Jameil Aossey’s journey from a kid experimenting with a Yamaha DJX keyboard to becoming a Grammy-winning producer is a story of persistence and creativity. He started by making beats in his bedroom, and that passion eventually led him to work on major projects such as Eminem's The Death of Slim Shady and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Despite facing personal challenges, Aossey never lost his drive. A significant turning point was his partnership with super producer Symbolyc One (S1) to form the duo S1Λ0. In this Studio Talks interview, Jameil opens up about his creative process, the lucky breaks that propelled his career, and offers advice to aspiring music producers.
How did you get into music production?
My parents divorced when I was 10, and we moved to Ohio. I think I struggled emotionally during that time as a kid, and I always had a passion for music. I believe that childhood trauma really led me to start creating music myself. My mom bought me a Yamaha DJX keyboard. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a hundred-dollar keyboard with some sequencing capabilities. I started learning how to sequence on it, and from there, my interest in music kept growing as I went through high school. I always listened to all sorts of different music, and I wanted to be a radio DJ at that time, too.
So, I looked in the phone book—back when we still had phone books—and found a studio downtown. I was working at a pizza joint after school during the week, and on the weekends, I would spend my money at the studio. The nice guy who ran the studio taught me how to engineer. I was paying 50 bucks an hour every weekend, coming in, making beats, creating ideas, and learning. This was in the early days of Pro Tools, which wasn’t as popular then as it is now. I was sequencing on a Korg Triton, and eventually, he gave me the keys to the studio. After a year of paying for studio time, he let me come in on the weekends to experiment all day. That really helped me establish a solid foundation in music creation and learn the fundamentals by having the time to apply them. When you’re on the clock, you often feel rushed, thinking, "I’ve got an hour left; I better hurry up." As a kid, I think it was critical to have the freedom to explore without a time limit, especially when you can’t afford to buy that kind of equipment to have at home. That’s how I got started as a teenager.
Fast forward to 2012 or 2013. I took a random trip to LA for the ASCAP Expo. I was working with a local artist from Ohio, and we decided to take him to LA. I wasn’t even going to go, but his manager said, “Hey, you should come anyway. We’ll join a critique session.” So, we did. We walked in, sat down, and the critique judge was S1. At that time, I didn’t know at the time how things would turn out 10 years later, but he reviewed the track and gave some good feedback. He asked, “Who made the beat?” I said, “I did!” He responded, “Man, that’s incredible.”
Later that night, I was in a producer showcase—it was like a beat battle. I got destroyed. It was terrible; it just did not go well at all. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought a showcase would be about showcasing production, but it was more about bangers. S1 was a judge in that showcase. On stage, he said, “Man, after what I heard from you earlier, I expected more out of you.” I took that to heart, thinking, “Dang, go figure that would happen.” After I walked off stage, he gave me his business card and said, “Hey, we should follow up when you get back. Hit me up.” We used iChat for about a year, maybe 18 months, and I kept doing more battles and building that relationship. He was mentoring me, teaching me, and eventually, after paying my dues and proving my consistency, he offered me a deal in 2014.
Jameil Aossey’s journey from a kid experimenting with a Yamaha DJX keyboard to becoming a Grammy-winning producer is a story of persistence and creativity. He started by making beats in his bedroom, and that passion eventually led him to work on major projects such as Eminem's The Death of Slim Shady and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Despite facing personal challenges, Aossey never lost his drive. A significant turning point was his partnership with super producer Symbolyc One (S1) to form the duo S1Λ0. In this Studio Talks interview, Jameil opens up about his creative process, the lucky breaks that propelled his career, and offers advice to aspiring music producers.
How did you get into music production?
My parents divorced when I was 10, and we moved to Ohio. I think I struggled emotionally during that time as a kid, and I always had a passion for music. I believe that childhood trauma really led me to start creating music myself. My mom bought me a Yamaha DJX keyboard. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a hundred-dollar keyboard with some sequencing capabilities. I started learning how to sequence on it, and from there, my interest in music kept growing as I went through high school. I always listened to all sorts of different music, and I wanted to be a radio DJ at that time, too.
