Meet Montell2099, the NZ Producer With Beats As Big As His Ambition

Katikati is just like any other small New Zealand town. "It takes five seconds to drive through it," says Montell Pinny, the 21-year-old producer who's spent the past couple of years making a name for himself in the beat scene as Montell2099. The rural town, just out of Tauranga, might be known best for its outdoor murals, but the tiny community is also where Montell2099 called home for much of his teenage life. When he was 16 he moved in with his grandparents on the Te Rereatukahia Pa. It's quite the contrast to Los Angeles, a city that he's been jetting back and forth to recently off the back of his music.

It all started falling into place recently when he was flown over to meet with Atlanta native 21 Savage, who has collaborated with the likes of Drake, Future, Young Thug and Metro Boomin. An opportunity for the two to link up had come after Montell2099 was approached by Red Bull Sound Select with the idea. "I was like, I'll be keen," he says. "I'm always like that, eh. But then you never know until it actually happens."

It didn't take long. Within two weeks of getting the go-ahead from 21 Savage's camp, he was on a plane and then straight into a low-key studio in Hollywood. Montell2099 had lined up about 20 beats and as soon as 21 Savage found one he liked, he jumped right into the booth. Half an hour later, he had laid down the vocals to "Hunnid on the Drop". "It's almost too good to be true," says Montell2099.

Montell2099's beats are as big as his ambitions and they've already clocked up hundreds of thousands of plays on Soundcloud. In a way, they all give thanks to where he came from. Every song he uploads is tagged with #opbounce, a shout-out to his hometown. It was inspired by the term OPB, or Original Pa Boy, which was coined in Katikati. "It's pretty much telling everybody that we're from the pa," he explains. The hashtag has now become something of a sub-genre itself, with other producers around the world now using it to describe their own music.

Montell2099's own career began as kind of an accident. He hadn't even thought about making music until his grandad stepped in. "I was just annoying him one day," he says. "I think I was just on his nerves, so he just wanted to get rid of me. He just put me in front of the computer and opened up FL Studio like muck around on this and leave me alone. I didn't even know what a snare was, what a kick was, what a hi-hat was. I was finding that stuff out. I made a little sequence—like a real basic beat—and it started from there. It sparked the flame."

The move to Katikati had helped him to focus and stay out of trouble. "I was just hanging out with the wrong people and doing the wrong stuff," he says of his early teen years. After getting suspended from his high school in Tauranga, his mum thought it'd be good to move him out to live with his grandparents. It was too easy to get caught up in the wrong lifestyle staying put.

He ended up learning everything he could from tutorials he found on YouTube and soon began making his own beats. He couldn't get enough of it. "I was like, this is so fun and so sick. You can think or something in your head or try and make something that you've heard and you can just do it. It was so cool for me."

Eventually he made the move to Auckland to study at MAINZ, which he credits as an instrumental element of getting him to where he is today. The course helped him get good fast, he says, and being surrounded by people making different music and inspiring each other pushed him to find his own sound.

Making beats is a full-time thing for Montell2099 now, but performing live is just as important. "You get this crazy energy from the crowd," he says. "And because I'm a pretty shy, conservative dude—I'm not too out there—when you get on stage it just turns you into another person. You just go crazy when the crowd's giving you all that energy."

Last weekend, he was back on a flight to LA where he ended up performing alongside 21 Savage. "Again I was like, is he actually going to come through? That'd be crazy," he says. "Then we were chilling downstairs and he rolled up with like 20 people. It was crazy too because he came through with Amber Rose. I was like, what's Amber Rose doing here? This is so buzzy."

It might be a whole new world for Montell2099, but the stress of it doesn't seem to get to him. Music's probably the last thing you should feel pressure about, he says. "Hunnid on the Drop" is just the beginning, too. He's got plans to release an EP this year and lately he's been working behind the scenes with a bunch of artists like What So Not, Alison Wonderland, and his favourite producer, Mr. Carmack. Putting out a body of work might be the next step, but he's still got a few other things to tick off his to-do list.

"Getting that Porsche for mum, eh. She told me when all this stuff starting happening, that she wanted a Porsche. So I was like, I'll try and get you one. See if we can make it happen."

It's hard to imagine having any sort of success like this when you're living in New Zealand, he says. But if you just put the work in, meet the right people, and you take the opportunities that are there, anything can happen.

"I hope it just inspires all the young kids out there. It doesn't even have to be music—just in general, you know? No dream is too big to accomplish."

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