A couple of years ago, Kyle was finishing his senior year of High School while honing in on his musical ability in his free time. Today, he is credited on releases with artists ranging from Jorja Smith & Burna Boy to Flipp Dinero & Lil Baby, bringing in multiple Platinum Records & Billboard #1’s.
Kyle Stemberger is a young producer from Atlanta that has recently relocated to LA & has been creating a buzz. He recently inked a lucrative deal with publishing powerhouse Prescription Songs and has worked with many major artists, including Lil Wayne, Jorja Smith, Bad Bunny, Lil Baby, Trippie Redd, and countless others.
Flipp Dinero (DJ Khaled signee) and Lil Baby (rap star from Atlanta), two bubbling rappers, have collaborated over one of his beats. The video has garnered over 50 million views, and you can watch the music video for “How I Move” here:
I reached out to Kyle to ask him a few questions, and he agreed to hop on a call with me so I could learn more about him.
How are you doing? What have you been up to today?
I’m doing great, I appreciate you asking! I’m.. just chilling at my place in LA right now I’m waiting on some sushi I ordered to get here (laughs). I’ve just been working on some music, made some guitar ideas, I went shopping. I just took it easy today. I’ll probably head to the studio in another hour or so.
How did this all begin? When did you first gain interest in music & consider turning it into a career?
There isn’t really a time in my life where I wasn’t interested in music. It all started off with me teaching myself to play the piano. I just started playing around on the piano that my family had, I was probably 5 or 6, and I was able to pick the notes out and could play stuff by ear. I have this thing called perfect/absolute pitch, which is where I can tell you the note of any sound and can play any song by ear. I just sort of continued teaching myself piano and eventually picked up the guitar and got pretty good at it for my age. Actually producing music, I didn’t really get into that until middle school. I got into some of the Atlanta rap artists that were starting to blow up like Future, Migos, Young Thug, and I was always interested in the beats and wanted to know how they were made. I ended up downloading the demo to this program FL Studio, which is the program I use to make music on, and just started looking up all the information I could find on making beats and just got super obsessed with it.
When did you get your first major production credit, and how did it come about?
I was already reaching out to smaller artists and working with them since I was super young, I think the first rapper to ever work with me is my friend Kaleb Mitchell, that was probably back in 2015 or 2016. As far as major artists, like more household names. I think the first one was probably Trippie Redd. I did a song with him called RIOT, it came out a couple of years ago.
So like.. sometime around the middle or end of 2018, I started sending out these ideas that I made, producers call them “loops”, and I would just make an idea either on my guitar, piano, whatever, and send them to other producers to use in their own beats. Doing this was a game-changer for me because there were a lot of huge producers looking for the melody ideas I was making because guitar beats were really starting to pop at the time. But anyway, that’s how RIOT happened. My boy KD33, another producer, had a pack of my guitar loops and made a beat with one of them. He sent it to Trippie, and Trip ended up recording a song called RIOT over the beat and put it on his album, “!”, and that was that.
In your opinion, what’s the best song you’ve worked on so far?
Be Honest by Jorja Smith & Burna Boy. Apart from it being a fire song, I always remember that song. It’s like..motivation or inspiration for me, because of the way it came about. I just made this random guitar idea one day in my bedroom at my family’s house in Georgia. I thought it would be cool for a melodic rapper like Trippie or something, but long story short it ended up with this producer, Cadenza. He and Jorja are from the UK, & Burna Boy (who’s featured on the track) is an African artist. So somehow, all of us came together with all different music styles and just made a dope song. So it always reminds me to not put myself in a box because anything I make can wind up in the hands of any type of artist.
I saw you recently signed a publishing deal with Prescription Songs, how did you get connected with them?
I really have no clue how they found me, If I had to guess it was either through my management or my boy KBeaZy who is also signed to them. But I was talking to a few different publishers because I had just had 2 or 3 big songs come out in a month’s span and was kinda on fire.. and basically when I was in the process of drafting a contract with another label, they just called me and were like… we will give you whatever they are giving you, we want you to work with us and we really believe in you. I was like… bet. I had already heard a lot of good things about them and had already been working with some people signed to them, and my manager Pete, who I trust no matter what, was telling me more about them and everything, and I ended up signing. It’s a funny story actually, I wanted to do it in person so we all had to go to this random tiny UPS store because the people that have to watch you sign a contract, what are they called Notaries? Yea. They couldn’t get a notary to come to the prescription office because of COVID so I signed the deal at UPS (laughs). It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made though for real, it’s the best team I could ask for. They always make sure I’m taken care of and they have so many writers & producers out here in LA, so there is always something for me to work on no matter what.
It seems like you’ve made quite a name for yourself. How does it feel knowing so many new producers look up to you?
I don’t even know. I really feel like I’m still a new producer trying to make it to be honest. It’s cool tho, if watching, you know, my journey and everything I’ve been doing inspires someone to really take their dreams seriously, then that’s an honor for real. There’s a lot of producers who’ve reached out to me, saying that they were huge fans of me and I taught them how to do this and that, and then they’ve gone on to be way bigger producers than me. So that’s pretty cool too.
What lessons can people learn from you? What wisdom do you want to give to anyone reading, music-related or not?
This is cliche but. You can do anything you want to in any industry, seriously. You just have to work on your craft. It’s all about finding out what is different about you and capitalizing on it pretty much. Like I was saying earlier since I was already playing guitar, I saw how the guitar was becoming this huge thing in hip-hop music and maneuvered my way in by using my skill on guitar as leverage, you see what I’m saying?. There are thousands of people learning to make beats right now, and what’s gonna make you stick out from the rest is having that difference or particular skill about you that makes people want to work with you. It’s not always a skill or talent thing either, it can be your personality, the way you carry yourself, the way you dress, anything. You just have to figure out what it is that’s special about you and always hold on to that, and find a way to leverage off of that.
Where do you see yourself in the future? What are some long-term goals?
As long as I’m making the best music I can I’m happy. I just want to keep working as much as I can for now and improve as a producer. Long-term, I really don’t know. I have some interest in starting an entertainment company of my own one day, like where I would manage artists, producers, writers, maybe even designers & photographers that I believe in and am excited about.
You can follow Kyle Stemberger on Instagram and check out more of Kyle’s credits on his Genius page.
