Exclusive Interview

Jul 15, 2025

Produced by: Rudy Manager

Edited by: Rudy Manager & Andrej Aroch

Ghostrage – “There’s more to music than sitting in front of a computer screen”

From producing for hip-hop heavyweights like Young Dolph, Lil Durk, Future, GloRilla, and King Von to building a career grounded in authenticity and self-made grit, Ghostrage has established himself as a force in modern music production. In this in-depth interview, he reflects on his earliest musical moments—sneaking into his dad’s closet to play guitar as a kid—his evolution into a self-taught producer, and the mindset that’s kept him grounded while stacking major placements. We explore his creative process, the stories behind standout records like “Get Away” and “I AIN’T GOING,” and his take on the role of AI in music. This exclusive interview was conducted by Rudy Manager via video call on June 18, 2025.


Can you share your story of how you first started with music?

I started playing guitar when I was around two or three years old. My dad had this old-school Spanish nylon guitar that had been handed down from my grandfather. Funny enough, I still use it quite a bit in the music I record today. It’s really stood the test of time. Back then, I used to sneak into his closet just to play it.

Even as a kid, I was making up my own songs. I didn’t have the words yet, but I was humming melodies and coming up with real musical ideas—like what a hook or chorus could be. That creative spark started really young for me.

Eventually, I got into drums. I had an iPod Nano loaded with Nirvana and Green Day albums, and I’d teach myself to play the songs by tapping on my pencil box at school. I actually got in trouble for that—ended up getting sent to the principal’s office. But it caught my dad’s attention, and he signed me up for drum lessons. He’s always been incredibly supportive. Still is. He’s one of my favorite people.

Those drum lessons led me to a place called the School of Rock. The movie with Jack Black is actually based on a real place—and I was one of the students there. The person who ran the location I went to was well-connected in the rock scene. So it wasn’t unusual for me to be around people like Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses, Mike Starr from Alice in Chains, or Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction. These were the kinds of people literally in my orbit growing up.

When I was about 11, I started a band called Ash Panda and wrote a lot of the music for it. But, at that age, kids don’t really understand how bands are supposed to work. My dad and I were just talking about this recently—bands aren’t really a democracy. More often than not, it’s one person’s band, especially if that person is writing all the music.

How did you then transition to music production?

I ended up leaving the group I’d put together and started making beats full-time when I was about 14. That’s when I downloaded FL Studio and got my hands on some of the early Lex Luger drum kits that were floating around online for free. A lot of people don’t realize how different things were back then. I’m 27 now, and I’ve been producing for nearly 13 years—almost half my life. When I started, there weren’t many plugins available, and loops weren’t really a thing. You had to learn how to build everything from scratch unless you were sampling.

I cracked everything I could get my hands on—Nexus, Omnisphere, Purity, Xpand!, a bunch of soundfonts, and that Lex Luger kit, was my setup. What really pulled me in was having all that creative energy and too much free time in high school. I wasn’t into sports, wasn’t super social—I mostly kept to myself.

What I loved was the craft of working alone. It blew my mind that I could open a blank project file and end up with something I could export. Even now, I think that’s one of the coolest things about making music: you start with nothing but a blank canvas. And to me, that’s just dope as hell.

What’s your process for improving? Did you have any friends or mentors you worked with on the production side early on?

Not really. When people talk about being “self-made,” I think that term’s a bit exaggerated. I also believe it’s impossible to be truly self-made because music is such a collaborative journey—and I’m very confident in that belief. If you look at some of the greatest producers of all time—Quincy Jones, Dr. Dre, Rick Rubin—they’ve all had a ton of collaborators and people around them helping shape the sound.

That said, I didn’t start working with other people until much later in my career. If you look at my discography, most of my collaborations with other producers didn’t happen until after 2019. Before that, I was focused on honing my craft and sending beats out. I was more interested in building direct relationships with artists, because I felt like I had the production side pretty well covered on my own.

