{"id":39054,"date":"2025-08-01T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/39054\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T21:52:09","slug":"cardo-got-wings-on-the-music-that-made-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/39054\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardo Got Wings on the Music That Made Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cardo Got Wings<\/a>\u2019 voice cuts through the noise at Ralph\u2019s Coffee as he rattles off the albums that once filled his CD deck in the late \u201990s and early aughts. \u201cThat was a time period! Seventh and eighth grade. Best music ever. That shit molded me as a man,\u201d he proclaims. \u201cNo Limit Records, Cash Money Records.\u201d It feels like he could go on forever; his eyes can\u2019t stop lighting up as he gushes about his love for foundational issues of Murder Dog Magazine and the days when regional rappers felt just as important as whoever was on the top of the Billboard charts. \u201cMurder Dog Magazine would tell you about every region in the U.S. that you don\u2019t know about,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat was your guide to every artist\u2014from Kansas City to Des Moines, Iowa.\u201d Between sips of coffee, he reminisces about digging for new music like it was oxygen.<\/p>\n

Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where you\u2019re in \u201cthe center of everything,\u201d according to Cardo, exposed him to a myriad of influences. His father and uncles put him onto the groovy G-funk coming out of the West Coast, where projecting flyness was a focal point. That early exposure sparked a deep reverence for DJ Quik<\/a>, who \u201ccould make you feel like a million bucks without having a dollar to your name.\u201d Later, catching an early Three 6 Mafia<\/a> show at a local college kickstarted an obsession with DJ Paul<\/a> and Juicy J<\/a>\u2019s raw, sinister production and opened his ears to a darker, more experimental side of hip-hop that \u201cpushed the envelope\u201d for what it could sound like. By the time Cardo finally tried his hand at production, he already had a significant mental vault of sounds and styles from which he could pull.<\/p>\n

After toying around with PlayStation\u2019s MTV Music Generator and getting in constant trouble as a teenager, a move to Dallas, in 2004, pushed Cardo to focus on becoming a full-fledged music producer. He cut his teeth in the blog era, reflecting on it as both a \u201cfun time and a miserable time because you didn\u2019t know how the fuck you were gonna get paid.\u201d Through online networking, Cardo eventually landed his big break by producing a couple of glossy beats for Wiz Khalifa<\/a>\u2019s 2010 mixtape Kush & Orange Juice<\/a>, which led to a spot on the in-house Taylor Gang production team. By the end of 2012, with a second child on the way, Cardo was ready to bet on himself and carve out his own path like the hip-hop auteurs he\u2019d always admired. Since the career shift, he\u2019s cemented his reputation as a Swiss Army knife producer capable of crafting beats for rappers at every rung of the industry ladder. His range has led him to making regional bangers<\/a> with Washington, D.C., stalwart Shy Glizzy<\/a>, assisting grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal<\/a> on evolving his sound<\/a>, helping break<\/a> a new artist in Baby Keem<\/a>, and crafting horror<\/a>–inspired<\/a> anthems<\/a> with ATLien Playboi Carti<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cardo Got Wings spoke with us about the music that defined his upbringing and shaped his worldview. The below interview has been lightly edited for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cardo Got Wings\u2019 voice cuts through the noise at Ralph\u2019s Coffee as he rattles off the albums that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22591,22589,22590,6491,96,9012,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-39054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-_opinion","tag-5-10-15-20","tag-cardo-got-wings","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}