Apple Music: KAYTRANADA and Aminé chop it up with Zane Lowe about 'KAYTRAMINÉ'

There’s lots to talk about right now for hip-hop artists KAYTRANADA and Aminé especially with their new KAYTRAMINÉ finally in existence. The duo chop it up with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to dish on everything from their collaboration project to how they approach record-making.

The Zane Lowe Interview is all about Aminé and KAYTRANADA

More than 20 minutes in length and all types of deep dives into their approach to hip-hop creations, kick back and embrace the conversation with some pulled out quotes.

Aminé Tells Apple Music About Being Surprised By The Challenges of Working on a Collaborative Album

Honestly, just me and Kay have known we've always wanted to do this together. He was one of the first producers who ever reached out to me before the world even knew who I was in 2014, 2015....we just been working on it for a minute and it just felt like with his schedule and my schedule, it's really tough putting collab albums together just because we just have our separate careers and our separate lives and we have separate teams.  It takes commitment and it takes people just wanting to work with each other. You know what I mean? A lot of collab albums never really come out just because of just different types of ways they work. I never knew how challenging this was until we did it and it's so worth it. So seeing it released was just such a, I don't know, just such a breath of fresh air for me. It just felt really good. I think anytime me and Kay get in the studio, it's always so much fun.

Aminé on His Favorite Part of Collaborating with KAYTRANADA…

And I think for us, we are just really excited to show our hip hop side. We're like true, true hip hop fans. He's crazy with the hip hop beats. That's why it was just so exciting for me to hop on these beasts that a lot of people don't get to hear from him. You know what I mean? So that was the exciting part for me. I just didn't want to come into it with him just doing exactly what people expect. I wanted to do something with him that was just so different and very, very fun for us.

...there was a lot of times where I wasn't sure if I wanted to hop on this beat or that beat, and Kay was there just pushing me. Just like, "Yo, you should do this. I think you would murder this. I think you would kill it." And then I would go in and give it a chance and he was right and I loved it. So most producers that I work with don't really push me like that. But working with somebody as powerful as this man is us just really partnering together. This is a collab album. I didn't want all my ideas to be the decision-making. I want half of them to all be his too.

…no one here knows the process that it took to make this album. It really looks easy and it looks great, but it's a lot of hard work that went into this. There's a lot of people that aren't even here in this room that helped us make this happen. Yeah, it was a lot.

KAYTRANADA Tells Apple Music About Being In The Studio with Aminé…

…it's never work. It was always just us having fun all the time. It was never serious. It was always an art expression from both of us.

KAYTRANADA on Being Influenced by Pharrell…

In my mind, of course, it's like super, super influential for a lot of rappers and just producers, of course. But a lot of it for me too is just overall style and just how to just create your own identity. I think that's how I always say Pharrell, as a young... I didn't really notice that when I was younger until I got older, just how much he just made a stamp on who he was as a person, visually, stylistically, musically. Just like it all packaged so well together and I was always so envious of that, just coming up as an artist. I was just like, man, I've got to figure out what my thing is. You know what I mean?

Man, it's really the vibes that he brought over the years, over my childhood to my teenage and to my adult. It's like I said, everybody wants to be like him. I think he's an inspiration in terms of, okay, sounding yourself no matter what and then even end up on the radio. You know what I'm saying? For me, I want to be the same in terms of like, okay, like I've got my sound, the Kaytranada sound as well. I hope it breaks through the radio as well.So it's kind of like the inspiration of, okay, I'm going to keep my identity, like Adam said. So I mean it, you know? I just think I want to do the same thing, you know? So that's kind of my main goal.

KAYTRANADA on Leaning Into His Hip Hop Influences as a Producer…

I'm a student of Dilla, Madlib, Just Blaze, all those producers really, I still have them in mind even when I make electronic music.

KAYTRANADA Tells Apple Music About Enlisting “One of the Best Verses of the Year” from Big Sean…

Sean is somebody who, of course, I see in that light. He's an artist that I've looked up to for Years… I always knew he was going to kill this beat. So I hit him up for a year straight just trying to get him on this verse. And he was hitting me back and he had family... Yeah, he's a dad. He gave us literally one of the best verses of the year. I think it was amazing to finally get that verse sent to me. He FaceTimed me and it was a great moment. Yeah, so I was really hype about that. 

KAYTRANADA on the Possibility of Live Shows From KAYTRAMINÉ in the Future… 

We definitely going to make shows. We definitely going to have shows, I would say this year, later this year… we got into some, how can I say that? We had confirmations before we think, we thought about dropping the album. So that's where we have scheduled conflicts. But we're definitely working on that, you know. We definitely going to bring it to life for sure.