As far as how I improved, I studied beats relentlessly. I’d dive into FLP remakes just to watch how people rebuilt popular instrumentals. I would also listen to instrumentals on their own, without vocals, and found that incredibly valuable. I recommend that to any producer. If there’s a song you love, don’t just listen to the final track—do some digging, find the original instrumental, and study that.

Doing that teaches you a lot. You start to hear what gets mixed out of a track and what elements are turned down—which is critical. It gives you a much deeper understanding of where an artist is supposed to fit in the mix. Because beyond just “there’s a beat and there are vocals,” there’s a whole hierarchy of sounds in an instrumental—some are crucial to the listener’s experience, others not so much.

It helped me understand what artists are drawn to—what they consider ear candy—and what sounds are just filler. I started realizing that in a lot of my favorite songs, half the elements in the beat weren’t even necessary. You could remove them and the song would still work. On the flip side, listening to a beat and then hearing how an artist delivered on it taught me what kind of rhythm and pocket they needed to really shine.

That’s how I developed my style—by studying instrumentals by myself, then comparing them to the final versions. It gave me a really nuanced sense of how to make space for an artist. If you listen to my productions, they’re not overly complex. They’re layered and dynamic, but there’s usually just one or two core melodies—maybe three or four supporting sounds that enhance the feel. Everything revolves around a central idea, and I build the entire record around that.

Who were some of the first artists, or what were some of the first projects, you worked on?

The first major album I ever produced on was actually for Rico Nasty, back in the day. I did a song called “Oreo” on one of her projects. Around the same time, I also worked with Fetty Wap—back when he was one of the biggest artists in the world, around 2016.

That was a huge turning point in my career. I remember getting a check for $5,000 when I was 18, and it completely changed my perspective on what was possible with music. Honestly, that one check is half the reason I’m still here. I came from nothing. At that point in my life, I had bet everything on music. I don’t have a college degree. I’m very street smart, but I didn’t really know how to navigate the business world or operate in the capitalist system. So I needed art—needed music—to be my way forward financially.

And I was scared. Like, really scared. I was basically homeless at the time, bouncing between different Airbnbs. So getting that placement was huge. It was like proof that I could actually do this—that this could really be my future. It’s one thing to believe you can make it—everyone thinks they might. But I needed some kind of tangible evidence that I was on the right path. And those two songs—Rico Nasty’s “Oreo” and the record with Fetty Wap—were exactly that for me.

Outside of those, I was producing for a lot of underground artists in the SoundCloud scene. Omen Xiii and 93FEETOFSMOKE are two good examples. Before I ever worked with anyone in the mainstream music industry, I built my foundation in the underground scene, especially around LA.

I’ve always been pretty open about this—I prefer working with artists over working with other producers. I love being hands-on—building an entire song with the artist. It’s not uncommon for me to have an artist in the studio, play them an idea I’ve been working on, and then customize it in real-time based on their vision. A lot of the time, if you hear a track I solo-produced, it’s not the original beat I made. It started as an idea I played in the session, and then we rebuilt it together—adding things, taking things out—until we landed on the final version with the artist’s input.

That kind of collaboration has been part of my process since the beginning. My first real work was with a mix of underground artists and a few mid-tier names. That’s how I got my foot in the door.

When you start working on an idea from scratch, how do you approach the composition?

Well, I’ve got a full synth rack. I use my Prophet, my Moog Grandmother, and the UDO Super 6. I’ve also got a pedalboard—though I don’t use it all that much. I feel like it’s more useful for making one-shots that I’ll use later when I’m building beats. I’ve also got a whole rack of guitars in the back.

When I start a beat, it usually goes one of two ways. Sometimes I literally hear the full idea in my head—like the entire beat is already there. And then I just try to recreate it exactly how I imagined it. That’s happened quite a few times. “Get Away” from Young Dolph was like that. I actually heard that whole loop in my head—melody, singing, everything—months before I ever laid it down.

