Knox Fortune Tells Us How He Created Mini Universes For Joey Purp’s QUARTERTHING

Right before he launches into a relentless, spacious flow on his airy song "2012," Chicago rapper Joey Purp acknowledges his producer. "Yo Knox," he speedily slurs over a chiming sample, shouting out trusted collaborator Knox Fortune. To hear the 26-year-old producer and musician tell the story of how they assembled the tune, that brief salutation represented the energy the two captured in the room together.


"We were just sitting around. I think I began to play the sample-sounding thing, and from there on, [Joey] just began rapping, maybe without drums even," Knox recently told MTV News over the phone, minutes immediately after stepping off a plane in New York. "It just built really organically. It was nice because it was something we really did not have to think about at all."


The proverbial sausage often gets made through the much messier (and some days much sexier) techniques. Yet once it's among two musicians who've worked alongside each other for years, some days it really is that simple.


Knox and Joey first met through Vic Mensa and rapidly started networking with on Joey's Leather Corduroys project with KAMI. In 2016, Joey got a boost from his impressive iiiDrops mixtape, executive produced by Knox, which included the infectious Chance the Rapper-aided ladies @." Joey returned the favor, helming Knox's debut, Paradise, in 2017.


It only made sense, then, that Knox would have a hand in Joey's genuine debut, QUARTERTHING, which dropped on September 7. He worked with Joey on three songs — "2012," "Aw Sh*t!," And "QUARTERTHING" — building on sessions the duo had stashed away from recordings in Los Angeles and London. "I'd arrange them by most to least interesting, and then put them in potential places that they can work," Knox mentioned. "And if it doesn't work, [we] just immediately removed it and just stuck to a set guideline of, 'Do we like this? No, we don't like this. OK, it's gone.' And then we never picture it again."


That's why, in listening to Knox tell stories of creating these songs with help from the Social Experiment's Peter Cottontale, Nate Fox, and Nico Segal, who executive produced QUARTERTHING, it almost sounds accidental; as if they randomly stumbled upon excellent moments. Although it's not quite that, he mentioned. It's more like following a formula that certainly wouldn't work for each person however nearly routinely works for them.





"A lot of artists you work with, you'll have a four-hour session with them, and so they spend all four hours working on a song, attempting to get it finished up," Knox mentioned. "Joey will sit and play [NBA]2K and listen to shit I'm making or just playing in the room for three along with 1/2 of these hours, and then in 30 minutes write the perfect verse you've ever heard."


It's easy to see this from one full listen through QUARTERTHING. Joey appears to morph with the music on each track, entering exultant and victorious on the album's beginning bars like a wrestler stomping down an entrance ramp. By the time the house-indebted "Elastic" hits, he's gone icy to match the clubby vibes before dialing the charm back up to shout out Mike Jones a number of songs later.


Of course, it pays to be prepared for these moments. Knox's attention to detail is pristine, and he admitted that he's generally very in control" of his contributions. He added the sounds of shaken-up spray cans to "QUARTERTHING" and also selections from "Rick Rubin's personalized modular synthesizer." To coalesce all these ideas into a beat is tricky, especially as soon as you're creating music someone else has to meld with. That's where Peter, Nate, and Nico come in — sprinkling a "Pop Goes the Weasel" soundbite at the end of "Aw Sh*t!" And recruiting DJ Taye's low synth rumbles to finish it off.


As much as he likes being in the driver's seat, Knox called it "super, super reassuring" to have the trio, plus Joey, as closers for QUARTERTHING: "It's very nice have the ability to take something where you're sort of at a dead end with it and be like, 'What do you guys think of it?' Cause they'll routinely have something for you."


With assignments from peers like Noname and Very Slight, along with his own handiwork, out in the world — not to say some new Knox Fortune originals potentially willing to drop as early as October — Knox feels like it's Chicago season once again, a sentiment he amplified on Twitter. "It feels like one of these moments again of something special in Chicago, and that's totally what it's all about for me," he mentioned. "That's why I like doing it."