Image by August Foreman. The Beat Menace (left) and Dizzy Banko (right)
Posthumous albums have unfortunately been a crucial part of hip-hop in the past few years. A number of young artists tragically lost their lives during the prime of their careers, making releases from late rappers like XXXTentacion, Mac Miller, Lil Peep, and Juice WRLD a sad necessity. Most recently, Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut album, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon, was released to great fanfare just a few months after his untimely death. The album debuted at No. 1 and all 19 songs landed on the Billboard Hot 100.
Although many of the songs fell off the chart soon after debuting, the Lil Tjay-assisted “Mood Swings” has proven to be a lasting hit—peaking at No. 17 this week—partly thanks to a series of viral TikTok memes. The song features production from The Beat Menace, who got his first break producing 6ix9ine’s “BILLY,” as well as Dizzy Banko, who’s worked with the likes of Lil Wayne, Dave East, and Famous Dex. The two producers initially connected back in 2018 during a Dave East studio session and have been working together ever since.
Genius caught up with The Beat Menace and Dizzy Banko over the phone to talk about how they changed the beat for “Mood Swings,” how the song was supposed to feature PnB Rock, and how TikTok helped fuel its popularity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Shy Ink.
Genius: Did you guys vibe with each other right from that first session with Dave East?
The Beat Menace: Yeah, right from the get-go we started talking, we were playing beats, and we liked each other’s work so we linked up, traded numbers, and ever since then we’ve been homies.
Genius: At that point, did you guys have differences or similarities between your production styles?
Dizzy Banko: We have our differences in certain areas but you know, the same hunger in the way we create is similar.
The Beat Menace: We got the same drive.
Dizzy Banko: Family man to family man, it’s just the fact that we are different [from other producers]. People in the industry [that are] producers, they have more of a rush where there’s a lot of things going on. But we kind of have an upper hand as we’re in the music business in some way, but we’re behind the scenes putting up numbers.
The hunger with me and him, it’s that drive. [Menace] thinks before he creates. Some people don’t think before they create, they just go and do it and it’s just whatever. When we do something it touches differently, it becomes bigger than what we did. It’s like getting a sample but we turn it into a whole other situation just by us picking each other’s brains.
Genius: When did the idea start for Pop Smoke’s “Mood Swings?”
The Beat Menace: “Mood Swings” started as two projects. Actually it was 6ix9ine’s engineer who approached me and said, “Hey, I have this guy who’s working with Pop Smoke and he wants you guys to do a beat for him.” I said, “For sure, we love Pop Smoke, we tryna work with him.”
He sent us the vocals, we made the beat. I made the melody and I hit up Diz and I said, “You wanna do the drums?” Because Diz is really good at drums and when me and Diz get together, I feel like it’s better than just one person. We did the project and that’s how it started.
Genius: Were you just sent Pop Smoke’s vocals?
The Beat Menace: It was actually the vocals with a different beat and they said, “We don’t like this beat, we want you to make something better.” We took the vocals, got rid of the beat, I made my own production on top of that, Diz did the drums to that, and they liked it a lot.
Genius: Was Tjay on it already?
The Beat Menace: It first started with an artist named Ajani Benitez, that’s the second version if you go on Genius you can see there are two versions. It first started with him, then it moved onto PnB Rock, then they finally settled on Lil Tjay for the last version.
Genius: When did you first start working on the beat?
The Beat Menace: It was about five months ago Diz?
Dizzy Banko: Yeah, about five months because it was like right after his passing, if I’m not mistaken.
The Beat Menace: Yeah, right after he passed, damn.
Dizzy Banko: Probably like the week after it came in. Because I went from [Pop Smoke] just DM’ing me his email. We were supposed to link up and sessions got screwed around, so he end up sending me his email to send beats and I’m like, “Oh sh*t, I’m about to work with Pop.” Then he passed and it was just like damn…every time I get a chance to do something, it goes to that point, it goes left. Then boom, that’s when I got the call from Menace.
Genius: Were you guys hearing versions of the track throughout this whole process?
The Beat Menace: We actually didn’t even hear anything after we sent everything, ‘cause we were working with the engineer. They wanted everything to sound clear and crisp for the album. They contacted us and said, “Hey, send the stems, send everything, we are going to put PnB Rock on this and Lil Tjay.”
