Music

There are a handful of hip-hop producers you can argue have served as architects for the sound of modern rap. Turbo, sometimes known as Turbo the Great, would undoubtedly be on the Mount Rushmore of present-day rap hitmakers. With production credits on some of this generation’s biggest hits — Gunna‘s “Drip Too Hard” and Travis Scott’s “Yosemite” to name a couple — Turbo, real name Chandler A. Great, is among the most prolific producers to come out of Atlanta. He’s furnished the hip-hop Mecca with an endless bag of hits featuring his distinct, melodic take on trap that by now feels like a signature for a whole city.

Most recently, Turbo lent production work on Gunna’s new album, The Last Wun, which debuted at the top of the hip-hop charts last week, as well as Offset‘s new album, Kiari, which dropped Friday. In the past year, he’s formed a budding creative relationship with Wizkid, whom he plans to feature on his upcoming album. As a producer, Turbo is most adept at creating cinematic beats capable of engulfing you in a world of his own creation.

The Grammy-winning producer is currently working on a solo record featuring a smattering of artists that listeners expecting familiar Atlanta rap staples might find surprising. In addition to flirting with more Afrobeats-influenced sounds, Turbo says he’s been collaborating with a handful of country artists and writers ever since his work on “Whisky Whisky” with Moneybagg Yo and Morgan Wallen last year. The still-untitled album doesn’t have an official release date yet, but Turbo says fans can expect a body of work that offers a full display of his creative passions. Turbo spoke with Rolling Stone about his relationship with Gunna, working with Offset, and why this next album is going to feel like a movie.

What’s the story behind your upcoming solo album?
I mean, it’s been going on. I think my sound has been so distinct over the years. I think it’s time for me to put out my own project with a bunch of different artists, some of the guys that people don’t know me for, and to just expand my sound, put my flagpole into the ground of this music thing that we’re doing.

You’ve produced for some of the biggest names, especially in the Atlanta scene, but who are some of the more unexpected names that you’ve been working with?
Wizkid. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff with Wizkid lately. Some fire all the way, completely different. Not even for him. I don’t even think it’s Afro. It’s its own thing, its own genre. So I’m excited about that. Wyclef, been doing some stuff with Wyclef lately. Who else? Of course Gunna, Swae Lee, Don Toliver, a bunch of people.

How did you and Wizkid connect?
Through Gunna, actually. When he, I guess he moved to LA. I don’t know. He was just in LA for a month, and him and Gunna connected and we all got into the studio just feeling each other out and just seeing what we could come up with. But I realized him and his guys were so cool. They just like us. So we started hanging out together and just started doing our own music, and I had a bunch of experimental beats that I really couldn’t play for anybody else just in my catalog. I played him something, and just from his reaction, I think he was just surprised that I had this type of music just sitting on the drive. And from that point, it was like two weeks we was going to the studio every day and he’s like, “No, play me this, play me this. No, I don’t want to hear anything Afro. Play me your stuff.” And he’s just super creative and we just caught a vibe.

What do you think the kind of bridge is between that culture and what you guys got going on?
I think it’s all the same. I think we’re just now starting to figure out that it’s all the same, all the way down to our mannerisms and what we do inside the studio. I met some of his friends and it seemed like I knew those guys for forever, and we were sitting there talking in a little group just in the studio, outside of the studio room for hours just talking about where he’s from in Nigeria and where we are from, and I didn’t know that he lived in Atlanta for a long period of time. So just connecting on all that type of stuff. And I think we both just realized that we’re very similar in culture and just in musical taste. And then from that point on, it’s just meeting your brother and doing music.

Thinking about where you guys come from in Atlanta, you’ve been in the scene for so long now. How do you think the city’s sound has evolved since you first started?
I think it’s completely changed, especially with some of the stuff that I’m hearing now that’s coming from the younger guys. It’s really energetic. And I think in the beginning, especially when I came in, it was just a different type of sound just coming from how we grew up or just the Atlanta trap era. We still kind of had that embedded in our sound when we first started. Now I hear some of the newer guys and it’s super energetic, super festively, crazy drums. It’s just exciting.

Thinking back about that time that you were coming up, it seems like a lot of people are also revisiting that 2010s Futuristic Atlanta sound.
Yeah. I don’t think it could ever be recreated, bro. It could never be recreated. It was just such a time all the way down to how we talked, how we dressed, Mohawks, having Mohawks with the design on the side of your head. It was a real lifestyle thing that bled into the music, so I can appreciate it and it’s nostalgic, but I think it’ll just never feel the same because it was just something that was new, it was fresh, it was Atlanta. This was our life. So I mean, I see it, but you know.