Funny enough, a lot of people think that part is a sample, but it’s not. That’s actually me singing. The voice in Dolph’s song that says “I wanna get away”—that’s me, just with a lot of effects on it. I had that melody and hook playing in my head for months before it ever became a finished track.

If I don’t already hear the full song in my head, then I usually start with just a small idea—like two or three notes that I like. From there, I try to make them feel big. When I’m building a melody, I want it to be something a kid could remember—super simple and super catchy. That’s the kind of stuff that sticks with people.

So I’ll start with those few notes and build an entire melody around them. Then I layer sounds to make it feel more complex and emotional. Some of my favorite songs are actually very simple when you strip them down.

For example, “Don’t Forget” by Lil Yachty or “Out The Mud” by Lil Baby and Future—both are built around just a few notes. It’s literally just a super simple melody, but it feels big because of how I layered and structured everything. That’s always the goal—one central melody that everything else orbits around. Once I have that, I build from there.

Do you have any tips for other producers on how to layer sounds to make a track sound bigger?

A lot of it comes down to processing, ambience, and knowing how to manage frequencies. When you look at an EQ, the mid-range is usually where most of the audible information sits—and it’s also where rappers tend to live in the mix. So when you’re stacking sounds, you have to do it in a way that feels big but doesn’t interfere with the vocal. I spend a lot of time layering different textures—atmospheric sounds, pads, reverb-heavy elements, all of that.

One of the craziest things I’ve done in my production process was taking an entire beat and routing it to a single mixer channel, side-chaining the whole thing, and cranking the reverb on that channel all the way up. Then I’d EQ out the low frequencies from that reverb return and turn the volume way down—just enough to fill in the background. A lot of the size in a beat doesn’t come from the main idea—it comes from what’s happening underneath it.

Who were some of the first artists, or what were some of the first projects, you worked on?

The first major album I ever produced on was actually for Rico Nasty, back in the day. I did a song called “Oreo” on one of her projects. Around the same time, I also worked with Fetty Wap—back when he was one of the biggest artists in the world, around 2016.

That was a huge turning point in my career. I remember getting a check for $5,000 when I was 18, and it completely changed my perspective on what was possible with music. Honestly, that one check is half the reason I’m still here. I came from nothing. At that point in my life, I had bet everything on music. I don’t have a college degree. I’m very street smart, but I didn’t really know how to navigate the business world or operate in the capitalist system. So I needed art—needed music—to be my way forward financially.

And I was scared. Like, really scared. I was basically homeless at the time, bouncing between different Airbnbs. So getting that placement was huge. It was like proof that I could actually do this—that this could really be my future. It’s one thing to believe you can make it—everyone thinks they might. But I needed some kind of tangible evidence that I was on the right path. And those two songs—Rico Nasty’s “Oreo” and the record with Fetty Wap—were exactly that for me.

Outside of those, I was producing for a lot of underground artists in the SoundCloud scene. Omen Xiii and 93FEETOFSMOKE are two good examples. Before I ever worked with anyone in the mainstream music industry, I built my foundation in the underground scene, especially around LA.

I’ve always been pretty open about this—I prefer working with artists over working with other producers. I love being hands-on—building an entire song with the artist. It’s not uncommon for me to have an artist in the studio, play them an idea I’ve been working on, and then customize it in real-time based on their vision. A lot of the time, if you hear a track I solo-produced, it’s not the original beat I made. It started as an idea I played in the session, and then we rebuilt it together—adding things, taking things out—until we landed on the final version with the artist’s input.

That kind of collaboration has been part of my process since the beginning. My first real work was with a mix of underground artists and a few mid-tier names. That’s how I got my foot in the door.

When you start working on an idea from scratch, how do you approach the composition?

Well, I’ve got a full synth rack. I use my Prophet, my Moog Grandmother, and the UDO Super 6. I’ve also got a pedalboard—though I don’t use it all that much. I feel like it’s more useful for making one-shots that I’ll use later when I’m building beats. I’ve also got a whole rack of guitars in the back.

