Connie May: "Is being a student, producing and working a difficult balance?” 

Sam Wilson: Yeah definitely, taking the time to be able to get inspiration from music artists to actually incorporate it into your own is such a big aspect of production, but obviously working and balancing a student life, like trying to keep up with work and my assignments and socialising with all of my friends, as well as pursuing production as a career objective is a lot harder than it sounds.

When you're doing your assignments it's hard to separate doing music as a hobby from an actual career path, because the pressure that comes with producing for university assignments is different to what you want to make and not meeting their standards, so it's definitely a lot to pile together.

Do you think young adults today who are trying to get in the music industry have it easy – or hard?

I'd say it’s hard, definitely, because we can get our hopes up so much, thinking that we have spent a week or a month perfecting this song or this beat to send it out, put it online and get no traction, to then see other people share their stuff online [with so much less effort] yet they are doing a lot better.

So do you think social media has had a negative impact?

I think it’s hard, there’s positives and negatives to social media being such a big thing in the music industry nowadays because it can help younger, homegrown artists get their stuff out there and maybe get noticed, it does provide a huge platform, but then again people do feel pressure if their stuff isn't engaged with because they haven’t got as many views as some other people have.

Is there anyone specific that inspires you in the music industry? 

First off when I started producing in college when I was 17 it was like Future, Metro, and I would probably say like Gunna, but as time went on that style got a little bit old and it started to feel more robotic than actually doing what I wanted to do, there wasn't as much heart or talent in it, it was just seeing how many beats you could do in one day rather than taking the time to do maybe one or two in a day and actually putting all your effort into those two and making sure they were perfect than just copying and pasting stuff.

So then, when I was probably 18/19, I started basing a lot of stuff around Travis Scott, especially rodeo and Kanye West’s album graduation, production wise they felt more intricate and advanced so i was learning more techniques to elevate my production up. And then when I started my 20s I took a long hiatus from producing seriously, I stopped using rap as an inspiration for what I wanted to do, and wanted to develop my skill set and learn a few instruments' so therefore I learned how to play the guitar, electric acoustic and bass, and the drums.