Inside The Credits 042: Bandplay
The Booming Resilience Of Bandplay
Let’s take it back to late 2020 through 2021, when Memphis rap was having a surefire moment or boom. Young Dolph released his pinnacle album, to my ears, Rich Slave and followed it up with his second collaborative effort with his South Memphis protogé Key Glock, Dum and Dummer 2. Those projects represented a one-two-punch of guttural sheen as they were as gritty as they were polished. Then a new voice of the city emerged as a part of Gucci Mane’s 1017 label in Big Scarr, who came roaring in with his immaculate release, Big Grim Reaper. The mixtape captured the ghostly spirit of the city filtered through a barrage of 808s and fervently tumbling vocal cadences. There was only one artist who bound these bursts of energy together, one of the great producers of the 2020s, Bandplay.
Krishon Gaines aka Bandplay was raised a bit outside of Memphis in Columbia, Tennessee, but his beats have been at the core of the surge of what could be called the modern Memphis sound. In 2021, as a part of my list of the best producers for Okayplayer, I had him at number 5. He had as big an impact as anyone for a 12 month period around that time, but if you’re familiar with any of the names listed in the first paragraph, you know that the legacy he was building was short lived. Young Dolph was tragically shot dead in Memphis in November of 2021 and Big Scarr passed away by accidental overdose around a year later in 2022.
In October of 2024, rapper BigXThaPlug dropped the most car speaker rattling hip hop album of the year in Take Care. As I have a lot of commuting to do now living in LA, the album chronicled much of my last quarter of the year. Upon first listening, I was immediately struck by not just how pulsating the production was across the project, but how cohesive and intentional it felt. Naturally, as I’ve been known to do, I dove into the album credits. There were two prominent names listed throughout—Tony Coles (who I now know is X’s in house producer) and the resilient Bandplay. I was stunned at the breadth of work he had done for X on the album and excited to learn they’d been working since 2023. It’s truly remarkable to me how someone like Bandplay can navigate such grief in a personal and professional manner and still come out swinging with year defining production so immediately. I became excited to dive in further to his catalog than I ever had.
Bandplay has credits dating back all the way to the early 2010s for the likes of French Montana, 50 Cent, Starlito, Young Buck, Mack Maine, and Travis Porter. That said, there’s no use chronicling his work intentionally until 2018 when the prodigal pairing of Bandplay and Key Glock emerged. The South Memphis snarl toothed spitter comes alive in Bandplay’s cadences, to this day, in a way like no other. You can hear the difference immediately on Glock’s 2018 tape Glock Bond. On track 2 “Cocky” it feels like Bandplay finds the exact brand of braggadocio his beats had been searching for—--nonchalant with an added element of vigorous sauce.
The next aha moment for Bandplay would arrive only six months later that same year when Glock would bring him into the world of Young Dolph. Bandplay produced his first of many Dolph x Glock collabs in “Major,” which has so much fervor that Dolph catches a flow as immaculate as a Michaelangelo mural. “Mobbin' in the Bentley, smokin' moon rocks/Pocket full of motherfuckin' blue, guap/Half an ounce in my Gucci tube, socks/For the summertime got a new, drop,” sounds like a top down drive down the PCH, like a seafood dinner by the water with a pristine view. Bandplay was off to the races.
After a few tracks on Glock’s closing 2018 tape Glockoma (the best being “Bottom of the Pot”), Bandplay would introduce a franchise with Glock and Dolph that had a triumphant run cut way too short. The first Dum and Dummer album was Bandplay’s true coming out party. He produced almost the entirety of the tape which built on the success of “Major” and proved that Dolph and Glock were one of the most dynamic modern duo’s in rap—- as long as they had the right orchestrator to bind their deliveries. What’s so impressive about Bandplay’s work on the project is how well he provided range in the sounds he used to encompass both rapper’s voices. There are classical styled string chops, western styled guitar flourishes, and (of course) eerily hard Memphis piano sequences that all push Glock and Dolph to their most potent.