When I start a beat, it usually goes one of two ways. Sometimes I literally hear the full idea in my head—like the entire beat is already there. And then I just try to recreate it exactly how I imagined it. That’s happened quite a few times. “Get Away” from Young Dolph was like that. I actually heard that whole loop in my head—melody, singing, everything—months before I ever laid it down.

Funny enough, a lot of people think that part is a sample, but it’s not. That’s actually me singing. The voice in Dolph’s song that says “I wanna get away”—that’s me, just with a lot of effects on it. I had that melody and hook playing in my head for months before it ever became a finished track.

If I don’t already hear the full song in my head, then I usually start with just a small idea—like two or three notes that I like. From there, I try to make them feel big. When I’m building a melody, I want it to be something a kid could remember—super simple and super catchy. That’s the kind of stuff that sticks with people.

So I’ll start with those few notes and build an entire melody around them. Then I layer sounds to make it feel more complex and emotional. Some of my favorite songs are actually very simple when you strip them down.

For example, “Don’t Forget” by Lil Yachty or “Out The Mud” by Lil Baby and Future—both are built around just a few notes. It’s literally just a super simple melody, but it feels big because of how I layered and structured everything. That’s always the goal—one central melody that everything else orbits around. Once I have that, I build from there.

Do you have any tips for other producers on how to layer sounds to make a track sound bigger?

A lot of it comes down to processing, ambience, and knowing how to manage frequencies. When you look at an EQ, the mid-range is usually where most of the audible information sits—and it’s also where rappers tend to live in the mix. So when you’re stacking sounds, you have to do it in a way that feels big but doesn’t interfere with the vocal. I spend a lot of time layering different textures—atmospheric sounds, pads, reverb-heavy elements, all of that.

One of the craziest things I’ve done in my production process was taking an entire beat and routing it to a single mixer channel, side-chaining the whole thing, and cranking the reverb on that channel all the way up. Then I’d EQ out the low frequencies from that reverb return and turn the volume way down—just enough to fill in the background. A lot of the size in a beat doesn’t come from the main idea—it comes from what’s happening underneath it.

Who were some of the first artists, or what were some of the first projects, you worked on?

The first major album I ever produced on was actually for Rico Nasty, back in the day. I did a song called “Oreo” on one of her projects. Around the same time, I also worked with Fetty Wap—back when he was one of the biggest artists in the world, around 2016.

That was a huge turning point in my career. I remember getting a check for $5,000 when I was 18, and it completely changed my perspective on what was possible with music. Honestly, that one check is half the reason I’m still here. I came from nothing. At that point in my life, I had bet everything on music. I don’t have a college degree. I’m very street smart, but I didn’t really know how to navigate the business world or operate in the capitalist system. So I needed art—needed music—to be my way forward financially.

And I was scared. Like, really scared. I was basically homeless at the time, bouncing between different Airbnbs. So getting that placement was huge. It was like proof that I could actually do this—that this could really be my future. It’s one thing to believe you can make it—everyone thinks they might. But I needed some kind of tangible evidence that I was on the right path. And those two songs—Rico Nasty’s “Oreo” and the record with Fetty Wap—were exactly that for me.

Outside of those, I was producing for a lot of underground artists in the SoundCloud scene. Omen Xiii and 93FEETOFSMOKE are two good examples. Before I ever worked with anyone in the mainstream music industry, I built my foundation in the underground scene, especially around LA.

I’ve always been pretty open about this—I prefer working with artists over working with other producers. I love being hands-on—building an entire song with the artist. It’s not uncommon for me to have an artist in the studio, play them an idea I’ve been working on, and then customize it in real-time based on their vision. A lot of the time, if you hear a track I solo-produced, it’s not the original beat I made. It started as an idea I played in the session, and then we rebuilt it together—adding things, taking things out—until we landed on the final version with the artist’s input.

That kind of collaboration has been part of my process since the beginning. My first real work was with a mix of underground artists and a few mid-tier names. That’s how I got my foot in the door.

