Introducing Kenneth Blume, the artist formerly known as Kenny Beats.
The powerhouse producer — who defined an entire era of rap crafting albums by Jpegmafia, Denzel Curry, Vince Staples, Rico Nasty and more — is entering a new chapter by going back to the name he was born with.
“I named myself Kenny Beats at 15 years old for MySpace — because my name was Kenny and I made beats — and it kind of just stuck,” Blume tells Variety over Zoom from his L.A. studio. “And whenever I get a Grammy nomination as Kenny Beats, there’s times where in my heart I’m just like, ‘But my last name is Blume.’”
One of his first credits as Kenneth Blume is as the composer and curator behind the music of “Lurker,” Alex Russell’s tense debut film that follows Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), a shy retail worker who will do anything to break into the inner circle of Oliver (Archie Madekwe), an artist on the brink of stardom. The psychological drama, which was a hit at Sundance and went on to play Berlin Film Festival before premiering in theaters on Friday, features a score and original songs from Blume alongside collaborators like Dijon and Rex Orange County.
“To be honest, ‘Lurker’ has been a big part of me deciding to use my real name,” Blume says. “Being at Sundance and seeing my government come up on the screen was a very different feeling.”
Below, Blume talks more to Variety about saying goodbye to Kenny Beats, working with his longtime friend Russell, crafting the film’s original music and more.
Let’s start with your name — you recently decided to retire the Kenny Beats moniker and go by your real name, Kenneth Blume. What’s behind this change?
I’ve been Kenny Beats for 20 years and I’m starting to not feel like it; I’m starting to feel like Kenneth Instrumentals or something now. So just being my real name feels safe from here on forward, you know? It’s time. I hope I didn’t make everyone feel like they have to call me Kenneth, though. I still want people to call me Kenny, but I think if I’m going to use my real name I have to use the whole thing.
How did you get involved with “Lurker”?
Really, Alex was my favorite journalist in hip-hop. I was always just like, man, if I ever do Fader or XXL, I know who I’m going to call — and I remember thinking that years before I ever got the opportunity. And then when I was getting a lot of write-ups in 2018/2019, I was like, “I need Alex Russell to write my first Fader piece.” We reached out, he came by the studio and he was there for a whole session during “777,” which was a formative album for my career. I felt how most people feel when they meet Alex: “Oh, he hates me.” Alex is very quiet and very inquisitive, and I was just like, “Wow that guy’s cool, but I don’t think he thinks I’m cool.” But we slowly talked more and became friends.
Then it got to the point where me, Zack, Alex and Mike [Power], my manager, were hanging out so much that Alex ended up living with Mike. He said, “Oh, I wrote this movie,” and he wrote it at Mike’s house during COVID, and so we all got to see [the script] right away. And everyone’s already impressed with Alex from years back, before he had all these Emmy nominations and “The Bear” and “Beef.” I hate to say it, but I’m not sitting here shocked that Alex has a really cool movie coming out in theaters worldwide. I expected this for a long time, and when we read it we were like, “Holy shit, it’s as good as we thought it was.” And I unfortunately never had an option to do the music or not. This wasn’t like, “I can’t wait to help my buddy.” Alex was like, “When I do movie, you do music.” I was like, “OK, that’s it.”
Obviously, “Lurker” is set in the L.A. music world with producers, musicians and artists all fighting for their big break. How did the story resonate with you?
My first thought, honestly, was: “We’ve let Alex in too far. We’ve let him see way too much.” Alex has been there with me through crushing moments in my career, getting fucked over and weird shit happening. My first thought about the movie was to take stock and be like, “Wait, is this about my friends? Is this about someone we know?” So much of it wasn’t literal to any one scenario but it was like, this all could and does happen around us all the time.
How did you approach the role of music in the film? What did you want it to add?
Because Alex got it so right with how hard and fucking nails on the chalkboard it really feels every day trying to climb your way up one centimeter in the music industry, I didn’t want the music to then miss that. Or that the songs Archie was singing in the movie didn’t feel like a song an artist like him would really sing or that there’s too much music in a music movie instead of letting the dialogue speak. I wanted it to feel like 2018 for me and my friends, I wanted those songs to really come from people like Dijon and Rex Orange County.
I mean, Dijon just wrote Bieber’s album and is one of the most influential people of our time — I think that “Sweet Talk” really rings out, even as a song by Archie. That Rex Orange County song, “Love and Obsession,” really feels like it could go on a really unbelievable album. And I think the music selling it, Alex really understanding the world from being privy to it and somehow nailing it with the dialogue and the feel of the movie… like, you can’t get the music wrong in a music movie. So I just took it so fucking serious. I’m really, really proud with what we came out with. I went and saw it with so many of my best friends who all understand this even better than I do about the industry and the toils of it, and they all were like, “Man, it felt real.” And that’s the biggest compliment we could get with this film.
For the original music, were most of the songs written for the movie or were they from previous sessions?
“Snakes in the Garden” was written for the movie. I was in a writing session with [songwriter] Beau Knox and I told him, “I’m working on this movie,” and he was working on a ballad for a pop artist. And as we were doing it, for some reason I was like, “You know what, fuck that artist. Can we just do this for Oliver?” That one was written to fit in the movie — the other ones were not.
“Domicile” was written around the same time by DVR, a very young, talented songwriter on XL Records. He had this song, but when we talked to him about what the movie was and what the character was, he was like, “I feel like he would sing this.” Then we kind of shaped it to Archie and his range and made it fit who Oliver was becoming. The Dijon song, “Sweet Talk,” was basically just a demo at the start of a session with Dijon and I from years ago. I was going through 2018 songs on my computer and I found a half-assed half-finished Dijon song and I called him and was like, “I don’t wanna be that guy, but is there anyway we can use it?” And before I finished he was like, “Dude, I don’t care, go ahead. Love you, bye.” And it was just the chillest thing in the world.
Like, thank you so fucking much to Rex and Dijon for just being as helpful and cool as they fucking could. And for them, I think it’s a beautiful thing because look how good their fucking throwaways are. Holy shit! I talked about it with Rex yesterday and I was like, “Bro, how fucking cool is it that ‘Love and Obsession’ — which, now I’ll love this song for the rest of my life — was this demo that he had with guitars. And I remember listening to it with Archie and being like, “Dude, this is good enough to be a song that carries a fucking film,” you know? When you see the movie, “Love and Obsession” is what you’re left with. These other songs, you remember that they were there, but you know the words to “Love and Obsession” when you leave. It was just such a joy to be able to have songwriters I look up to so much be in for this. Like, good luck getting Dijon to go write a song for your fucking movie now!
On the other hand, how did you approach the score?
As someone who doesn’t score and never really intended to — and I don’t dream about scoring more — it’s not really something that was ever in my purview. When you think about scoring, the first thing that comes to your head is like John Williams and string sections and Hans [Zimmer]. And I think looking at how I felt when I first heard the “Ex Machina” or “Social Network” scores, I left remembering the texture and the wavy wonkiness of it. I kind of wanted it to feel like that, which is the antithesis of my work as a producer. I always want people to leave my work as a producer with something in their head: a lyric, a melody, a feeling. With this, I wanted people to leave and go, “God, that scene made me fucking uncomfortable and I don’t know exactly why.” I wanted everything to kind of creep on you.
I know you just said you don’t want to do more scoring, but would you do the music for Russell’s next film?
I’ll do anything for Alex Russell for the rest of my life. But other than that, no.
I’ll hold you to that.
For my next Variety interview for my next score, you can remind me of that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
