphazard way, accentuating the gaps in Problem's flows. The duo's ability to do a bunch of different sounds is one of their strengths: 

"[Problem] could be like, ‘Yo, I want to fuck with some sample-based shit, I wanna fuck with this sound,’ and I can do that, and I’m down with that shit," said Salva. "He’s a fucking really sick rapper,' he continued, "he’s a legit artist, he probably does three songs a day.”

As previously mentioned, last year's Peacemaker project was Salva's most rap-centric to date, with him linking up with a huge variety of rappers over an equally eclectic collection of beats. The tracklist was a result of him "chasing after all those dudes" with beats that he thought they'd fuck with, and they clearly did in the end. Whether collaborating with dudes he considers "legends" like E-40 and Kurupt or "crazy kids" like Glo Gang's Ballout and Tadoe, Salva adapts his sound to fit in with whatever context the artist is working in.

On Peacemaker, these adaptations not only happened between songs, but sometimes even within individual ones. Take "Motel" for example.

Giving Kurupt a spacious beat that sounds like a bombed-out, post-apocalyptic version of G-funk, Salva then switches gears ever so subtly for E-40's verse. After a short buildup, he cuts in a "lets get hyphy on these hoes" before 40's "uhh" cuts through the mix, heralding a wackier, snap-driven section of the track. Quick shifts like this almost require a double-take to catch, and really help to show off Salva's nuance.

The biggest song on the tape was definitely "Old English," where a double-take was again required, this time only at first glance of the guest list. Seamlessly incorporating the seemingly incongruous styles of Freddie Gibbs, Young Thug and A$AP Ferg, the track was co-produced by Nick Hook and, as Salva tells it, was basically a result of everything falling into place.

“Nick came to L.A. and I was working on this beat, and he came to my house and helped me finish it. Then he ran into Young Thug in Atlanta, I got Freddie Gibbs on it when me and Freddie were working— this was before Thug really popped, like a year and a half, two years ago, before 'Stoner' was big, Freddie had just heard of him. It definitely shouldn’t work, but it does. But that was kind of what I wanted to do with Peacemaker, is like put different fools together.” 

Almost a year after the tape's release, Salva considers it a success: 

"We released it on Bitorrent and it got a shitton of downloads, so I was stoked. I just wanted people to hear it, you know? So much music comes out, so for whoever the fuck might be paying attention, I just tried to get some dope names on it to get some hype and be like, ‘Yo, I made this, I make rap beats.’”

Cop the tape below.

Along with electronic music and rap bangers, another essential piece of Salva's output is his remix game. Most of the time, he opts to flip current rap hits into more expansive, "big room" products. As he hinted at earlier, his biggest remix to date is the "Mercy" mix he did with RL Grime, which did so well on SoundCloud that it caught Kanye's attention.

This is where the "crossover" aspect of Salva's appeal really factors in, as the remixes play well at both rap and EDM shows. When asked how he decides which new songs to remix, it's that crossover effect that he mentions:

“Honestly, it’s every time I think ‘This would sound dope for the EDM crowd.' I try to do that crossover shit, you know, I try to make my rap music kinda big room-sounding, real slapping shit, to appeal to that crowd. And then on the reverse, I’m the one dude at the straight up like trance festival, and I’m playing fucking rap bangers. Like, I’m able to infiltrate that market and play rap music? I’m stoked.”

For other producers, this mindset often results in formulaic, danceable versions of hits (look at DJ Mustard's remix of Beyoncé's "7/11"), but keeping things interesting is Salva's speciality. Take his remix of Sage The Gemini's "Gas Pedal."

Already outfitted with a modern sheen, this track didn't need any updating, so Salva used the same sample from Wrexx-N-Effect's "Rump Shaker" (and Jay Z's "Show Me What You Got") to give it a little bit of a retro sound. Filled with hyperactive changes in tempo and groove, this is one of Salva's best remixes, and one of the many that lets him show off his vast musical knowledge.

“All my friends, we were all rap heads," he says when describing his music taste, "Ten years ago, I was probably listening to Apex Twin and 50 Cent. It’s just always what we were into, and the whole music community is just more forgiving to all that crossover shit now.” 

With Peacemaker effectively acting as the best-possible advertisement for Salva's rap production chops, we should be hearing a lot more big collabs from him before the year's out. He says he's got tracks with Fashawn, Nas, YG, RJ, Bodega BAMZ, and even more with Problem, on the shelf, waiting on the individual artists or their labels to drop them. After hearing this widely varied list of names, and taking the rest of his collaboration history into account, I ask him if his strategy is to work with any rapper that he can.

“Anyone that’s dope! I’d love to work with Lil Wayne, but I can’t hold my breath, you know. With all this shit, it’s just about having the heat and having so many different styles that it’s just like, if I go to ATL, make sure I have enough that’ll speak to those guys, like I could play them a bunch of New York-ass beats and they won’t fuck with that shit. Some of them might want to fuck with some bass shit, I don’t know, but it’s really just being prepared and having a lot of songs.” 

This open-minded, omnivorous strategy has been working wonders for him thus far, and he credits that to working with artists "that actually let me be a producer, and not just take my beat and do what the fuck they want." This artistic freedom is immediately apparent in most of his music, as beats are rarely looped ad infinitum and new wrinkles reveal themselves with each listen. His versatility means that he could ideally work with any artist that wanted to, and says in addition to Lil Wayne, his wishlist includes Drake, Future, Rich Homie Quan, K Camp, Lil Herb and Dreezy.

That being said, it'd be amazing to see Salva team up with Problem for a full-length a la DJ Mustard and YG's My Krazy Life, as their styles seem to compliment each other perfectly. I told him how much I'd like to hear this, and he said: “Yeah, we might do it. We’ve been talking about taking it to the next level for sure. It’s just everybody’s busy and got a million hustles, so we gotta carve the time out to do that shit.” Hopefully they find the time, because that would be fire.

Listen to their latest track, "Compton," and imagine it closing out an L.A. rap opus.