To the Maxsta
In 2016, after several years as a successful grime MC, both in his own right and working with the likes of Wiley, Chipmunk, Tinie Tempah and Little Nikki, East Ham-based Maxsta decided it was time to move to the other side of the glass and get involved in production. The first fruits of his time spent learning the engineering ropes are 2018’s Maxtape2 and the single BornOnYourOwn, featuring JME, which is the subject of this issue’s ProducerMasterclass.
We caught up with Maxsta at his home studio and started by asking him how he got involved in all this grimey bidness.
“I’m originally from East London, so when I was 14, I met Wiley, Bless Beats, Target and all of them, and they took me in a little bit. No one was trying to put me on the tunes, because I think they didn’t rate me at the time, but I just got to sit in the corner of loads of sessions, loads of Roll Deep sessions, sitting there watching Wiley and people like that record, and all the producers that were around at the time.
“When it got to 2008, I was physically there, but not respected enough to fully take part, so I’d learnt a lot. There were times when I had the keys to the Roll Deep studio, so I would go there with my friends, and I’d have access to their Mac – I’ve heard so much grime from those guys that hasn’t even seen the light of day. It just stuck in my head since then, and I always wanted to produce, because I had cello lessons when I was young, and I played drums in church and all that typical hoo-ha. It just evolved, because I knew all the MCs.
In this exclusive tutorial and its accompanying video, Maxsta takes you on a tour of the infectious and very ‘London’
BornOnYourOwn, on which he shares MC duties with grime heavyweight JME. How did the track come about? “The tune that we’ll look at today is called
BornOnYourOwn, and it features JME. It’s so crazy, because it was one of the first beats that I made using Maschine Mikro. I just had fun, really. I made the beat, and then I literally laid the tune down that day. I sent it to JME, because he had told me six months earlier that he would do a tune with me – and that’s a serious card, so I wasn’t going to waste it. The track came naturally, and I felt I could instantly hear him on it. So I sent it to him and, I think, ten days later – I was that sad, I was counting! – he sent me the verse. As a producer, away from being an MC, in terms of what I tried to do by giving him that song, I was so happy because I felt like he did exactly what I gave him the foundations to do sonically; how to sit on it and stuff. It was simple.
“I had mixed it myself, but I got a guy called JC – he’s Chipmunk’s engineer – to do it, just because I’m learning to mix and master as I go along. I’ve mixed and mastered some stuff on Maxtape2, just because on the internet and in the magazines that I read, it says stuff like, ‘Demystifying the dark arts of mastering’ – it’s not as crazy as you think it is if you understand the process. And I had a bit of a tight budget for the overall project, so I was like, ‘Back’s against the wall, time to come out swinging’. So I tried my best to mix and master it.”
Interestingly, Native Instruments’ London Grit Expansion features heavily throughout the track. In fact, it could be described as central to it, as Maxsta reveals.
“As I started collecting samples myself and doing all that stuff, I realised that sometimes, if someone can just put a sample pack together for you, that’s going for the same mood that you’re going for, it saves so much time.
“So I just really appreciated a present day pack of grime sounds that genuinely sounded accurate to me – the claps, the kicks… It was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the kick that I would spend a long time looking through my Splice files for’.
“The beauty of the vibe of grime, when you get it right, is that it’s quite simple.”
“The beauty of grime, when you get it right, is that it’s quite simple”