The game-changing beat Lil Pump made on his first try
Lil Pump was undoubtedly one of the most polarising rappers of the SoundCloud era. During the 2010s, some of the most influential artists got their start by uploading their independent music to SoundCloud. From Lil Yachty to Travis Scott and Trippie Redd, there was a wave of new MCs making noise on the platform.
However, Lil Pump was divisive as a lot of his music was trashy, and many found his image absurd. With little to no lyricism and beats that were poorly made, it seemed that Lil Pump’s primary objective was to shock and accrue streams irrespective of quality.
One of Lil Pump’s big hits was ‘Gucci Gang’, with lyrics that simply heard him rap, “Gucci gang, Gucci gang, Gucci gang!” In 2017, the track’s producer, Bighead, boasted that its simplicity was the key to its success, declaring, “Simple music is good music because if a three-year-old or a four-year-old can sing it, that’s what I aim for. Like ‘Gucci Gang’—a little kid can sing that.”
However, the track, which managed to land at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, was released before Pump[ tried his hand at producing. That said, in 2018, as he prepared to release his album Harvard Dropout, the emcee began producing and managed to create a hit.
In 2018, Lil Pump released the lead single of his sophomore album, ‘Esskeetit’. The title, which seems unreadable to many, was intended to be read as a slurred pronunciation of the term “let’s get it!” However, the slurred barely understandable title is reflective of the track’s lyrics, which hear Pump rhyme about his love for drugs, designer clothing, luxury cars, and girls.
With a chorus that hears the Miami rhymer rap, “Only wear designer, esskeetit / Hoppin’ out the Wraith, esskeetit / Smashin’ on your bitch, esskeetit / Runnin’ up a check with no limit!” It wasn’t the lyrics that made the hit but the instrumental.
Lil Pump made the beat with his longtime collaborator CBMIX and was the first piece of music he had ever created from scratch. In an interview with Genius, CBMIX explained why Lil Pump began producing, stating, “We ran out of beats, basically, and I was like, ‘Pump, we should start making our own beats! The first beat we made ended up being ‘ESSKEETIT’, and the rest is history.”
Detailing the creative process, CBMIX told the publication, “The beat is really simple. There are really only seven sounds in it. Basically, very stock FruityLoops sounds. I didn’t have much installed on this computer. The main sound, it’s a bass sound in the stock Nexus banks.”
Aside from the beat, the music video was also directed by Pump himself, along with Ben Griffin. The visuals for ‘Esskeetit’ see Lil Pump sitting on top of a sculpted ice throne with a wolf on a leash. Pump’s co-director told Genius, “We have a company that does ice sculptures. They bring it there, and they’re like, ‘You got about 4-6 hours before this thing melts.'”
Although ‘Esskeetit’ was the lead single of Harvard Dropout, it was undoubtedly the album’s third single ‘I Love It’ featuring Kanye West, that garnered the most attention for its wild, explicit lyrics.