So, I looked in the phone book—back when we still had phone books—and found a studio downtown. I was working at a pizza joint after school during the week, and on the weekends, I would spend my money at the studio. The nice guy who ran the studio taught me how to engineer. I was paying 50 bucks an hour every weekend, coming in, making beats, creating ideas, and learning. This was in the early days of Pro Tools, which wasn’t as popular then as it is now. I was sequencing on a Korg Triton, and eventually, he gave me the keys to the studio. After a year of paying for studio time, he let me come in on the weekends to experiment all day. That really helped me establish a solid foundation in music creation and learn the fundamentals by having the time to apply them. When you’re on the clock, you often feel rushed, thinking, "I’ve got an hour left; I better hurry up." As a kid, I think it was critical to have the freedom to explore without a time limit, especially when you can’t afford to buy that kind of equipment to have at home. That’s how I got started as a teenager.
Fast forward to 2012 or 2013. I took a random trip to LA for the ASCAP Expo. I was working with a local artist from Ohio, and we decided to take him to LA. I wasn’t even going to go, but his manager said, “Hey, you should come anyway. We’ll join a critique session.” So, we did. We walked in, sat down, and the critique judge was S1. At that time, I didn’t know at the time how things would turn out 10 years later, but he reviewed the track and gave some good feedback. He asked, “Who made the beat?” I said, “I did!” He responded, “Man, that’s incredible.”
Later that night, I was in a producer showcase—it was like a beat battle. I got destroyed. It was terrible; it just did not go well at all. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought a showcase would be about showcasing production, but it was more about bangers. S1 was a judge in that showcase. On stage, he said, “Man, after what I heard from you earlier, I expected more out of you.” I took that to heart, thinking, “Dang, go figure that would happen.” After I walked off stage, he gave me his business card and said, “Hey, we should follow up when you get back. Hit me up.” We used iChat for about a year, maybe 18 months, and I kept doing more battles and building that relationship. He was mentoring me, teaching me, and eventually, after paying my dues and proving my consistency, he offered me a deal in 2014.
Jameil Aossey’s journey from a kid experimenting with a Yamaha DJX keyboard to becoming a Grammy-winning producer is a story of persistence and creativity. He started by making beats in his bedroom, and that passion eventually led him to work on major projects such as Eminem's The Death of Slim Shady and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Despite facing personal challenges, Aossey never lost his drive. A significant turning point was his partnership with super producer Symbolyc One (S1) to form the duo S1Λ0. In this Studio Talks interview, Jameil opens up about his creative process, the lucky breaks that propelled his career, and offers advice to aspiring music producers.
How did you get into music production?
My parents divorced when I was 10, and we moved to Ohio. I think I struggled emotionally during that time as a kid, and I always had a passion for music. I believe that childhood trauma really led me to start creating music myself. My mom bought me a Yamaha DJX keyboard. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a hundred-dollar keyboard with some sequencing capabilities. I started learning how to sequence on it, and from there, my interest in music kept growing as I went through high school. I always listened to all sorts of different music, and I wanted to be a radio DJ at that time, too.
So, I looked in the phone book—back when we still had phone books—and found a studio downtown. I was working at a pizza joint after school during the week, and on the weekends, I would spend my money at the studio. The nice guy who ran the studio taught me how to engineer. I was paying 50 bucks an hour every weekend, coming in, making beats, creating ideas, and learning. This was in the early days of Pro Tools, which wasn’t as popular then as it is now. I was sequencing on a Korg Triton, and eventually, he gave me the keys to the studio. After a year of paying for studio time, he let me come in on the weekends to experiment all day. That really helped me establish a solid foundation in music creation and learn the fundamentals by having the time to apply them. When you’re on the clock, you often feel rushed, thinking, "I’ve got an hour left; I better hurry up." As a kid, I think it was critical to have the freedom to explore without a time limit, especially when you can’t afford to buy that kind of equipment to have at home. That’s how I got started as a teenager.
Fast forward to 2012 or 2013. I took a random trip to LA for the ASCAP Expo. I was working with a local artist from Ohio, and we decided to take him to LA. I wasn’t even going to go, but his manager said, “Hey, you should come anyway. We’ll join a critique session.” So, we did. We walked in, sat down, and the critique judge was S1. At that time, I didn’t know at the time how things would turn out 10 years later, but he reviewed the track and gave some good feedback. He asked, “Who made the beat?” I said, “I did!” He responded, “Man, that’s incredible.”
