Earlier this week on Monday (August 21), Doja Cat’s latest single “Paint The Town Red” became the first rap song from a solo female artist to reach No. 1 on Spotify’s Top 50 – USA chart. As the second promotional single for her upcoming fourth album Scarlet, “Paint The Town Red” saw Doja mesh enchanting harmonies with skillful rapping, a formula she plans to stick with for the duration of her eventual LP.
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Setting sail on this voyage to a more hip-hop-oriented sound at the start of the year, it only made sense for the 27-year-old former pop darling to enlist the help of Atlanta producer Earl On The Beat for “Paint The Town Red.” A renowned trap-rap instrumentalist since the mid-2010s, Earl’s first collaboration with Doja, which was released on August 4, saw him bring together many of the approaches he honed in on earlier in his career.
Before helping craft smash hits like City Girls’ breakout single “Act Up” (2018), Megan Thee Stallion’s Nicki Minaj collaboration “Hot Girl Summer” (2019), and Drake, Lil Yachty, and DaBaby’s “Oprah’s Bank Account” (2020), though, Isaac Earl Bynum got his start making beats in his early teen years. Attending middle and high school with Yachty in Georgia’s capital city, the two elevated together, with Earl earning credits on all of his pal’s first few projects.
However, on top of early Yachty songs like “Out Late” (2016) and “Yacht Club” (2018), as well as the aforementioned “Act Up” which Yachty wrote for JT and Yung Miami of City Girls, Earl’s friendship with the blossoming rapper also earned him even grander credits. Aside from the watershed Drake collaboration on “Oprah’s Bank Account,” Earl was able to feed Drizzy another beat for “Privileged Rappers,” the fifth track on he and 21 Savage’s 2022 joint album Her Loss.
[RELATED: Doja Cat’s “Paint The Town Red” Makes Spotify History]
In fact, because of his efforts in helping put together Her Loss, Earl’s buddy Yachty has been able to transform into Drake’s quasi-right-hand man over the past year, as the two have been spotted together constantly as of late. This is further evidenced by Yachty’s snarky tweet last night (August 25), where he teased Drake fans who were disappointed that his impending LP For All The Dogs did not end up releasing.
Instead of fully hitching himself to the Yachty and Drake bandwagon, though, Earl has used the past couple of years to carve out an impressive career for himself with other mainstream acts, evident in his credits with Doja, Minaj, Lil Baby, Young Thug, Migos, and more. Catching up with him in the midst of “Paint The Town Red”‘s reign and Doja’s months-long Scarlet rollout, Earl spoke with us at American Songwriter about all his achievements noted above, as well as his opinions on the current state of hip-hop.
Read our conversation with Earl On The Beat below.
American Songwriter: Did you think that you had beats that Doja would sound good over, or did you just send her beats you had in your vault that you liked?
Earl On The Beat: “I was kind of in the dark with it, because I was just coming off the Drake thing, the ‘Privileged Rappers’ thing. And it’s like, I like Doja Cat, but at the time, I wasn’t in the mind of her. I was just shooting shit constantly to Drake. I was in that mind space, in that headspace. So when I meet her I’m like, ‘Okay I gotta send these beats.’ But in my head, while I make every style of beat, I’m thinking, ‘I don’t have anything for her at this exact moment. Everything I’ve been making has been Drake.’ So I was just thinking, ‘Let me get on my shit and let me just get right.’ So I sent some (beat) packs I thought would be best and here we are now.”
AS: Did you expect her to pick the beat she did? And did you expect her to sound the way she did over it?
EOTB: “Kinda sorta. I made that beat two years ago and sometimes as a producer, you have to be ahead of the wave. You have to be ahead before the sound catches up if that makes sense. So sometimes you may make certain records that may be years ahead, but they can’t get off right then and there. It may not be ready right now for the sake of the culture at the moment. And maybe it’s years, you know? After the pandemic, things are different, the world’s ready to turn up again, you know what I’m saying? I reworked that beat a little bit, and added some new things to it. That was literally one of the first ones I chose to send. I make everything, but at that moment, I didn’t necessarily have anything for her, but I knew I had that… I love what she did over it.”
AS: In terms of Drake, did “Oprah’s Bank Account” open the floodgates for a relationship, or was that more of a one-time thing?
EOTB: “I feel like that was like a one-time thing for me. But for him and Yachty, that was the beginning of their relationship, that record.”
AS: When Lil Yachty started elevating in the industry, were y’all working on music together consistently, or was it more that y’all were both doing your things individually and it just made sense to eventually bring it all together?
