Evolving at the Tempo of Pop Culture with Record Producer Anthony Kilhoffer
“One day, we're going to this show with Travis [Scott] in New York. We're listening to the radio on the way, and they played three good music songs in a row that I had a hand in - a Kanye song, a ‘Watch the Throne’ song, and a Pusha T song. Just to know that I had that much of a hand in what’s being played in popular culture… that was quite impressive.”
American record producer, songwriter and engineer Anthony Kilhoffer is an integral member of Chicago’s Slang Music Group, having worked with founder Vince Lawrence for more than 20 years.
Over 25-years, his work has shaped the sound of some of the biggest and most influential artists in a variety of genres and earned him four Grammy awards. Recently, he has even stepped into the limelight himself with his debut single as an EDM artist, ‘Live Forever’. Upon its release in August 2023, the track received praise and radio play from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Pete Tong and global festival DJs.
From Chicago to LA, and on global tours, Kilhoffer has collaborated with a who’s-who of artists, including Jay Z, Kanye West, Zayn, Kid Cudi, Cash Cobain, Travis and Iggy Azalea - with whom he earned a Record of the Year nomination for her breakout hit ‘Fancy’.
Speaking to LBB’s Ben Conway, alongside Vince Lawrence, Anthony Kilhoffer says he was always drawn to music - tracing it back to the impressive low end reverberations he felt from a fretless bass guitar as a child. He shares that other early memories include the influential radio show ‘Casey’s Top 40’, hosted by DJ and actor Casey Kasem, and the bounty of artists being played on the airwaves during the ‘80s pop music peak.
[Above: Anthony Kilhoffer and Vince Lawrence]
“You had Hall & Oates, Prince’s first album, The Cars, Cyndi Lauper… the ‘80s had great smash hits. To this day, people love ‘80s music - it still sets the party off. And I think a lot of contemporary music is based around that whole thing. The Beyoncés, the Rihannas… they're all following the Madonna archetype, which is whatever the pop culture is at its height, but they're then adapting their styles to it.”
Growing up in rural central Illinois, a young Anthony picked up the guitar at around 10-years-old. In highschool, he hoped to join the next Guns ‘N’ Roses, before this shifted to a more grunge-leaning dream at college in mid-’90s Chicago. Here, his influences quickly broadened - Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and more.
His first real break into the industry came via an internship at Chicago Trax Recording. By day, Anthony was engineering and programming; by night, playing local clubs with his band. However, the ambition of being the next Pearl Jam or Nirvana soon ended when he realised he could make a living working with recording artists in the studio instead.
His first significant project was an engineering gig for Ralph ‘Wildstyle’ Leverston, of the hip hop group Crucial Conflict, and soon Anthony was regularly working with R Kelly’s camp of producers, who gave him a solid boot camp education in the music business. After parting ways with the R&B singer a couple of years later, he started his first brief stint working for Slang Music Group, having collaborated with Vince - and admiring his “hustle” - a few years prior.
“He had his own studio in the Chicago Trax building, and I saw that he was doing a lot of ad work, and that he was making money,” says Anthony. “I try to always affiliate myself with people that are succeeding and hustling. Oftentimes people have an alliance with studios but I think you need to have an alliance with clients that are doing good business.”
He continues, “It's all about the relationships that you're building with people you're working with. The biggest move is to go from being just the engineer that works with whoever, to the engineer that people call because they want you.”
Together, Vince and Anthony worked under Vince’s philosophy that “to live life without looking at the price tag, you have to work without looking at the clock,” working flexibly and tirelessly with a diverse range of artists, sometimes even starting sessions at 2AM. It’s this dedication, mixed with his adaptability and communication skills that lie at the heart of Anthony’s prolonged success.
“People from seven different cultures will come together in a room and make music,” says Vince. “You have to get along with everybody, and Anthony had that ability to find common ground with just about anyone.”
In a studio, Anthony says that what someone is trying to achieve isn’t always what comes out of their mouth, so being able to interpret artists’ requests from ‘what they say they want’ into ‘what you think they want’ has been one of his most valuable talents.
“And you can't take it personally or be upset if they don’t like what you deliver right away… if people question what you're doing or how you're making a sound or what the end goal is. If you think it's a great mix but they're not happy with it, you have to tailor it to what they want. It's just like being a waiter, but different.”
[Above: Anthony poses with two Grammy awards]
Anthony also has had to adapt over time to the shifts in pop culture. As rock music began to step aside in the late ‘90s, he refused to discredit the rising popularity of hip hop and trap music as a fad - like he witnessed some of his contemporaries do - and has since continuously adapted to the trends of the time. Recently, he’s shifted away slightly from trap and rap to pursue the “next level of house EDM”, resulting in the ‘Live Forever’ single, released under his moniker, Kilhoffer.