Speaking of the 2010s, do you remember how you and Gunna first connected?
Yeah. We’re from the same neighborhood, so we were always brushing shoulders because we always had mutual friends, or we went to the same clubs when we were kids. It was this club called The Palace on Old National that Gunna and his best friend Nechie used to go to every single Friday and Saturday. So even if I missed a couple of weekends, whenever I would come, I would see them and they would be doing what they was doing and I’d be doing what I was doing. But we always had mutual friends, so it was never like a, “Hey, Turbo, this is Gunna. Gunna, this is Turbo.” It was just like, Hey, what’s up? Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And it kind of bled from there.

What’s it been like seeing his progression from those early tapes to this most recent record, The Last Wun?
Watching it firsthand is, how can I say it? I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s a word to be able to describe it, because Gunna, I seen Gunna when he was full-blown in the street, and he always loved to rap, but he was full-blown in the street. So now to see where he’s at now, it’s almost kind of crazy to view, I guess. You know what I mean? And comparing it to what we used to talk about and what I used to see him do when we first got kind of clicked up to now it’s like a complete 180, completely, from mind to body, to I’m scared to go and get a Dunkin’ Donuts in front of him. You know what I’m saying? Because he like, “Man, what you doing? You eating donuts? We got to go to the gym.” You know what I mean?

But it is cool, because he’s holding everybody around him accountable for just health and wealth and just the future. So I would just say it’s a complete 180 from when we first met, and I think that’s the same thing with just how he’s approaching his music and how we all approaching the music is just thinking big, thinking superstar to a whole nother level where we just didn’t have that level of thinking in the beginning.

What do you think attracts you the most as a producer these days when it comes to the types of sounds that you’re interested in?
Something that’s just standing out, something that’s personal to whatever artist’s style or my style. I try my best to stay out of the box completely, or even if I get into the studio with an artist and they say, “Oh, I want something that sounds like Gunna.” You know what I mean? It’s like I immediately get turned off. So when I’m looking or when I’m working with newer artists, the things that stand out to me is if these people have their own style or if they’re confident in what they’re doing, and almost teaching me something that I might not know.

That’s been very exciting, or I get excited when I come across those type of kids that’s just unapologetic, they’re they self. They don’t give a fuck about a Turbo or whoever. It’s like, this is my sound and this is what I like, and I can just learn something from them and then create something even bigger. That’s really what I’ve been looking for. That’s what I get excited about. And I haven’t ran across it much in the musical space, more so in a fashion space, but that’s kind of what I’d be looking for, bro.

How do you approach the creative process? Do you start with a melody, or how does it work for you?
I start with a color really. You know what I mean? I honestly start with a color, and a lot of times what helps me find that color is whatever mood I’m in or whatever mood that whatever artist that I’m working with is in. And then I try to work backwards, because for me, with music, I see it in colors in an oddly type of way. It’s more so my music speaks to my senses more than it does to my ears solely. So that’s kind of like my process. And sometimes I’ll start with the drums. I remember being in the studio one night, had an hour left in the session, and was not really inspired that night. I just seen like a dark brown color in my mind, almost like a Cactus Jack type or beef and broccoli type of brown.

And I started with the drums, just crazy bass, 808, crazy sounding drums, and from that point, kept building and put a couple chords on top of it, and it was done. And that was the process for that night. And I think that song ended up being “Swing My Way” for Offset. So it’s like sometimes it starts with the melody, sometimes it starts with the drums, sometimes it starts with just a metronome. I’m just open to whatever my mind and my spirit is telling me at the time.

Do you have interests more broadly in arts and visual art or fashion or anything like that?
Yeah. Hell yeah. Visual arts, architecture all the way down to, I guess you could say landscaping. You know what I’m saying? Oddly enough, when people yards or their flowers are decorated in a certain way, I kind of pull from all of those type of visual things. As I’m getting older, I’m starting to have a love for just architecture and just seeing different buildings or the history of different things, and I haven’t all the way figured out how it bleeds into my music. Some way, somehow, I just find a way to do it. But I kind of have to get into that zone. I haven’t figured out how to put it to you in words.

Even thinking about some of your production, there’s sort of a cinematic quality to it as well.
Yeah. Yep. I mean, it’s just kind of what comes. Like I said, I get into a zone. I can’t really explain it. If you ever get a chance to just see me work, it’s like when I catch an idea, I get completely focused on that idea, and it’s almost, it’s so many things that’s just pouring into my mind and I’m trying to figure out how to do it, how to put it into my music. I can’t explain it, but it is something similar to what you’re saying. Just like I might see something, or I always have, like those guys on YouTube that make castles out of mud and shit. I’ll have that playing in the studio and just watch them and just make a soundtrack for that, I guess. And sometimes it’s cinematic, sometimes it’s just ghetto and it’s raw, but it is Turbo’s music.