EOTB: “We were making music just to play around. I always made beats for real, I’ve been doing this shit for a long time now. But he would just play around and rap on them a little bit. I didn’t know that he was trying to do that shit for real at first. I didn’t know it was gonna turn into this.
“When you’re growing up, you got those kids that are either super good at sports or super good with technology and know how to use everything. He was that kid, that knew how to use laptops and type without looking at the keyboard at like, six years old. Knowing how to work every aspect of a MacBook and all that. He was like that. So he would record on GarageBand and use auto-tune all the way back then, he was on his shit. So once he was like, ‘I really want to get into it,’ he just started doing it. And I told him, ‘I’m right behind you.’”
AS: I’ve noticed you recently have earned credits with up-and-coming acts like Yeat, Dro Kenji, Dom Corleo, Ken Carson, and more. How did you get introduced to that sort of underground scene?
EOTB: “Coming up with Yachty, you don’t forget where you come from. I wasn’t always making hits. I started off making niche stuff and working with niche artists. I understand that there’s always a new wave.
“Sometimes I’d rather go work with a Ken Carson than whatever artist is big at the moment because it’s new. New energy. New beats. It’s a new approach. Versus, ‘Okay you have a song structure, the beat has to drop at nine seconds, and we have to have the hook right here, and this and that.’ That is cool and fun, but it’s no rules when it’s underground. Shit don’t gotta be mixed. They can make a song tonight and drop that shit tomorrow. That’s what I love about it. Versus this shit. I’ve been waiting for ‘Paint the Town’ to come out for so long, bro. I had to be quiet about that for months.
“I fuck with the young wave. It’s nice. It’s refreshing. You’ve got to have a balance. There’s nothing wrong with the Dojas and the Drakes of the world. But at the same time, you still need the Yeats and the Kens. Because Yeat will soon be the next (Playboi) Carti. The Destroy Lonelys out here, they’re growing.”
AS: So speaking of the underground and new movements, when you got the “Act Up” placement, was that one of the first times you felt you stepped outside of the box?
EOTB: “Definitely. Because right now, there’s a plethora of ‘women’ songs out currently. That’s like the new thing. But before ‘Act Up,’ it was not like that. At the time, Yachty and JT were dating. I knew that before the world did because I used to live with him. And I’m thinking like, ‘Okay, there’s this new artist at the label, let me try to get with them before they fucking blow up.’ That was my whole mindset. This is my bro’s girl at the time, let me shoot him some beats and see if he’ll want to write them a song or give them the beats, or whatever the case may be. So, he was like, ‘Alright, I want to write some shit to this.’ And it ended up being ‘Act Up.’”
AS: Now that it’s been a while since you’ve worked with City Girls or made songs like that, do you think you’ve moved on from that style of music?
“Definitely. I’ve definitely been off that wave for a minute. That’s why I’ve been doing the things that I’ve been doing. It’s hard to be considerate of those things. You’ve got to really have the willpower, have the drive, have the discernment and understanding to know what sessions to choose. What to say yes to and what to say no to, and not feel bad saying no to certain things. Everything is not for me. I don’t want to do certain shit because this person is doing it or because this person is hot right now.
“Why would we box ourselves in? Yes we can work with this one trap rapper that’s got a lot going on, but it’s like, ‘What about all this pop? And this R&B? And some country? And some gospel in there?’ There’s just so many other things that we can do. We can work on all kinds of music, not just one box.”
AS: In terms of your relationship with Yachty, how much do you think it helps a producer to come up alongside an artist?
EOTB: “It can help you but it can hurt you. If you come up and everything is given, it’ll be harder for you when you’re on your own. Let’s just say you come in with an artist, and that artist blows the fuck up. That can definitely put you on. But we’re in a time period where you can come up with an artist and that artist can fall the fuck off quick and you kind of fall off with him. It just depends what the person and the situation is.”
AS: Your “Earl on the beat” producer tag helped to build your reputation early on, how did it come about?
EOTB: “It came from a friend of mine back in the day, her name’s Jade. She just had a nice-sounding voice so I asked her, ‘Can you do me a favor? Can you send me some versions of a tag? Like ‘Earl on the beat,’ ‘Earl did the beat,’ ‘Earl made the beat?’
I really haven’t even been using my tag lately, I’ve been giving it a break for the last two years. Too much of something is doomed to be unappreciated. Sometimes you gotta move like a ninja so people don’t get tired of you. Just go with no tag so they don’t know who it is until they look at the record or the credits and then they’re like, ‘Oh, he did this one. I wouldn’t have ever known.’ You gotta keep it fresh.”
Photo by Joshua Ade / Courtesy On Record
