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In May 2020 the London radio station Capital XTRA put the drill producer Ghosty on a video call with its Classical Kyle, a classical music expert in a suit and tie. Near the end, Kyle asked how he had made his producer tag. Ghosty explained that a friend recorded it (play: Ghosty on his tag, and Bach’s, Capital XTRA, 2020) and he took it into FL Studio and added delay, a flanger and EQ: “literally an audio signature.” Kyle then played him the last piece Bach wrote. Three bars from the end, Kyle said, Bach “puts in his producer tag”: the notes B-flat, A, C and B-natural, which spell BACH in German notation.[1]
“As of yet, drill beatmakers haven’t sought to be recognised beyond their producer tag,” TRENCH wrote in 2021.[2] So when Drake tried the style on Headie One’s “Only You Freestyle” in 2020, it was M1OnTheBeat’s producer tag “echoing in his headphones in the booth,” as Crack Magazine put it.[3]
A producer tag is a short recorded signature that identifies its maker. UK drill took Chicago drill’s template and made it London’s, with sliding 808 basslines that, in M1’s words, now define the genre: “Nowadays it’s not drill if it doesn’t have that sound.”[2] The tags travelled with those beats, as far as Brooklyn. Here are three producers and the TrapHouseMob collective tag heard on Pop Smoke’s “Dior.” For the American tags drill grew up with, see hip-hop’s greatest producer tags.
“M1OnTheBeat” · M1OnTheBeat
M1 left home at 16, spent six months in a YMCA hostel with a blue HP laptop, and was then given a council studio flat on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate, home of the OFB rap crew. Their manager knew his beats for CB, and the first track he made with them ended up in their viral session for Tim Westwood’s YouTube channel. As a teenager, with MKthePlug, he produced the records that moved UK drill away from Chicago imitations, from CB’s “Take That Risk” to Headie One’s “Golden Boot.”[3]
The Drake verse made his tag (play: Headie One x Drake, “Only You Freestyle,” official video, opening) one of the most recognizable in the genre, Splice noted.[4] He called the song his proudest achievement: “it doesn’t get much bigger than that, man.” He also told TRENCH why a tag wasn’t enough for him: “As a producer, you tend to stay in the background and that can only take you so far.”[2]
“Ghosty” · Ghosty
Ghosty, a London producer best known for Digga D’s “No Diet,” also helped carry drill to New York.[5] His tag is his name, repeated and run through the delay he described to Capital XTRA; Kyle sang it back to him as “ghosty, ghosty, ghosty.” A producer tag, Ghosty told him, “is mainly a vocal of someone saying the producer’s name,” though it can also be a sound.[1]
The beat that left London · 808Melo
808Melo, a London producer born in 1997, had made beats for Headie One, OFB and K-Trap when Pop Smoke found him; he went on to produce the Brooklyn rapper’s debut mixtape, Meet the Woo, including “Welcome to the Party.”[6]
He told Genius in 2020 that Pop Smoke first emailed him from an address that wasn’t even his rap name, then messaged him on Instagram asking to use the “Welcome to the Party” beat. “Dior” went the other way round: in the studio, Pop Smoke played him a song he had already recorded on the beat. “This guy ripped it off YouTube,” Melo said, laughing. In his breakdown you can hear where the beat starts after his tag (play: 808Melo: “after the Melo beat tag,” Genius Deconstructed).[7]
“Dior” also carries the “TrapHouseMob” tag (play: TrapHouseMob’s tag on Pop Smoke’s “Dior,” voiced by Jaye Neutron). The collective name is a separate identifier from Melo’s own tag. VoiceTagGods, which publishes this blog, credits this recording to vocalist Jaye Neutron in its public client reel, with the cue at 00:30 in Pop Smoke’s official video.[8]
How we chose
This selection follows three producers’ documented accounts and the separately credited TrapHouseMob recording on “Dior.” UK drill has many other tags, including MKthePlug’s and Carns Hill’s. The TrapHouseMob vocalist credit is specific to the recording in our public client reel; it does not establish who voiced Melo’s own tag.
Kyle rated the two signatures evenly. He liked Bach’s, he told Ghosty, and he “equally” liked “ghosty, ghosty, ghosty.”[1]