The title of Black Milk’s 2007 album, Popular Demand, was more prophetic of his future than it was indicative of his status at the time. Sure, the Detroit producer/emcee had already served seven to eight years in the game, scored extensive beat placements with Slum Village and Phat Kat both as a solo producer and as part of the tandem BR Gunna, and he was turning heads with his Sound of the City Volume 1 mixtape and his Broken Wax EP. But once the aforementioned disc dropped earlier this year, things have gotten a lot busier for the 24-year-old. While continuing to lace the emcees in his city, he’s also nabbed placements with Pharaohe Monch and Lloyd Banks. Rounding out the year with the Caltroit album/mixtape with Aftermath’s Bishop Lamont, Milk is having a direct hand in some of the most anticipated music to hit stores in ’08: a full-length LP with Sean Price and Guilty Simpson, an EP with Michigan underground staple One Be Lo, and much more.

In an in-depth interview with HipHopDX’s Producer’s Corner, Black Milk talks about his continuous growth, managing a seemingly infinite workload, and gets readers ready for dream collaborations in the works.

HipHopDX: You’ve been doing you for a minute, but now you’re getting recognition. Does it seem fast, or like a long time coming?
Black Milk: I don’t feel like it came fast. I’ve been grinding out, doing music for the past seven or eight years, basically since ’99-2000 I’ve been making beats. I took it seriously around 2001, so I’ve really been grinding for a minute. It probably don’t seem like it, 'cause I’m still young, I started in my teenage years making beats and selling beats. I’m only 24 now, so I feel I’ve still got a long way to go, man. It feels like it took a minute, but I feel like I’m blessed to be able to accomplish what I’ve accomplished so far at this age. I’ve still got a lot more things I want to do and accomplish in the game.

DX: For a while, you were compared to J Dilla, but as of late, you’ve really found your own sound and hose comparisons have dwindled away. How difficult was it to get into your own groove?
BM: Well, it wasn’t difficult. To tell you the truth, people compared me to Dilla, but people didn’t compare me to Dilla until he passed. It seems people didn’t realize I was doing beats, or didn’t know who I was, or didn’t know I was already producing for artists before Dilla passed. I never heard that before, when he was alive, when we did collaborations together and stuff I did for Slum and other artists, production-wise. Of course, we’re from Detroit, we work with a lot of the same people in the same circles, so I can see where the comparisons come from. In a way it’s a compliment, but when people say, “You’re the next Dilla,” or “You’re the next dude to hold the torch”…I want to separate myself from that. I don’t want to be the new Dilla, that’s not why I’m here.

DX: So when those comparisons came up, did you feel the need to change what you were doing?
BM: A little, a little. My style of music is always going to have some kind of Detroit sound and feel to it, it’s a certain feel that we have in Detroit. I can’t really describe the sound or the feel, but it’s something that we have that people can recognize and connect with and know that it’s a Detroit producer: from me, to Wajeed, to Karreim Riggins, to Dilla. So it’s a certain Detroit thing that will always be in my beats. The soul vibe of it, which Dilla basically kind of created, he laid that blueprint out for all of the Detroit producers. But me, personally, my sound is going to change regardless.

DX: Yeah, it seems like you’ve changed quickly. I remember listening to Popular Demand, but I heard the beat CDs from the MySpace page, and they sounded light years ahead of it. How do you come up with new directions?
BM: A lot of people feel what I do. I get more love from what I do than bad criticism. But the criticism that I do see that’s negative, in one, two or three reviews, or some internet shit or someone on MySpace…some stuff I recognize as just hate and I don’t pay it no mind, but sometimes I do take certain things under consideration. Like, “Okay. They say they wasn’t feeling this,” so I go back in the lab like, “I gotta show up the people that don’t think I’m as good as other people think I am, or as good of a producer as some other producers. I’ve got to perfect my craft.” I’m all about perfecting my craft, and making sure it’s nothing you can say about my production that’s bad. [Laughs] That’s probably why the sound changed up from the album. Plus, to tell you the truth, the album was done for months before it came out. So I was kind of already on some other shit when the album dropped. Continued on page 2 »