There were two great Glock tapes (Yellow Tape & Son of a Gun) with hefty Bandplay involvement between Dum and Dummer and Bandplay’s 2020-2021 takeover. Those projects have a few great tracks on each of them, but they really feel like set up projects for the following ones which will forever define Bandplay’s career. “Hold Up Hold Up Hold Up,” “I See $,” “Death Row,” and “1 Scale” on Dolph’s album Rich Slave all act as Bandplays best beats up to that point in his career. They cement the overarching aesthetic of the album of brooding elegance. Yet, the quality of the instrumentals is most proven by how playful Dolph sounds on them. Dolph is cut from the Gucci Mane cloth of humorous punchlines but how you hear him on Rich Slave sounds like a kid at the candy store trying whatever he can get his hands on. His flow patterns, deliveries, and ad libs bounce off Bandplay’s rhythms like a basketball on a trampoline.
Somehow his work on that album still didn’t mark Banplay’s true peak. Dum and Dummer 2 was one of my favorite albums of 2021, I now realize, because Bandplay brought his new proficiency with Dolph back to Glock. The original Dum and Dummer seems to be the more revered of the two albums, but the second feels like two rappers leaning into the theme more effortlessly. Bandplay found even more ways to expand the sounds to evoke freewheeling artistry. The opening track “Penguin” sounds like it's a beat made inside an iced out igloo chain. It allows Glock and Dolph to use dynamic repetition to a mystifying effectiveness. “Aspen” presents the duo at their most glitzy with a beat that sounds like a trapped up Nickelodeon commercial theme. Then finally “Cheat Code” and “Case Closed” are the most booming beats Bandplay has produced in his entire career.
On Bandplay’s solidifying work that came next, Big Grim Reaper with Big Scarr, he expanded even further on a sound he introduced on the first Dum and Dummer. The classical violin chops on track 2 “Get It In,” sound plucked straight from a Beethoven symphony and allow for Scarr to flow with a cinematic flair. While Bandplay is known primarily for the pronouncement of his bass, the way he weaves sounds on beats is actually what sets him apart from producers of his same ilk. If you listen to the song “Joe Dirt” off Big Grim Reaper you hear what sounds like a Mozart piano sequence morphed into an undeniable slap. It’s almost as if Bandplay hears an alignment with southern trap music and classical orchestration that no one else hears.
Glock released his next solo tape Yellow Tape 2 right before tragedy struck. He and Bandplay continued their momentum with dynamic offerings like the buoyant “Juicemane” and the hard-nosed “Can’t Switch.” The next significant release with a Bandplay beat would be a posthumous song with Dolph in the form of a Gucci Mane single “Blood All On It” which also featured Glock. The song is a heater and equal parts gratifying and melancholy. You hear mentors rapping through three layers of lineage—-Gucci to Dolph to Glock—and hear how each style weaved into the next. Bandplay was the perfect producer to link all the deliveries as he represented the progression of the sound originated by Gucci and Zaytoven in the late 2000s.
Bandplay would continue to work crafting equally potent posthumous work for Big Scarr and most significantly executed a visceral Megan Thee Stallion single featuring Glock in “Ungrateful.” Glock and Bandplay also continued their reign with Glock’s 2023 tape Glockoma 2, which, to me, features an array of their best work to date together. It seems both artists fueled their frustration and pain into pulsating and grimey tracks like “Work” and “Ratchet.” I can’t help but wonder how difficult it must’ve been for Bandplay and Glock to just go back to work. If they had to out of financial necessity or contractual obligation though, maybe the most healthy way to do so was to make fiery sounds to fuel their anger through.
Bandplay’s work with BigXThaPlug came soon after. The results have been glorious. The first two records they did of significance actually sample funk and disco records filled with vibrance and joy on “Mmhmm” and “Rock & Roll.” Clearly, Bandplay used this new opportunity to expand his range even further. For BigXThaPlug’s Take Care album he brought back some of his more guttural proficiencies on track’s like “Leave Me Alone” and “Planting Seeds,” but also tackled grainy soul and jazz sampling to masterful success. “Change Me” and “The Largest” bring northeast styled sample flipping to Memphis and Texas boom in a way that would make Houston-bred producer DJ Premier grin in approval.
Bandplay has continued to innovate the core Memphis pulse he began with through unimaginable hurdles. His beats are filled with the depth of his pain and magically result in making you feel empowered to break through any wall in your way. Bandplay is The Hulk to a team of southern rap Avengers.
Inside The Credits 042: Bandplay The Playlists