We did and we sent them everything. After that, we didn’t hear back for another two or three months. Next thing we hear it’s going to be on the album and Lil Tjay’s version is going to be used.
Genius: Going back to the production, what was your frame of mind when you were presented with that task?
The Beat Menace: We wanted to keep a similar vibe because we didn’t want to stray too far from the original vocals, then it wouldn’t sound right. So I isolated the vocals and I did a lot of different versions of the keys and the melody to make it sound correct and to make it sound like it fit, that it was tailored for Pop Smoke’s vocals. After that, I sent everything to Diz and he did the drums on top of Pop’s vocals and the melody that I played. He sent it back and it sounded good.
Genius: Diz, what was your approach with the drums when you heard what Menace had done?
Dizzy Banko: We go crazy on a normal basis, so it’s like, this situation, it’s a smooth record. It’s my first time doing a smooth type of record, everything was perfect how it came out. I didn’t have to do too much, didn’t have to do too little. Overall how it came out, how it was mixed, it kinda shocked me. Still excited ’til this day when I hear it.
Genius: Is it easier or harder to do drums when you’ve got the vocal idea already there?
Dizzy Banko: Nah, that’s my specialty, so anything I hear in life, anything that comes in my direction, I know how to put it. You really gotta ask Menace, if he didn’t believe in sending it to me, he wouldn’t send it to me to do that, you get what I’m saying?
The Beat Menace: I already told Diz I needed him to do drums, but the vibe was supposed to be a smooth vibe, it’s a smooth record. We actually had to hold back ‘cause me and Diz usually we go crazy. When we do drums, it’s hard hitting, it’s aggressive, this time we had to hold back and keep it simple and that type of vibe came out.
Genius: I think those tracks are harder to make than you think because you can overdo it. I think you guys got the perfect balance on this one.
The Beat Menace: It’s funny you say that because we were going back and forth—I know I was—with the engineer to the point where this guy was asking for too much but they wanted to make it clean and make a sound that was worth Pop Smoke’s legacy.
Me and the engineer went back and forth and we actually removed some sounds that I had on there originally and added another sound. Went back and forth for about a week before we really got it down to how they wanted it.
Genius: What was your first reaction when you heard the final track?
Dizzy Banko: The final track, I was tearing up because it sounds so clean. Like, I know what’s mixed, I know what’s rough, I know everything before the actual final version. Sometimes people will say the final version and I’m thinking it’s the final version, ain’t the final version. So, it’s like damn, how far can we go with this to even make it sound good? Any record I ever did, I know I was in that studio session. This studio session I wasn’t really in to see how they mixed it or anything but the fact that the way it came out, that is just perfect.
The Beat Menace: Yeah, it’s perfect.
Genius: When the album dropped the song was doing well but I think it hit a different level when the TikTok memes started to come in.
Dizzy Banko: The TikToks, people making videos, just everything started to pick up. I’m like, “I can’t tell where it will go but the fact that where it is now, this is God’s work.” It started hitting the Billboard numbers, not saying I didn’t expect it, but…
The Beat Menace: Yeah, it was a surprise once Kylie Jenner started posting it and all these big celebrities started posting it, I was like, “Wow, this is going to go crazy.”
Dizzy Banko: Exactly, that’s when it started to hit me. Then it just got bigger and bigger. This morning Matt Barnes asked the people he was talking to questions about the lyrics to “Mood Swings,” so people were sending that to me. That’s a good feeling that my tag or Menace tag isn’t even on the record. Normally people know us by our tags, now they are studying our sounds.
The Beat Menace: At one point it touched number one on Apple Music, it was going back and forth with I believe it was Drake at the time.
Genius: I wanted to talk a bit about what makes a good posthumous album, as we’ve had a lot of them unfortunately over the last few years. There’s a big difference between Pop Smoke because it sounds complete, and then there are other ones that come out and you think, should it have come out? What do you think makes the difference between those albums?
The Beat Menace: What makes a good posthumous album is, first of all, were the fans ready for it? If the fans aren’t ready then nothing’s going to be good enough. Pop Smoke was already working on this album before he died, so the fans were ready to hear what he was working on.
They took their time and effort, it was like five, six months of working on this album that they took it to another level. 50 Cent got involved, the production changed. I think that’s why we were reached out to because we’re known for high-quality sound and they wanted that on the album. I think that’s what makes a good album, time, effort, and [if] the fans [are] ready.
