Jameil Aossey – “The key is to keep going, no matter what.”

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.