How ivvys and #stepTeam unlocked new rhythms in rap production

The Connecticut-raised producer broke through self-doubt and type-beat limbo to make a sound all his own.

The FADER’s longstanding series Beat Construction interviews today’s most crucial producers and their craft.

No, you don’t have music playing from two apps at once, and yes, your Internet connection is just fine: ivvys actually wants his drums to sound like they’re skipping, stuttering and glitching all over themselves. The Connecticut-raised producer and rapper has quietly taken SoundCloud by storm as the de facto face of production trio #stepTeam, whose off-kilter rhythms seem to miraculously quantize irrational time-signatures. This isn’t strictly true – watch a few of ivvys’s cookup videos and you’ll begin to understand how he makes 4/4 sound so convoluted – but the jagged, mesmerizing form of #stepTeam’s cadences has caught the ear of everyone from MIKE to tana to Umru.

Rounding out membership are the DMV producer sxprano and New Jersey artist maajins, who had already built significant reputations among the hip-hop underground (sxprano as ian’s go-to producer, and maajins as a highly prolific rapper and producer). By comparison, ivvys’s rise has been synonymous with that of the crew, and so his name is most closely associated with the collective’s stop-start instrumentals. When I call the 18-year-old producer mid-April to ask about the inspiration for his drum patterns, he tells me, “rhythm-wise, it would come from a mix of all the ambient [trap] I used to listen to, EDM music, and fucking footwork, bro, I kid you not.”

ivvys first popped up on my radar last fall with the sxprano-produced “juco,” a madcap 64 second cut where piercing sirens herald seismic 808s rumbling beneath a martial parade of synthesized chants, stop-start snares, and a whirring, near atonal sample droning incessantly. It’s deliberately intense, but the bass doesn’t quite redline like OsamaSon or blowout like skaiwater — instead, it forms an uneven metronome, like tides under a full moon or the attack patterns of a video game boss fight. That song led me to August prettifun collab “sephora step,” where ivvys takes the basic melody loop of Playboi Carti’s “Ain’t Got Time” and stacks precarious drums atop its delicate arpeggios — it’s a wonder the song doesn’t fall apart under its own weight, but prettifun’s tender falsetto breezily flutters through its polyrhythmic crevasses.

#stepTeam has an affinity for cheat code samples from the SoundCloud heyday of their youth, and it’s here that the collective’s production ethos is most apparent. The crew’s drums crib from the ambient trap of DPM (Deep and Powerful Music), but seem equally influenced by the way EDM toys with anticipated drops. Take sxprano’s work behind the boards on xhulooo and 1600j’s “step sisters,” where he throws twitchy snares over “Real Sisters” by Future, or “check please,” which refurbishes a long-abandoned Carti leak. Ultra-familiar melodies are rendered bizarre, practically grotesque, by novel downbeats, but #stepTeam’s samples only get stranger when they chop things up.

On “vibes,” ivvys turns a segment of Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist’s Voir Dire into a twinkling backdrop for a caustically dismissive verse. And then there’s the wonky, flatulent instrumental for “blatts” by maajins, which chipmunks a fragment of “Stop Worry!” by MIKE and Sister Nancy into something harder and meaner (MIKE’s a fan). Much like nu-jerk music, the unifying thread for the collective’s work is in their drums more than any particular sonic palette, and while you still get flashes of maajins’s Jersey Club roots and sxprano’s trap-indebted sensibility, their production under the #stepTeam moniker is studiously syncopated and distinct from their solo work.

ivvys grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, though he’s lived down South “near Arkansas” for the past couple years. Growing up, he says his mom played a lot of Christian rap and gospel around the house, while his dad was playing 03 Greedo and Gucci Mane. “My knowledge of rap started in third grade when ‘Black Beatles’ came out,” he explains. “When Post Malone dropped ‘White Iverson,’ I was in the back of the bus – that shit popped up on my YouTube recommended and I was like bro, what the fuck is this? This shit is crazy, I gotta listen to more of this.”

Just shy of a decade later, ivvys is helping to compose Billboard-charting melodies himself, thanks to a coproduction credit on Ken Carson’s latest album More Chaos, though he’s far from satisfied. Over the course of our conversation, I get the sense that the burgeoning producer, who graduated high school last year, is deadset on maximizing his moment by sheer effort. The idea of striking while the iron’s hot crops up a couple times in our conversation, and ivvys certainly practices his preachings. The day after we talk, he’ll drop AUDIO, a short mixtape of collaborations including features from angelus, boofpaxkmooky, and 1600j; over the subsequent weeks, he’ll be intermittently flogging a $50 drum kit and various beat sales on his Instagram story, occasionally reminding viewers to “come bready” or get blocked.

The FADER caught up with ivvys to chat about learning to produce from his dad, the foundation of #stepTeam, and the recording process behind his January single “Bikini.”

The FADER: When did you first start making music?

ivvys: When I was eight, I seen my dad make Chief Keef beats on FL 10. He had the square, boxy, pretty loud Gateway laptop, and it was in the living room – it never got touched until he was like, “I’m making beats on it.” Then I’ll be watching him cook up and I was fascinated.

So he was asleep one time, he was taking a nap. He had a long day. I was tapping him repeatedly and he woke up. He was like, “Yo, what you want little n***a?” I’m like, “oh, I’m just trying to make beats, that shit look pretty cool.” He’s like, “Alright, bro, but if I teach you, you gotta stay up, you can’t go to sleep, you can’t be too bored.”

