How Hard Beats Are Born — Southside x 808 Mafia Mindset

This video is not a typical tutorial.

This is a real look into how hard beats are actually born, using the Southside x 808 Mafia mindset — simple ideas, few sounds, and pure focus on feeling instead of overthinking.

In this 10-minute session, I show you how I personally create dark, hard melodies the way 808 Mafia producers work behind the scenes. No complicated theory, no endless plugins, no fake perfection. Just the raw process of turning a simple idea into something powerful.

A lot of people think you need tons of plugins, crazy sound chains, or advanced music theory to make hard beats. That’s not true.
808 Mafia’s sound is proof that less is more. Fewer sounds, fewer plugins, but better decisions. When you keep things simple, every sound has space, every melody hits harder, and the beat feels more focused.

This video shows:

How to start a beat with a very simple melody

Why using few plugins actually makes your beats stronger

How 808 Mafia keeps things easy at the producer level, while engineers later make everything sit perfectly

How mindset matters more than tools when creating dark trap melodies

Also, this is important:
At the beginning of the video, the beat is slightly out of tune. And that’s intentional to show the real process. Not everything starts perfect. As the video progresses, things get adjusted, locked in, and that’s where the magic happens. This is how real beats evolve — not instantly, but naturally.

This is not just a tutorial.
This is how Nick Joe creates rhythms in real time. If something you see or hear in this video works for your own beats, don’t overthink it — use it. That’s how producers grow.

If you’re into:

Southside

Wheezy

808 Mafia

Dark trap melodies

Simple workflows that actually work

Then this video is for you.

📲 Follow me on Instagram for more behind-the-scenes and beat ideas:
👉   / nickjoeee  

If this video helped you or inspired you in any way:

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This is how hard beats are born 🖤🔥