When you start working on an idea from scratch, how do you approach the composition?

Well, I’ve got a full synth rack. I use my Prophet, my Moog Grandmother, and the UDO Super 6. I’ve also got a pedalboard—though I don’t use it all that much. I feel like it’s more useful for making one-shots that I’ll use later when I’m building beats. I’ve also got a whole rack of guitars in the back.

When I start a beat, it usually goes one of two ways. Sometimes I literally hear the full idea in my head—like the entire beat is already there. And then I just try to recreate it exactly how I imagined it. That’s happened quite a few times. “Get Away” from Young Dolph was like that. I actually heard that whole loop in my head—melody, singing, everything—months before I ever laid it down.

Funny enough, a lot of people think that part is a sample, but it’s not. That’s actually me singing. The voice in Dolph’s song that says “I wanna get away”—that’s me, just with a lot of effects on it. I had that melody and hook playing in my head for months before it ever became a finished track.

If I don’t already hear the full song in my head, then I usually start with just a small idea—like two or three notes that I like. From there, I try to make them feel big. When I’m building a melody, I want it to be something a kid could remember—super simple and super catchy. That’s the kind of stuff that sticks with people.

So I’ll start with those few notes and build an entire melody around them. Then I layer sounds to make it feel more complex and emotional. Some of my favorite songs are actually very simple when you strip them down.

For example, “Don’t Forget” by Lil Yachty or “Out The Mud” by Lil Baby and Future—both are built around just a few notes. It’s literally just a super simple melody, but it feels big because of how I layered and structured everything. That’s always the goal—one central melody that everything else orbits around. Once I have that, I build from there.

Do you have any tips for other producers on how to layer sounds to make a track sound bigger?

A lot of it comes down to processing, ambience, and knowing how to manage frequencies. When you look at an EQ, the mid-range is usually where most of the audible information sits—and it’s also where rappers tend to live in the mix. So when you’re stacking sounds, you have to do it in a way that feels big but doesn’t interfere with the vocal. I spend a lot of time layering different textures—atmospheric sounds, pads, reverb-heavy elements, all of that.

One of the craziest things I’ve done in my production process was taking an entire beat and routing it to a single mixer channel, side-chaining the whole thing, and cranking the reverb on that channel all the way up. Then I’d EQ out the low frequencies from that reverb return and turn the volume way down—just enough to fill in the background. A lot of the size in a beat doesn’t come from the main idea—it comes from what’s happening underneath it.

Do you have a creative routine, like treating it like a nine-to-five or listening to music to get inspired?

The day this ever starts to feel like a job for me, I’m quitting. No way—this isn’t a job. I have fun, and I happen to get paid for it.

As far as my creative routine goes, I think one of the most important things—and it’s something not talked about enough—is living life outside of music. I see so many producers online saying stuff like, “I made five beats today,” or “I make 10 beats a day, bro!” But honestly? No. Go outside. Live your life.

Most of my ideas don’t come when I’m sitting down trying to make music. They show up before I even touch a keyboard. Or sometimes I’ll be in front of the MIDI and something just clicks—but the best ideas tend to come when I’m not even thinking about making music.

I’ve never once sat down and said, “I’m going to make a beat for Future,” and then had Future hop on it. Same with Lil Baby. I’ve never consciously made a beat for an artist. I’ve never sat down, made a beat for someone, and had it placed. It’s more so that sonically, we were aligned at that time. The GloRilla beat was just me having fun. For “Get Away,” I never imagined Dolph getting on that. When I found out he did, I was completely thrown off—in a good way.

I spend a lot of time outside, just living. I read a lot. I skate around LA—sometimes for an hour or two. And then, when I come back, an idea will just hit me. That’s what people don’t always realize—there’s more to music than sitting in front of a computer screen.

Think about it—music is such a solitary process nowadays with how tech has changed things. People wonder why their beats sound stale, but they’re just sitting alone in a room with their laptop for hours on end. Of course it gets stale eventually. You can only do that for so long before it starts feeling repetitive.

