Cardo Got Wings’ voice cuts through the noise at Ralph’s Coffee as he rattles off the albums that once filled his CD deck in the late ’90s and early aughts. “That was a time period! Seventh and eighth grade. Best music ever. That shit molded me as a man,” he proclaims. “No Limit Records, Cash Money Records.” It feels like he could go on forever; his eyes can’t stop lighting up as he gushes about his love for foundational issues of Murder Dog Magazine and the days when regional rappers felt just as important as whoever was on the top of the Billboard charts. “Murder Dog Magazine would tell you about every region in the U.S. that you don’t know about,” he recalls. “That was your guide to every artist—from Kansas City to Des Moines, Iowa.” Between sips of coffee, he reminisces about digging for new music like it was oxygen.
Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where you’re in “the center of everything,” according to Cardo, exposed him to a myriad of influences. His father and uncles put him onto the groovy G-funk coming out of the West Coast, where projecting flyness was a focal point. That early exposure sparked a deep reverence for DJ Quik, who “could make you feel like a million bucks without having a dollar to your name.” Later, catching an early Three 6 Mafia show at a local college kickstarted an obsession with DJ Paul and Juicy J’s raw, sinister production and opened his ears to a darker, more experimental side of hip-hop that “pushed the envelope” for what it could sound like. By the time Cardo finally tried his hand at production, he already had a significant mental vault of sounds and styles from which he could pull.
After toying around with PlayStation’s MTV Music Generator and getting in constant trouble as a teenager, a move to Dallas, in 2004, pushed Cardo to focus on becoming a full-fledged music producer. He cut his teeth in the blog era, reflecting on it as both a “fun time and a miserable time because you didn’t know how the fuck you were gonna get paid.” Through online networking, Cardo eventually landed his big break by producing a couple of glossy beats for Wiz Khalifa’s 2010 mixtape Kush & Orange Juice, which led to a spot on the in-house Taylor Gang production team. By the end of 2012, with a second child on the way, Cardo was ready to bet on himself and carve out his own path like the hip-hop auteurs he’d always admired. Since the career shift, he’s cemented his reputation as a Swiss Army knife producer capable of crafting beats for rappers at every rung of the industry ladder. His range has led him to making regional bangers with Washington, D.C., stalwart Shy Glizzy, assisting grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal on evolving his sound, helping break a new artist in Baby Keem, and crafting horror–inspired anthems with ATLien Playboi Carti.
Cardo Got Wings spoke with us about the music that defined his upbringing and shaped his worldview. The below interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
