Matt Friedman and Jed Cappelli are ILLFONICS: A music producing duo who has worked with the likes of LL Cool J, The Clipse and many more.

They recently produced Kid Cudi’s track “Enter Galactic” off his newly released album Man On The Moon: The End Of The Day, as well as Jim Jones‘ “Na Na NaNa Na Na”, off his new album Pray IV Reign.

ILLFONICS: Jed Cappelli and Matt Friedman (left to right)

Along with these placements, ILLFONICS have had their music featured in hit TV shows like Entourage, CSI New York, Everybody Hates Chris, Rob & Big, and they are currently working with artists like Red Cafe, Mickey Factz and Nipsey Hussle.

The guys have pretty much been making music their whole lives individually, and then teamed up after they met in the Music Technology program at New York University.

Kiki recently got a chance to find out more about ILLFONICS, such as how they have managed to successfully work together for over 10 years, as well as who they consider to be style icons in the music industry.

Check it out:

DrJays.com: You mentioned in an interview with IllRoots that some of your strongest work is with R&B, pop and rock, while you primarily get hip-hop placements. Why do you think that is?

Jed: It’s really a numbers game. The bigger your catalog is, the more likely you are to get placements. With the R&B and pop tracks, a lot of A&Rs and artists are looking for complete songs, not just a beat. Since we don’t really do too much lyric writing we have to rely on songwriters for our R&B and pop stuff and as a result we don’t have as many complete songs ready to shop compared to the catalog of beats we have to shop.

Matt: Also I think once we started getting those hip-hop placements more people started checking for us in that lane. It’s great to have people looking out for you, but at the same time we definitely don’t want to be pigeonholed because we do so much varied music. So it’s important for us to let people know about that, at least until those other style tracks start coming out.

DrJays.com: What has kept you working together for 10 years? What are your individual strengths/weaknesses, and how do they compliment each other?

Jed: Sometimes two heads are better than one. We both do a lot of the same things equally well, as musicians and production-wise, but its great to able to bounce ideas around. Sometimes one of us will start a beat and the other dude hears it and takes it in a totally different direction than originally intended and it comes out great. Other times we’ll make beats completely independent of each other, it really just depends.

DrJays.com: As producers, you guide artists on the path to making hits. If you could guide artists in terms of their fashion sense, which ones in your opinion need the most help?

Matt: That’s a tough one. I don’t really want to call any artist out cause neither of us are stylists, but I will say that recently I’ve seen a few girls wearing those drop-crotch pants in NY and that style has got to go before it even catches on in the slightest bit. Looks like people are walking around with a loaded dirty diaper in their pants. Bad!

DrJays.com: Who is someone you consider a style icon in the music industry and why?

Jed: I think Rihanna’s style is the shit. She’s got multiple different looks and she pulls them all off equally well.

Rihanna

Matt: Yeah she’s definitely dope. I think Kanye and Pharrell. I know those are sort of the obvious two, but I feel like they really carry a lot of weight in terms of launching looks that kids really rock.

DrJays.com: What are some of your favorite brands currently?

Matt: “I’m kind of into real basics right now; Levis, Vans, Uniqlo, etc.

Jed: “10.Deep, LRG, Upper Playground“.

Kidz In The Hall’s Double-O in LRG Holiday 2009

DrJays.com: Where do you guys see yourselves in a few years from now?

Jed: “Making more music, getting more placements, and developing artists”.

Matt: “On a beach…”

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