In addition to the new Gunna project, you have some stuff on this new Offset record. What was the process working with him like?
With Offset, it was a challenge in the beginning because I think we weren’t used to working with each other, and I like to move stuff around in the Pro Tools session. Like if he raps one way, I might go and put what he thought was a hook into a verse and what he thought was a verse into a hook. And he wasn’t loving that at first, and we would kind of bump heads on what was the song and what wasn’t the song, or whatever. But I think after Swing My Way came out and him being so confident about that song and then me seeing what it did from the visual to how his fans reacted to it, we started to communicate way better just about music and just personally. So it was that, you know what I mean?

We had to kind of, I’ve worked with him before, but I haven’t worked with him now on the solo stuff. So we almost had to relearn each other. And honestly, the relationship is way better than before. It’s way closer. So we got a lot of stuff in the vault. I think I got two or three on this next album, and he’s dropping. Cool.

How important is that for you and the artist to build a genuine relationship?
It’s super important for me because that’s where all my success came from. A lot of the people that I have huge songs with were my friends, and we spend time together outside of the studio, or we spend a lot of time in the studio just talking about life and whatever, however, and that as a producer helps me to make the soundtrack for their life that they’re finna tour with or get synced to a movie or be able to do all of these radio shows with. It just kind of helps me understand it a little bit better. So I try to get to know whoever I’m working with before we start working together, because then it’ll last longer and it won’t be just cookie cutter.

Who are some of the artists you’ve worked with in the past that you’ve been able to build that with?
Moneybagg Yo. We just had “Whiskey Whiskey” come out with him and Morgan Wallen, that did really well, went gold in a month. That was super surprising to me. But it was one of those type of relationships where he’s from Memphis, I’m from Atlanta, but we usually connect through a mutual friend in L.A. a lot together. We’ll spend hours talking. We was just talking about mutual funds the other day, you know what I mean? And investing. And I was teaching him about some of the stuff that I do as far as with my investments or my brokerage accounts, and finding different ways to just pull from the resources we already have. And it’s like, I don’t know, man. It’s a real genuine conversation, a real genuine friend at that point. It’s not really about just send me some beats or whatever. So that’s the first person that pops into mind outside of somebody like Gunna. But yeah, Bagg for sure. Shout out to him.

Memphis is interesting with the country sound that they’ve got going right now
Yeah, I had a few country records come out in 2024, and that was my first introduction to working with country artists or really just the writer world that they got going on over there. But I was really thankful to be able to catch one with Morgan and for it to kind of be a crossover between a hip-hop and a country, and people actually resonated to it. So yeah, Nashville is different, but I love Nashville.

Have you been working with country artists lately?
Yeah, a lot of country writers. I had a song come out with Charlieonnafriday in 2024 called “When It Rains,” and that was a good song. That was something that was full country. I’ve worked with Breland and his writers a lot. We got a bunch of just crazy shit in the stash. And then I did a lot of stuff with Charlie Handsome for Post and Morgan, stuff that just hasn’t come out yet.

What’s it like translating what you do, coming from the rap world, and working in that environment?
I think it’s more so like I’m adding value by my frequencies. They kind of have a way that they do things, but me coming from my world, it’s like we have a way of doing our own things. So I can honestly say I kind of was bringing frequency to those rooms, whether it was lower frequencies, because that’s what I’m used to in the hip-hop world, or just a certain sound that this person might’ve not have been thinking of because they’re so used to doing acoustic guitar or just real drums instead of programmed drums. Just that type of input. But honestly, I think it was more of a learning experience for me than anything else. I was learning how they do things and how people, they have the writers and the writers come up with the records, and just their process. That’s something completely different from the hip-hop world.

When you think about your project, what do you think about when you structure an album for yourself?
You know how some of the best movies in the world started from a book? I kind of want to put that into the perspective of my album. You know Turbo as the producer, but you don’t really know Turbo as or, okay, well, I’ll say you’ll know Turbo as the hip-hop producer or the trap producer, but you don’t know Turbo’s real broad span of music, because I haven’t done it with any of those type of artists yet. So with my album, I kind of want to open the listeners and all of my fans’ ears to how broad my music discography and just my mind goes with music and not just hip-hop trap rap. So that’s really my goal, to paint the picture. I feel like me and the stuff that I did from the Babys and the Gunnas and the Thugs and the YSL stuff was just the start. That was my book. And even still, that was a great fucking book, if you’re a book reader, you know what I mean? But everybody’s not a book reader. You’ll have to see the movie. And my album is basically the movie.