Music production—the actual craft—is just the medium. The creativity comes from outside. From the world. My studio setup, FL Studio, all my synths—they’re not where the creativity comes from. They’re just the conduit for it. The real ideas, the inspiration—that all starts out there, in real life.

What’s your opinion about the use of AI in music production?

I’m not a fan—at least not in the creative sense. But I am a fan of humanizing AI, and I do use it that way. For example, if I’m putting together a folder of 20 beats to send to an artist, it’s not unusual for me to use an AI program to get input on which ones might best suit their style. Or I might use AI to double-check my mixes.

I subscribe to ChatGPT—I pay for the $20/month version—and I’ll often upload a pack of beats to get feedback on the mix. I’ll say something like, “Can you check these and let me know if there are any frequencies I should cut? I’m sending this pack to such-and-such artist.” Then it’ll analyze the files and say something like, “This artist typically works in this vocal range—this beat sounds great, but you might want to lower this frequency on that one,” etc.

I treat AI like a proofreader—kind of like having someone review your essays back in high school or college. That’s how I use it: as a collaborative tool. I’ve never used AI to start a creative idea. It’s more of a mini-assistant, and it’s made my workflow better.

There have even been times when ChatGPT suggested I shouldn’t send a certain beat to an artist based on stylistic mismatches—and then when I did send it, the artist came back with exactly that same feedback. Later, I sent the beats AI did recommend, and the artist was like, “Yo, what the f**k?”

But AI should never be the end-all-be-all—and in my opinion, it shouldn’t even be the starting point. I see ads for AI music tools, and I don’t use any of them. I think they remove the human element from music.

If someone sent me an idea and I found out it was generated by AI, I’d stop working with them. There are just certain things where I don’t believe AI belongs—especially when it comes to the creative process. I just don’t agree with that.

Can you share how you made “Never Imagined” by Lil Durk featuring Future?

That idea came from a studio session. And here’s another tip for producers: book studio time. Getting out of your usual space forces you to be creative in a new way. You’re outside of your home, surrounded by different tools, different energy.

There was this studio in Pasadena I used to book. I’m not sure if it’s still there because of the fires. It had pianos, guitar amps, drums. It had this whole rock-band kind of setup. I’d book a five-hour block for a few hundred bucks, set up my computer, mic everything properly, bring my guitars, and knock out five or six loops in one sitting.

The same session where I made “Never Imagined” is also where I made “Real Oppy” for King Von and G Herbo. All in the same day.

For “Never Imagined,” it started with the piano chords. Then there’s that little guitar line in the background—you can hear it in the song. It kind of echoes in the mix, very simple, very raw. What’s funny is, that particular record has almost no layering. No ambient effects, no reverb tricks, nothing fancy.

The whole loop was basically a raw live take. No EQ, no compression, no gain staging, no limiting—just pure recordings. I think what made the beat sound so big was actually the ambience of the room I was recording in. It wasn’t created with any VSTs, except for the sub bass at the beginning—that was from Omnisphere. But other than that, the entire loop was live: piano, guitar, and that’s pretty much it.

There’s something about live instruments—they carry a depth and feeling that’s really hard to replicate digitally. That session was a good example of that.

And a little side note people might not know: my left hand doesn’t work that well. I was attacked by a dog when I was a kid, and I’ve still got the scars. So when I play piano, I can’t really use my left hand. I usually have to record in two takes—one for the chords with my right hand, then another for the top-line or melody.

So for that track, I laid down the chords, recorded the arpeggiated piano part on top, played the guitar, added some bass to give it more weight, and then exported it. That was just one of five loops I made that day—and two of them ended up getting placed.

Is there a favorite production that holds a special place in your heart?

There are actually two. “Get Away” by Young Dolph and “I AIN’T GOING” by GloRilla. Those are my top two favorite songs that I’ve ever worked on.