“[It’s] because I see that trap is towards the end of its lifespan, just like in the early 2000s when nu metal was at the end of its lifespan,” he says. “When I first moved to LA, I was working with Limp Bizkit and some other folks, and I was trying to make that change into being a rock ‘n’ roll music producer. But as I saw that was falling, and that hip hop was coming up, I made the pivot to work on hip hop music.”
It was there, out in LA circa 2002, where Anthony met a young producer who he instantly recognised would be successful - a certain Kanye West.
Though initially unaware of his full potential as an artist in his own right, Anthony did everything possible to impress Kanye, hoping he would need his engineering services. This became a 12-year partnership, with Anthony working on every Kanye West album from his 2004 debut ‘The College Dropout’ to 2016’s ‘The Life of Pablo’. In this time, Anthony was also credited on the Jay-Z and Kanye West collaborative album ‘Watch the Throne’, as well as projects for Michael Jackson, Rihanna, John Legend, Common and the Pussycat Dolls.
“Being from Chicago, Kanye used all the same equipment Rob [R Kelly] did. All the Chicago producers used the MPC [Akai’s sampling and sequencing music workstation] and the ASR-10 [Ensoniq’s sampling keyboard]. I always made sure we could track the beats efficiently, and was thinking the next step ahead… technical things like always starting the songs at 30 seconds when you’re syncing to timecode - that was another big thing with Kanye.”
He explains, “It sounds like a very menial thing, but say Mariah Carey decides she wants that beat, and then wants to add to it another day - it avoids that timecode problem where the artist is going to lose their fucking mind because all the instruments aren’t playing together.”
This penchant for the technical side of making music is what made Anthony so valuable to both Kanye West and Slang Music Group, whom he helped bring into the ‘next era’ of production by putting together Vince’s first Pro Tools rig. When he wasn’t making albums or touring with Kanye - doing live playback and autotune at shows - he was helping people bridge the gap between their familiar, analogue tools and the cutting edge digital revolution. Not to mention working on commercial briefs that Vince would send his way.
Other people sending things in Anthony’s direction during this time included many up-and-coming artists; people would send him emails after reading his name on credits lists for projects with Kanye, Kid Cudi and more. And as if Anthony’s hit-rate for collaborating with some of the hottest rising stars wasn’t high enough already, one of these young correspondents turned out to be a 16-year-old Travis Scott.
“We went back and forth - he'd send me demos and I would talk to him about how to make them better. Then once he graduated high school, he moved to LA and we met in person and really started to work together.” Anthony went on to manage Travis Scott from 2012 to 2015 - a turn of events that would lead him back to Slang Music Group.
In 2014, Vince was throwing shows to help his rap clients find fans, and decided to fly in a rising star to headline the first event. Enter Travis Scott, and manager Anthony Kilhoffer. 1000 tickets sold later, the relationship between the pair of producers has been strong ever since.
“I would take songs that I didn't place with artists and then just tailor them to what Vince was looking for,” says Anthony, describing his commercial workflow. “So if I was pitching songs to Sean Kingston and he didn't take them, and if they fit the genre that Vince was looking for, I would just cut them down to 60-second spots. That's still the same thing I do today.”
“The win for me,” adds Vince, “is that when a client wants the vibe of a Sean Kingston song, I’m immediately able to say, ‘Hey, I know a guy who worked on that,’ and tap into that.”
He continues, “Anthony is one of one of a few producers in our group that's had success in the mainstream record business. Oftentimes, advertising is asking us to mimic culture - but we're contributing to culture in the first place, so there’s an authenticity that comes from being an actual cultural driver. Because you recognise the authenticity from the other rooms that you’re functioning in.”
Anthony’s approach to commercial work is scientific - he examines the key, tempo and other integral elements of the reference tracks chosen by the client to identify common threads. To him, it’s similar to his experiences as an engineer in the studio - avoiding the pitfall of choosing what he wants, and instead listening deeper for what the client really wants (even if they don’t say what it is).
But whether it’s his commercial work with Slang Music Group, releasing his own house music to “combat David Guetta”, or producing for hip hop artists like recent collaborators Kid Cudi and Sheck Wes, Anthony continues to diversify to this day - embracing new trends and technology alike - from emerging genres to Ableton [DAW software] and Dolby Atmos.
“He’s reinventing himself, yet again,” says Vince. “He was the rock guy, the rap guy, the R&B guy, the pop guy… Kanye! Kid Cudi! Then he developed Travis Scott - and now he’s making dance music again, but as an artist!”
To predict what Anthony’s future looks like, beyond his expected follow-up single to ‘Live Forever’, would be a fool’s errand. But wherever his path takes him, it’s clear that he’ll refuse to stay still and let the music fade out. He, instead, is louder than ever, and always changing tempo - writing, producing and importantly, evolving, at the speed of pop culture.
