Kenny Beats

Biography

Kenneth Charles Blume III, formerly known professionally as Kenny Beats, is an American record producer, DJ, audio engineer, and songwriter.

Early life

Kenneth Blume III was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. His mother was a receptionist and later became a project manager; his father worked at a photo studio and a restaurant. His father purchased him a guitar and drum kit at age 7. He learned to produce music in GarageBand and Logic in an electronic music class in high school. His first guitar was a Fender Stratocaster and his first amplifier was a Fender Hot-Rod Deluxe. During his junior year at Greenwich High School, he was able to enter a national electronic-music competition hosted by the National Association for Music Education (NAFME) and the National School Boards Association (NSBA). Blume won second place in the competition, which motivated him to start taking music production seriously. He interned for RCA Records in his senior year of college.
After he graduated from high school, he moved to New York, where he started interning for Cinematic Music Group in the summer of 2010. His internship at CMG led to his collaboration with artist Smoke DZA on 4 of his albums. It was also during the year 2010 when his music attracted the attention of Levi Maestro, leading to their collaboration on an ad campaign for Brisk. He then moved to Boston and studied jazz guitar and music business at Berklee College of Music.

Career

In 2009, while attending Berklee College of Music, Blume met Ryan Marks, a DJ. These two became friends, and in 2012, they decided to form the EDM duo Loudpvck. Marks ultimately left the group in 2017 while Blume transitioned from being an EDM producer to a hip-hop producer.
In March 2019, Blume launched The Cave, a YouTube series in which he invites guests to his studio to produce and record freestyles. An April 2019 episode with Zack Fox spawned resulted in "Jesus Is the One (I Got Depression)", which was officially released as a single in June 2019.
Blume released his debut album, Louie, in 2022. The album was a tribute to his father, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2021.
Following Louie, Blume began production of Buff, an album which followed a boy who slips into dissociative states to avoid a difficult home life. He recorded 16 songs, featuring artists including Gorillaz, Lola Young, Little Simz, and Panda Bear, before cancelling the project, deeming its fictional story as disingenuous.

Musical style

Blume's production style varies. His digital audio workstation (DAW) of choice is Ableton Live. He plays piano, bass guitar, electric guitar, and drums. He often implements live instrumentation into his instrumentals, whether it be performed by himself or a fellow instrumentalist.
A lot of his productions credits often fall into the trap music sub-genre of hip-hop, commonly using 16th/8th note hi-hats with slight variation (such as rolls), hard-hitting kick drums, snares & booming 808 bass shots. He also explores more versatile instrumentation, tempos, production styles etc. such as with the likes of the more laid back and instrumental approach of songs such as singer Dominic Fike's "Phone Numbers" which contains a live guitar sample (performed by SNL lead guitarist Jared Scharff) and a more acoustic feel, backed by a Virtual Studio Technology (VST) version of a real electric bass within Ableton Live that plays the bass line, provided via the Kontakt (sampler) VST. Another style of his production leans to a more experimental sound, found within his collaborative project with rapper Denzel Curry, Unlocked which contains many spoken word samples scattered throughout the tracks and a more disjointed feel, provided by various creative implementations of obscure musical samples found throughout the project. His songs often begin with the producer tag "Whoa, Kenny!", which was originally said by the Atlanta rapper KEY!, who is a frequent collaborator of Blume's.