Later that night, I was in a producer showcase—it was like a beat battle. I got destroyed. It was terrible; it just did not go well at all. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought a showcase would be about showcasing production, but it was more about bangers. S1 was a judge in that showcase. On stage, he said, “Man, after what I heard from you earlier, I expected more out of you.” I took that to heart, thinking, “Dang, go figure that would happen.” After I walked off stage, he gave me his business card and said, “Hey, we should follow up when you get back. Hit me up.” We used iChat for about a year, maybe 18 months, and I kept doing more battles and building that relationship. He was mentoring me, teaching me, and eventually, after paying my dues and proving my consistency, he offered me a deal in 2014.
What inspires you when you start working on a new track? Can you share the creative process behind your initial ideas?
I've always been inspired by unusual things and strange devices. Typically, my favorite way to create is to start with something unique—a sound that no one else has—or by picking up a noise box or some kind of gadget and trying to extract a texture or tone from it. Sometimes, I'll let it run for five or ten minutes, hit record, and see what we get. Then I go back, chop it up, and look for little moments in the recording. That's usually how I love to start.
However, when you're working on projects with specific briefs, it’s typically more challenging because you can’t experiment in the same way from the start. In those cases, I’ll sit down, review the criteria, and begin creating some sort of skeleton idea, almost like throwing paint on a canvas. Then, I might incorporate a unique element afterward. I really believe in having an element of uniqueness in some form, even if it’s just one aspect. So, I'm always looking for that unique element.
You have a placement on Eminem's most recent album, The Death of Slim Shady, where you produced the song "Head Honcho." I’m curious—how did this collaboration come together, and can you share the backstory behind this track?
It's pretty incredible how it happened. The track was made around May of last year, 2023. I sent it to my manager, and he hit me back, saying, "Man, this is perfect for Eminem. Good thing you marked it." And I was like, "What do you mean I marked it? I put 'Em' because it's in E minor." It was just the song key. So, what happened was a simple misunderstanding. He thought I had marked it specifically for Eminem, but I had actually just labeled it with the key.
I usually tag my tracks with the tempo and key, and for whatever reason, with this particular one, he just thought it would be perfect for Eminem. So, they sent it off without giving it much more thought. A couple of days later, they said they wanted it, and we were just like, "You've got to be kidding me; that's how it happened?" We thought, "Hey, if this actually makes it onto the album, what a story that would be."
Fast forward to this year, just a couple of weeks before the album came out, we found out it was going to be included, but we were still waiting for the paperwork to make sure it was official. A lesson learned from past experiences is that you really don’t know until midnight the night it drops whether you actually made it onto the album. So, an accidental mistake with a tag turned into a track. It’s crazy.
What inspires you when you start working on a new track? Can you share the creative process behind your initial ideas?
I've always been inspired by unusual things and strange devices. Typically, my favorite way to create is to start with something unique—a sound that no one else has—or by picking up a noise box or some kind of gadget and trying to extract a texture or tone from it. Sometimes, I'll let it run for five or ten minutes, hit record, and see what we get. Then I go back, chop it up, and look for little moments in the recording. That's usually how I love to start.
However, when you're working on projects with specific briefs, it’s typically more challenging because you can’t experiment in the same way from the start. In those cases, I’ll sit down, review the criteria, and begin creating some sort of skeleton idea, almost like throwing paint on a canvas. Then, I might incorporate a unique element afterward. I really believe in having an element of uniqueness in some form, even if it’s just one aspect. So, I'm always looking for that unique element.
You have a placement on Eminem's most recent album, The Death of Slim Shady, where you produced the song "Head Honcho." I’m curious—how did this collaboration come together, and can you share the backstory behind this track?
It's pretty incredible how it happened. The track was made around May of last year, 2023. I sent it to my manager, and he hit me back, saying, "Man, this is perfect for Eminem. Good thing you marked it." And I was like, "What do you mean I marked it? I put 'Em' because it's in E minor." It was just the song key. So, what happened was a simple misunderstanding. He thought I had marked it specifically for Eminem, but I had actually just labeled it with the key.
I usually tag my tracks with the tempo and key, and for whatever reason, with this particular one, he just thought it would be perfect for Eminem. So, they sent it off without giving it much more thought. A couple of days later, they said they wanted it, and we were just like, "You've got to be kidding me; that's how it happened?" We thought, "Hey, if this actually makes it onto the album, what a story that would be."
