Kenny Beats: YouTube's Favorite Producer
by Harry Sutton
If you’ve been paying attention to the hip-hop scene over the past few years, whether you listen to mainstream trap artists like Roddy Ricch or more niche lyrical rappers like Benny the Butcher, you’ll have heard the exclamation “Whoa, Kenny!” dozens of times. This statement serves as the producer tag used by Connecticut native, Kenneth Charles Blume III, more well-known as Kenny Beats.
Kenny began making music in high school and got his foot in the door of the industry in the summer after his graduation by getting an internship under Jonny Shipes, the producer credited with discovering Joey Badass, Sean Kingston, and others. Kenny then moved to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music, where he became interested in EDM music and started an electronic duo called LOUDPVCK alongside Los Angeles DJ Ryan Maury. The duo gained a fair amount of success, but Kenny felt limited with his EDM work and decided to focus his talents into becoming a great producer of all genres. In 2017, Kenny began to pump out beats at a fast rate and gained popularity very quickly. His early work soon caught the eye of some bigger artists and by 2018, Kenny had released collaborations with some huge names in the rap world like Freddie Gibbs, DaBaby, and Vince Staples.
One of Kenny’s most impressive traits is his versatility, he has aimed to push himself to the limit and explore as many styles of music as possible with his production. As much as we’d love to articulate the contour of Kenny’s music, there’s no way to define his style. Sometimes he works with brash and loud rappers like Rico Nasty and EARTHGANG, while sometimes he makes calm melodic tracks with singers like Omar Apollo and Khalid.
This versatility that Kenny brings with him is perfectly exemplified in his YouTube show The Cave. While Kenny’s music is anything but formulaic, his show has a simple set of rules. Each episode Kenny brings in a different guest artist and asks them what kind of beat they want him to make. In ten minutes or less, Kenny will submit a final product that the artist will then freestyle over.
This format has led to some incredible moments such as a hilarious freestyle from Zack Fox titled “Jesus Is the One (I Got Depression)”, which became such a popular meme that Kenny and Zack were invited to make a Genius Lyric Breakdown. In the Season 1 finale of The Cave, Kenny was joined by Florida rapper Denzel Curry, who he had previously beefed with online. While viewers expected tension, the chemistry between the two was palpable. It was later revealed that the beef between the two was all staged in order to attract views. Denzel and Kenny went on to release a collaborative album titled Unlocked in 2020 which received vast critical acclaim.
Kenny has emerged in the past few years not only as one of the most promising and versatile producers in the industry, but as one of the most entertaining and down-to-earth musicians to reach mainstream success. Kenny seems to truly enjoy his career, both in music production and his endeavors in entertainment. He has released episodes of The Cave consistently for three years and livestreams on Twitch multiple times every week. The door is now wide open for Kenny and it remains to be seen where he’ll go in his career. Whether he will hone in on one particular genre or continue to be a jack of all trades, one thing is for certain: he will continue to keep us entertained with The Cave.
