Meet Boi-1da, the hit-making hip-hop producer

Welcome to Meet the Producers, a CBC Music series that highlights Canadian producers making waves in their respective genres. Producers are integral to building the backbone of the songs we love: they turn ideas into fully fleshed creations, and because so much of what they do happens behind the scenes, we want to shed a light on them. 

Boi-1da is two years shy of being 20 years in the game — and his prolific productions show no signs of slowing anytime soon. The Toronto producer and songwriter chalks his longevity up to his adaptability: as the hip-hop landscape has shifted around him, Boi-1da has learned to pivot but still trust his gut.

"I don't think anybody could actually pinpoint a style of mine because I have multiple styles and I constantly switch and I'm onto another," he told CBC Music. 

That freedom to explore has led to an abundance of platinum records, many achieved alongside fellow Torontonian Drake. The megastar is without a doubt one of Boi-1da's most common collaborators, going back to 2006, when Boi-1da produced tracks on Drake's first mixtape, Room for Improvement.

The two have worked together on more than 50 songs — hit singles "Best I Ever Had," "Headlines" and "God's Plan" (for which he won a Grammy) are just a sample. Boi-1da is one of the in-house producers on Drake's OVO Sound label, and he executive produced the widely acclaimed 2015 Drake album, If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, which included "Energy" and "Know Yourself." 

Boi-1da is a student of producers including Dr. Dre, Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Swizz Beatz, all of whom he grew up admiring.

"I would definitely listen to them and try to emulate their styles, which ended up teaching me a lot about producing in general," he said. Aside from Drake, Boi-1da's worked with a mix of old-guard talent like Eminem and Jay-Z, contemporary heavyweights like Future, Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj, and rappers taking hip-hop in new directions like Cardi B, Travis Scott and Jack Harlow. 

Although Boi-1da has a laundry list of hip-hop production credits, he doesn't just stay in that lane: he dabbles in both pop (Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Alessia Cara, Maroon 5) and R&B (Giveon, Savannah Ré, Kehlani, Ella Mai) production. He pulls from a wide range of influences, describing the music he listens to as "all over the place." He's the kind of connoisseur to have Bootsy Collins, Tupac, Lil Wayne, the Chi-Lites, Supertramp and Queen all on one playlist. 

"I don't like to trap myself in a box when it comes to creating, so each time I get into the studio, I go in there with a free mind," he explained.

The Boi-1da sound, dissected

Boi-1da is a self-described jukebox, when his hands have touched a beat you'll hear anything from the sinister 808s of Kendrick Lamar's "The Blacker the Berry" or the shimmery, stadium-ready reggaeton of Travis Scott's "K-Pop" featuring Bad Bunny and the Weeknd. 

His love of production began at 14, after a friend introduced him to Fruity Loops softwa (now FL Studio) on the way home from school. "I always had a love of listening to music, and a curiosity of how it was made," he said. The software allowed him to understand the inner workings of a song: "I started playing around with [Fruity Loops] and became very passionate about it, and kind of became addicted to it." 

Boi-1da was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and as a kid moved to Toronto — one of the cities with the largest Jamaican diaspora in Canada, so dancehall and reggae music were always around him. Even when he's not making a beat that clearly pulls from the reggae lexicon, like the smash hit "Work" by Rihanna and Drake, the influence of Jamaican genres crops up in his productions. 

"Dancehall and reggae are very rhythm-based [styles of music], and I feel like with the music that I make, it's very rhythm-focused. I just feel like if you have the right rhythm, it makes people want to do certain things, and move a certain way," he said.

Drake's "Controlla" is another obvious example of that Caribbean touch, but you can also hear that affinity for energetic groove in the rolling rhythms of Beyoncé's "Heated" — which began as a Drake reference track — and the syncopated drums of Justin Bieber and Kehlani's "Get Me." 

In the studio, Boi-1da is very hands-on and will guide artists who need it, or take a step back with artists who have their own visions. As a songwriter, he's no stranger to dropping a few bars during a session to help an artist get their ideas flowing. 

"Sometimes saying what you have in your head helps an artist kind of spin it in their own way and it turns into something really special," he said. 

Throughout his career, Boi-1da has welcomed all kinds of new innovations, and that curiosity recently led him to AI, which he sees as a new frontier in music production. "My sound is forever changing and music is forever changing … and there's new ways of making music now," he said. 

In 2019, he dropped a beat pack called Bare Sounds for Your Headtop that gave emerging producers the chance to use his go-to snares, hi-hats, 808s and more. It was not the first time he shared his riches in that way.

"I want to be known as one of the people that helped others push sound forward," he said. "I've never been the type to hold information back, I was one of the first people to publicly put out my own sounds for other producers [to use]."

He sees AI as an opportunity to keep that ethos going by allowing upcoming singers and rappers to use his beats, even when he's not actively involved. 

In December 2023, he released a project titled The Concept A.I.bum made up of songs using AI beats trained on his back catalogue. The five artists he worked with on the project included Toronto R&B singer Savannah Ré, who penned the bumping "Hall of Fame" using the AI-generated beats.

Boi-1da admitted that he was apprehensive at first about AI taking work away from human beings, but he believes people need to learn to use it to their benefit.

"I feel like, you know, AI is our friend. You just got to know how to use it and not let it use you." 

Stay tuned every month for new instalments of Meet the Producers to discover more Canadian producers who are making hits and pushing boundaries.