Fast forward to this year, just a couple of weeks before the album came out, we found out it was going to be included, but we were still waiting for the paperwork to make sure it was official. A lesson learned from past experiences is that you really don’t know until midnight the night it drops whether you actually made it onto the album. So, an accidental mistake with a tag turned into a track. It’s crazy.
What inspires you when you start working on a new track? Can you share the creative process behind your initial ideas?
I've always been inspired by unusual things and strange devices. Typically, my favorite way to create is to start with something unique—a sound that no one else has—or by picking up a noise box or some kind of gadget and trying to extract a texture or tone from it. Sometimes, I'll let it run for five or ten minutes, hit record, and see what we get. Then I go back, chop it up, and look for little moments in the recording. That's usually how I love to start.
However, when you're working on projects with specific briefs, it’s typically more challenging because you can’t experiment in the same way from the start. In those cases, I’ll sit down, review the criteria, and begin creating some sort of skeleton idea, almost like throwing paint on a canvas. Then, I might incorporate a unique element afterward. I really believe in having an element of uniqueness in some form, even if it’s just one aspect. So, I'm always looking for that unique element.
You have a placement on Eminem's most recent album, The Death of Slim Shady, where you produced the song "Head Honcho." I’m curious—how did this collaboration come together, and can you share the backstory behind this track?
It's pretty incredible how it happened. The track was made around May of last year, 2023. I sent it to my manager, and he hit me back, saying, "Man, this is perfect for Eminem. Good thing you marked it." And I was like, "What do you mean I marked it? I put 'Em' because it's in E minor." It was just the song key. So, what happened was a simple misunderstanding. He thought I had marked it specifically for Eminem, but I had actually just labeled it with the key.
I usually tag my tracks with the tempo and key, and for whatever reason, with this particular one, he just thought it would be perfect for Eminem. So, they sent it off without giving it much more thought. A couple of days later, they said they wanted it, and we were just like, "You've got to be kidding me; that's how it happened?" We thought, "Hey, if this actually makes it onto the album, what a story that would be."
Fast forward to this year, just a couple of weeks before the album came out, we found out it was going to be included, but we were still waiting for the paperwork to make sure it was official. A lesson learned from past experiences is that you really don’t know until midnight the night it drops whether you actually made it onto the album. So, an accidental mistake with a tag turned into a track. It’s crazy.
I’d also like to talk about Beyoncé because you had a few tracks on her Grammy-winning album, Renaissance. How did this collaboration happen?
It’s a great story. So, let's rewind to COVID-2020. S1 and I, like everyone else, were shut down. It was this strange moment in time where we were all trying to reidentify with who we were at the time. We decided, "Hey, let's focus on creating things we're really passionate about." It's easy to get caught up in doing projects just because we're capable, but that doesn't mean we resonate with them in some way. We can all create a wide range of things, but the ones that truly inspire us are what we should be focusing on.
At that time, we decided to dive into our unique, left-field type of sound and really find a way to bring it to life now that we had the time. So, we decided to create a sound pack—the Yeezus sound pack. It was full of left-field, unique, dirty, gritty, no-rules sounds. We just decided that if we loved it, we would ship it. The pack came out in June 2021.
Then, around April or maybe the first week of May 2022, during the final production stages of Renaissance, Beyoncé’s engineer somehow got hold of that pack and played it for her. She was blown away and said, "Wow, this is incredible! Hit them up, see if they want to work on my album." So they reached out. Of course, we said yes. They sent some sessions over, and literally, that same day, within two or three days, we worked on both of those songs and sent them back.
We really applied our style to those demos, as they were tracks, she already had at the time. So, we didn’t create anything from scratch—we just added our touch to the existing demos. We sent them back, and within a few weeks, they flew down to Dallas to play the finals. Before we knew it, it was happening. It all happened so quickly.
We made the album, and then the Grammys followed. It was an incredible time, but it all goes back to focusing on your passions as an artist, believing in what you do, and not conforming to what everyone else wants. It's about channeling your inner energies, your creative tastes, and expanding on them.
I read that you’re developing an audio plugin called Flux. Can you share the inspiration behind this and its development?