“Get Away” is especially meaningful to me because—like I mentioned earlier—I heard that entire song in my head months before I ever made it. I heard the vocal sample, the chords, the melody—everything. The voice I originally imagined on the track wasn’t mine. I was picturing a woman singing it, but the vocalist I had in mind was in college at the time and caught up with finals, so I couldn’t get her to record it. So I thought, “Okay, let me just mimic what I hear in my head.” I went into falsetto and recorded the vocal myself. That whole process was insane—and it’s the only song in my entire catalog that sounds like that.

I also think “Get Away” showed Dolph at one of his most vulnerable points as an artist. If you really listen to the lyrics, he’s incredibly open on that record. And I say that as someone who’s very familiar with his work—I’ve always been a huge fan of both his music and him as a person. He was genuinely one of the kindest people I’ve ever spoken to in the music industry. So to be a part of what I think was one of his most human and personal statements on tape—it meant a lot to me.

“I AIN’T GOING” is the other one. That beat came out of a very weird, transitional point in my life. I made it, and about a month or two later it got picked up. I’m pretty sure it was one of the last songs added to the album. I sent a pack of beats to Ace C (shoutout to him—one of my favorite people) and told him, “Whichever ones you want to work on, let me know and I’ll send you the stems.” He picked a few, and I sent him the eight-bar loop for “I AIN’T GOING.” Then I heard nothing for a while—until two weeks before the project dropped. I got a text from him saying, “Yo, we got one on the album.”

I come from a broken home—and I know a lot of people who do. That’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough in rap music. And when I realized I had accidentally helped create what’s essentially an anti–domestic violence anthem, I got chills. I hit play and heard that hook—and just smiled. GloRilla’s talking about defending herself, refusing to take any s**t—it was empowering as hell. So to be a part of a record that made a statement like that and still sounded hard? That’s easily one of my favorite songs.

What advice would you give to upcoming music producers who want to build their careers and start working with established artists?

Get in the mix. Go to different places. Meet people. One person knows another who knows someone else. You can bump into the right person in real life.

The absolute worst thing a producer can do is just sit at home making beats all day. Everybody has beats. That’s not enough. What separates you isn’t just your talent—it’s your ability to connect with people. A lot of producers don’t know how to socialize or navigate different environments—but that’s a skill just as important as your sound.

Honestly, half the reason I get in certain rooms isn’t just because I make good music—it’s because people enjoy working with me. They like talking to me—and that’s a very important skill to have. You can have the craziest beats in the world, but if you’re super socially awkward or hard to be around, people won’t want to work with you. But when you’re someone people genuinely want to be around, it gives them even more reason to keep you in the room.

And the only way to develop those social skills—and to actually network—is to go out and live life. There’s no shortcut. You have to be outside. Go to studios, go to events—go anywhere that gets you out of your apartment. That’s where things happen.

I can’t even count how many artists I’ve bumped into just walking around L.A., skating, or hitting a session. It’s wild. But none of that would’ve happened if I stayed home.

Where do you see yourself in five years, both professionally and personally?

Multi-millionaire. Songs with Drake, Future, Thug. I see myself working more hands-on with artists I discover and develop—maybe even starting a collective or launching my own label. Working with Travis would be fire too. But really, I just want to keep building on what I’m already doing.

Personally, I just want to keep growing. When I look back at who I was when I started making music versus who I am now, it’s a night and day difference. It’s wild. It’s been really fun to see that progression. I imagine I’ll continue to elevate spiritually, financially, emotionally, and mentally. I want to have a bigger production catalog, collaborate more deeply with artists, and be surrounded by people I genuinely enjoy building with.

One of my favorite things is working closely with an artist—like I did with Kura. I produced an entire EP for him and was listed as a co-artist. I handled every track on that project. That kind of hands-on work is what I love most. I’d love to keep doing that, but on a bigger scale, with even bigger artists. And getting rich in the process. Not that money’s ever been my main motivation—but it doesn’t hurt.

Follow Ghostrage on Instagram: @ghostrage

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