Nicholas Piantedosi, the record producer and sound designer known as Decap, has spent the past decade shaping the low end of some of the biggest records in popular music. His fingerprints appear on tracks from Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo and Charli XCX, as well as Freddie Gibbs, Bad Bunny, Mac Miller, BTS and Ludwig Göransson's score for Oppenheimer. The Verge reports that the producer's reach often exceeds his name recognition.
His main vehicle is Drums That Knock, a series of sample packs that debuted in 2016 and is now on its 11th installment. The line has landed on recordings across multiple genres. Kenneth Blume, formerly known as Kenny Beats and the producer behind hits from Denzel Curry, Vince Staples, Rico Nasty, Idles and FKA Twigs, said Decap changed a million lives with a single snare.
Decap's obsession with low-end sound puts him at odds with phone speakers, which he said cannot reproduce a raw 808 without processing. He noted that many listeners spend the day on their phones without ever feeling the low end, and said making his drums knock on a phone counts as doing something right. He also credits a soft clipper with giving drums a warm analog character or making them hit far harder.
On tools, Decap still uses his Boss SP-202 Dr. Sample from 1998, the first sampler he owned, which he used to chop his first samples in junior high school. He uses Ableton Live as his digital audio workstation. He said the belief that producers need specific hardware or software to be legitimate is false, and that anyone with a computer has what is needed.
Decap said his creative approach is the 3M technique: make it, mix it down, move on. Perfection is not the goal, he said, and staying in the act of creation is where the magic happens. He meditates to align mind and body so he can focus, and said good food in Los Angeles is one of his pleasures outside music.
Asked about creative frustrations, he pointed to gatekeeping over gear and said the only thing he cares about is whether a producer is dope. He said his honest answer about what he would change is nothing, because he is happy making music that is meaningful to him and is his own expression. He also said the accomplishment he values most is creating a hard-hitting sound he loves and watching it travel across genres.
He credited his father with the advice to make a decision and put a stake in the ground, while remembering that a stake can always be pulled up and moved.
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