So it’s the same story—COVID hit, and we found ourselves sitting down with all these ideas for software and concepts. We thought, "Man, wouldn’t it be great if we made a plugin, or even a bunch of them?" So, we started collecting a bunch of random images, pulling old movie footage, and gathering the coolest, weirdest, most unique stuff we could find. We had everything you could imagine in this folder.
Flux was born out of our passion for old themes and aesthetics. We wanted our first plugin to be a multi-effects tool, and we felt that the Flux theme really fit that well. It acts kind of like a time machine—the layout and presentation allowed us to build those modules into it in a way that felt cohesive. We probably started the conceptual process during COVID, but we didn’t really begin development until 2021. So, it’s been a three-year process.
Of course, we’ve been working on other projects too—this wasn’t a full-time thing. We took our time, really learning the process. There have been a lot of ups and downs along the way. We partnered with a company called Producer Sources in Dubai, specifically with Amine. They have really spearheaded the whole thing. We’ve been providing our insights, concepts, and trying to ensure that the final product reflects our sound—something we’d approve of in the end.
We’re not the technical developers ourselves; we’re more like the creative team behind it. Producer Sources is handling the software development. We’ve been giving them ideas, doing all the testing, providing the sounds, and coming up with the concepts for which modules to include. We even sketch out the design on paper with markers, and then a graphic designer brings it to life.
The process of making plugins has been long and challenging. I’d say the trickiest part has been the presets. When you create a lot of presets, you eventually find that many of them sound similar. We had to go back and decide which ones were too alike, and eventually, we just decided to reduce the number of presets. Some may be similar, but they’re all useful in different ways. That was our biggest holdup—being a multi-effects processor, there are only so many modules to work with, so things can start to sound similar.
Looking to the future, we’re planning to develop some instruments. We’re going to capture a bunch of original sounds that we’ve created and plug them into the instrument. So, when you play it with a MIDI keyboard, you’ll actually be playing sounds that we created. That’s what’s coming down the line next.
What advice would you give to upcoming music producers who are just starting out and looking for artists to work with?
A couple of things come to mind. First, it's important to understand upfront that the journey is never linear, and it might take much longer than you expect to get to where you want to be. It's a marathon that repeats over and over again. It’s about building relationships, finding the right people to work with, facing setbacks, and trying again. You'll spend countless hours on projects that might not pan out, and you can't set specific expectations for when you think things will happen. When the timing is right, it will happen. Unless you get lucky early on, it's a long process, and it’s really based on consistency, relationships, and putting yourself in the right position to meet people.
Attending events like the ASCAP Expo, going to camps, and finding ways to network are all essential steps. The journey is like a complicated marathon—after one accomplishment, it’s a restart. For example, after my success with Beyoncé and the Grammys, it felt like starting over. You might be ready for the opportunities that come, but not necessarily for the challenges that accompany them. The workload doubles or triples, more people want to work with you and balancing that with your personal life can be tricky.
Embracing the process is crucial. If you don’t go through the ups and downs, you won’t know how to handle them when they happen again. I wouldn’t change my journey, but I think it’s important for young producers to understand that there’s no instant gratification in this business. The youth today often expect quick results, and you can’t blame them—technology changes so quickly, and they don’t know any different. When we grew up, things took longer to change, so we were accustomed to the slow grind and building our knowledge gradually. Now, information comes so fast that it’s hard to teach patience.
Many artists today feel like if they haven’t made it by a certain age, they should give up. I don’t believe in that. You should always keep chasing your dreams because you never know what your timing is or what’s in store for you. The key is to keep going, no matter what.
Can you share some upcoming projects or collaborations that you're working on and are excited about?
Right now, our focus is primarily on software projects. We’ve been dedicating a lot of time to preparing for the release of our first plugin, and we have a few others in development. This has been taking up a significant amount of our time. We're also working with Labrinth, who is absolutely brilliant. Finding an artist and producer with whom you truly resonate and who shares your taste is invaluable, and Labrinth has been that person for us. He shares the same palette in general, and working in the studio with him has been effortless—everything just clicked. It's a stark contrast to sessions where things don’t flow as smoothly, so we really cherish this collaboration. Building a catalog and working on projects with him has been a fantastic experience.
Follow Jameil Aossey on Instagram: @jameilaossey