So little me, I ain’t gon lie I fell asleep a couple times, but he was tapping me like, “Nah, you locked in. You gotta pay attention.” And then as I got older, say 14, 15, we just started cooking up together. But I didn’t know how to use FL at the time for real. I was on [the free in-browser DAW] SoundTrap, believe it or not, until 14. And I would just be doing drums on [my dad’s] loops, and then I found the underground through SoundCloud.

Fast forward a little bit to when you started developing your own personal sound.

I’d say a year or two prior. I used to make ambient beats and I would use lots of Timeless 3 [delay plugin], some shit like that. I was just experimenting with VSTs and drums. And I used to listen to a lot of the ambient artists in the community, like ian before he blew up and started doing trap. I listened to a lot of kujo, lot of Izaya Tiji, a lot of Xang. I used to listen to a lot of theo, shoutout theo.

So I was learning how they make their drums flow, [but] it was kind of terrible, what I was making a couple years back. But I started working at it, and then I started sampling and other bullshit. I just decided to incorporate kicks and weird cadences and all that shit you see today. When I announced #stepTeam was gonna be a thing, people tried to play me like I was crazy or like I was some clone of n***as I was inspired by, and that shit ain’t really make me feel good. So before everything took off I was really demotivated. I was like, “should I even continue with this shit?” Shit had me fucked up for a bit.

When you sit down to make some music, what’s your process?

Can’t lie, I first start with trying to find a vibe. If I’m being so honest with you man, the drums are just straight improvisation, bro. I don’t prefire drums, I don’t use MIDIs and all that for my drums. I really just improvise with what sounds good and what could make sense when it’s being penciled in the software. As complicated as step sounds for someone who’s never heard it before now, it’s really not that hard to make. Nor is it easy, but it’s definitely not hard. It’s really simple, you just gotta not overcomplicate it and you can really make like, the best beat of your fucking life.

What’s interesting to me is that you have busy instrumentals, but at the same time, you’re really good about having space on your beats: actual room for the elements to breathe. How do you balance those impulses?

I do it by adding more drums and sound effects. For example, if I want something totally balanced, I want to add too many kicks more than high hat rolls, or like, I want to have too many more hi hat rolls than kicks. I would always just keep a minimal amount of [one] and then just scatter them pattern-wise to the point where it just makes sense. There’s just no reason to ever overcomplicate drums and all that shit.

Let’s take it back to the founding of #stepTeam. How did you and maajins and sxprano connect?

I’ve known [sxprano] three years, he used to make pluggnb, so I met him doing that shit on YouTube. I’ve truly known maajins a bit longer than sxprano but we just never talked because maajins was like Superman in the eyes of little kid producers. [Laughs] N***as had no name at that time, like I wasn’t even ivvys then. I was in no position to be like, “you tryna work? send mels [note: short for “melodies”]” y’know? If you DM a producer trying to work with them and you don’t have a plan, bro? Every time you DM someone, always have a plan in mind. It just make everything smoother.

Two years later I was jumping on [Maajin’s] loops, making some hot shit, and then [a couple of my friends] were on a call one day, and they’re talking about my weird drums, and they said, “Bro this sound like a step team competition,” like on some wild shit, lots going on. And I was in the call with all my friends and then sxprano jumped in like, “Yoo I just got off the call with maajins.” I was like, “What happened?” He’s like, “we were just clowning your beats.” And I’m like, “N***a.” And he’s like, “Relax, relax, we were just saying it sounds like some step team shit.” And then as soon as he say “step team” I’m like, “Hmm.”

It sounds like what you’re describing is you and your friends all make crazy music on your own, and now you’re basically on some casual competition shit with each other to make better music. Is that an accurate read?

Honestly? Yes, but sometimes no. It’s how much chemistry we all have, y’know? This is a chemistry based group, that’s why everything goes so fucking well.

How did the Ken Carson placement come together?

My friend Four3va, he said I should make him melodies, and then the mel for that specific song [“Naked”] I made in December of last year. I sent it to my friend mental and then they made a mel off of it, and then sent the zip file to Four3va. And then he sent that over to Ken. It was crazy.

When you’re recording music or making beats, do you usually finish an idea in one sitting? Or do you go back and edit a lot?

When I think of an idea for a crazy ass song, right? Like “Bikini,” I was bored on FL one night and Sammy texted saying, “yo, Synthetic sent loops… go crazy.” I heard the mel to “Bikini,” [and] something just spoke out to me. It didn’t sound like how [it does on the song] the first time. So I had to pitch it down, speed it up a little bit. As soon as I made it perfect, I stayed up for a good six hours. I didn’t sleep that night. I did not let that idea slip my damn head until I got it in the most complete form.

Once I have an idea, it’s either I do it the best possible, like with the best meaning possible, or just not at all. I’m not a fan of returning to ideas, but at the same time it’s probably better if I start doing that, because [my skills have progressed].

When you think about the music you’ve been making over the past year, where do you feel like you’ve been growing and evolving?

It’s definitely the consistency of everything. Back then, when I assumed nothing would take off because it was type beats and shit, I was getting demotivated. I wasn’t really making as much as I should, pushing myself as much as I should. It was kind of terrible. But at the same time, I always saw that one glimmer of hope and direction of shit like, Dude, you know this is your life.

I just winged it, started getting more consistent. And when I started getting more consistent, I seen my sound change. And when I listen to music, I study the hell out of it. Everything I listen to I’m not gonna love, [so I] get inspiration from random ass things. It sounds weird, but every single thing I do to incorporate rhythm was a weird thing I just did.