Weeks after the release of Beyoncé’s Renaissance and days following the release of Megan’s Traumazine, we caught up with Ju, who is in Los Angeles at the time of our interview, between meetings with record labels.
Having grown up in DeSoto and Dallas, some of his fondest memories include seeing the Mavs and the Stars for $10 at Reunion Arena, and spending entire days at the State Fair of Texas during the fall.
“I love being from Dallas,” Ju says. “I wouldn’t want to be from any other place in America.”
When Ju was in second grade, his mother gave him a portable CD player, with Lil Bow Wow’s Beware of Dog album. Although he'd grown up around hip-hop, he became enamored with music once he realized he could carry it with him wherever he went.
“Just having hip-hop wherever I could go, that’s what got me into hip-hop, for real,” Ju says.
Ju carried his love of hip-hop — literally and figuratively — into his teenage years, and realized he wanted to produce music and instrumental tracks the summer before his sophomore year of high school, when he heard Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III.
At the time, leaks were a huge issue within the music industry, and Ju remembers Wayne's album had leaked online “about two weeks before” its planned release date.
“The day Tha Carter III leaked was the same day my friend showed me FL Studio, the software I now use to make my beats,” Ju recalls. “I remember sitting at his house that day, and we listened to Tha Carter III, and he showed me the software I still use to this day.”
Over the years, Ju taught himself how to make instrumental tracks by watching YouTube videos. As he improved his craft, he landed placements on projects for artists such as Asian Doll and Gucci Mane. In May 2017, 1501 Records founder Carl Crawford chose him to make tracks for the artists on the label.
During that fateful December, Megan Thee Stallion signed to 1501, and the two began working on her breakthrough mixtape, Tina Snow.
The first song they ever made together was “Tina Montana,” a bass-heavy, piano-driven track, which serves as a fiery introduction to the star. On the song, Megan raps, “None of these bitches is fuckin’ with Megan / Bitch, I’m the hottest, the fuck is they sayin’” and delivers scathing lines like, “They tried to tell me I can’t, but I did it / When I pull up, bitches look like they shitted.”
Though the song was released on Tina Snow in 2018, it remains a signature single for Ju and Megan, and was recently played in an episode of P-Valley’s second season.
“Our first song we ever did together is still getting played to this day,” Ju says.
Another song he produced on Tina Snow, “Big Ole Freak,” received much attention in late 2018 and early 2019, and became a breakthrough for a then up-and-coming Megan.
“That was the first time we had ever been on the radio,” Ju says. “All of her firsts felt like my firsts.”
Ju has since produced several of Megan’s hit singles, including “Captain Hook,” “Body,” and “Thot Shit.” Most times, fans will immediately know one of his productions as soon as they hear it, as many of his tracks open with an audio sample of Megan saying, “and if the beat live, you know Lil Ju made it.”
Many of Megan’s Ju-produced songs have gone viral on TikTok, with users of the video sharing app creating dances to the songs. Songs such as “Body” have pulled in over 130 million streams on Spotify and 135 million views on YouTube.
“The amount of money I've seen from TikTok is ridiculous,” Ju says. “I love TikTok, that’s my favorite app. I don't even get on TikTok, but I love TikTok because Megan’s music goes up on TikTok. As for Spotify, I would much rather people listen to music on YouTube before they listen to it on Spotify, because Spotify pays the least amount of streaming money.”
Though Megan has become a household name over the past four years, she’s expressed dissatisfaction with Crawford and 1501 Records on several occasions. In a tweet posted this past March, the rapper said, “First the man over my label said I don’t make him any money … now he counter suing trying to keep me on his label because he wants to make more money lol if I ain’t making you no money why not just drop me?”
Ju says he hasn’t spoken with Crawford since 2019, noting that he was only hired by the label to make beats for artists on a freelance basis. He has a publishing deal with Sony, which he says he plans to renew. However, he urges young producers and artists to always go over their contracts with a lawyer or legal professional.
“I love being from Dallas. I wouldn’t want to be from any other place in America.” – LilJuMadeDaBeat
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“It’s a cutthroat industry,” Ju says. “These labels know that there's kids, teenagers, and young adults making these beats who don't know anything about the music industry, and they're sending contracts to them for them to sign their whole life away. And even if they don’t sign their life away, they might sign away all their rights to the beat, not knowing any better. The record label’s job is literally to mess you over, so it's your job to not get messed over.”
With his resume, one could say Ju has navigated the industry fairly well. While the past few summers have been a “Hot Girl Summer” for Megan, Ju’s output has been equally impressive. Last month, he landed a spot on Beyoncé’s Renaissance album with a song called “Thique.”
He conceived the song in early 2020 with a songwriter who goes by the name Ink. At the time, Ju and Ink were creating reference tracks, not knowing where the instrumental or the lyrics would end up. Parts of his instrumental would be merged with a track from producer Hit-Boy, whose portion of “Thique” was crafted back in 2014.
“Being a producer is definitely a waiting game,” he says.
While he is one of hip-hop’s most in-demand beatmakers, Ju remains loyal to those who have been with him since the beginning, especially Megan. The two maintain an evident musical chemistry. Ju says he can read Megan’s mind when she describes the kinds of sounds she wants on her records.
On her latest album, Traumazine, Ju produced a song called “Flip Flop,” which contains a sample of Basic Black’s “Baby Can We Talk.” Ju sent Megan the instrumental for “Flip Flop” in “April or May of last year,” but left it untouched for a good while. A different producer presented her with a different beat with the same sample and was reminded of Ju’s beat. She opted to use the track given to her by her longtime collaborator.
“Megan has a big heart, for sure,” Ju says.
On earlier hits, for which Megan had described the audio bits she had in mind, Ju was able to land or recreate those sounds and build around them to create a track.
“A lot of me and Megan’s songs came from her telling me to make the beat in a certain way,” Ju says. “For instance, ‘Body’ has sexy moans, and before we made it, she literally said ‘Can you make me a beat with porn sounds?’ For ‘Captain Hook,’ she asked, ‘Can you make me a beat that sounds like a sword unsheathing?’ For ‘Do It on the Tip,’ she wanted it to sound like someone beating on a table at lunch, so that’s me literally beating on a desk in the studio. I recorded it on my iPhone and made a beat based on that [audio sample].”
Ju estimates he goes on “about seven or eight” flights per month, meeting with artists in Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta and more. He is currently working on several projects for other artists, although he can’t go into detail just yet.
Since Ju got into beatmaking, music has greatly evolved — from the way artists make music to the ways listeners consume it. In a technology-driven era in which aspiring producers, songwriters and musicians can learn the craft quickly, Ju reminds aspiring artists that if they wish to thrive in the industry, simply being good at making music isn’t enough.
“When Tha Carter III came out, there were like three videos on YouTube on how to make beats using FL Studio,” Ju says. “Now, there are millions of videos. Being good at making beats is only 10% of the job. But you have to put in 100% effort first to learn that 10%. Being good at making beats is just the tip of the iceberg. You have to get out and make a name for yourself.”
