Bruce Waynne grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn, amid all the chaos and hustle of the BK streets. A brief stay in Rikers Island proved enough to pull his attention away from the streets and towards a career in the mus ic industry, where his talent for creating catchy hooks and beats lead him to sell over 60,000 units independently with his former group US.

Dirty Swift is a Canadian-born beat junkie who caught the music bug at an early age. He became a turntable wiz by high school, winning the DMC Canadian DJ Championship soon after, and later branched off into production, working with some of the biggest names in Canada (K-OS, Choclair etc). Determined to penetrate the US market, Swift left Ottawa, Canada and headed for The Hip Hop Mecca, NYC. As chance would have it, Swift and Bruce met in a Brooklyn recording studio, while both working on the same project. They vibed, and soon after, formed a partnership hence, the beginning of Midi Mafia.

Q: First I'd like to know how long ya'll been producing and why ya'll choose a career in music?

Bruce: I been making music since I was like 16, it's been a norm. Like you know you try basketball, you try other things and you know hip-hop comes along and you like, it just felt right.

Swift: I'm from Canada originally, I wasn't in no musical family or nothing, but my parents always put me in musical classes. I just kind of fell into Dj'ing when I was in high school and fell in with hip-hop and I just started making beats from knowing how to play the piano and stuff, you know it's natural progression.

Q: With ya'll both being from different places how ya'll link up with each other?

Swift: We been in Brooklyn actually, I was living in a house with this artist Bad Seed who had a deal with Warner Bros at the time, Bad Seed was the mutual friend between us, so Wayne would come by the studio in the crib lay down beats, hooks and stuff. So he started to do some hooks on my tracks and I would help him with his tracks playing some keys or mixing whatever, cause I engineer and Bruce does the choruses and writing. We just started doing one thing here and one thing there. We just thought if we do something together we call it "Midi Mafia" and it's almost like a joke and it just started taking off and the work just started coming in, so we had to put a business plan together real quick.

Q: What was the key track that got Midi Mafia discovered as producers?

Swift: "21 Questions" 50 Cent from the "Get Rich or Die Tryin" album.

Q: How long did it take to complete that track?

Swift: That was a 15 minute track.

Q: How did it get into the hands of 50 Cent?

Swift: He had just lost a deal from Columbia and he was just going through the mixtape thing and he started talking to some labels about a deal, this was before he was real hot. Also my boy Dino was at Universal at the time as an A&R, he was trying to sign him and Dino was a good friend of ours, so we just gave him our whole beat catalog and Dino was like "Yeah I'm tryna sign this kid 50 Cent". We was like cool give him all our tracks and tell him to use whatever he wants. From there the relationship just continued to build, he did a few tracks out of that batch and one of them was "21 Questions", that was about a year before the Shady deal, that track was done a year ahead of time.

Q: So how much ya'll get for "21 Questions"?

Bruce: If we told you that we have to kill ya LOL.

Q: Come on just give me a little number?

Swift: Nah, we can't LOL.

Q: I understand, so who are some of your favorite artists to work with?

Bruce: Right now our favorite artist to work with is Fantasia. We love working with Fantasia and we love working with our artist Deemi "The Hoods Princess". She is signed to our labels imprint over at Atlantic Records and N.O.R.E., also Talib Kweli, Kweli is real dope in the studio.

Q: Who would ya'll like to work with in the future?

Bruce: Aw man, we wanna work with everybody man, everyone!

Swift: Probably Jay-Z, Snoop.

Q: What inspires you two the most when producing a track?

Swift: For me it's being creative, so it's not necessarily producing a track, it's a creative process. That just happens to be in my outlet for my creativity, some people write, some people dance or whatever. We just happen to make tracks, it's a process that's part of you and you just gotta do it. That's how we express it, if I'm mad one day I'll just go out make some mad beats and I feel better, it feels like therapy almost.

Bruce: When you do something that you love and it's something that's in your blood. And making money that's motivation too. It's like I'm doing something I love and I'm making money, so that's like the best of both worlds.

Q: Is it true producing is like a science?

Bruce: Yeah and no it depends on how you look at it you know? I mean we've been blessed to make music and money from it and have a career. We just do what we do and it seems people gravitate to it and it's working.

Swift: Art is science, cause science is art, there definitely is a technical side to it like formula, its a little instruction to it, but the art side to it is saying "Do what the fuck you want" LOL.

Bruce: I look at it like this though, this is what balances off me and Swift. I think it imitates life and we find a way to make it work across the board. I think that's why we balance each other out and I think that's why we make the music we make, I respect what Swift does and he respects what I do, we both bring something fresh to the table.

Q: Name some of the equipment ya'll use when producing?

Bruce: Aw man, if we tell you that we gotta kill you too LOL. I mean everything is set in our pro tools, we got MPC's 4000's and stuff like that.

Swift: We kind of switch it up once in a while, sometimes we put on some keyboards, sometimes we use some computer shit, sometimes we may bring in some instruments, you got to do stuff and make it fresh we don't always use the same thing.

Q: What are some of the prices of that shit?

Swift: A full blown pro tools can run you like twenty grand with all the hardware on the computers and stuff and the MPC's are like a couple grand, you can download the software off the internet for free, might be a couple hundred if you go to the store, so you know it adds up. You can start a basic set-up off of something, there's kids making stuff off of fruity loops and stuff. It's not about the tools; it's about what gets you through the end.

Q: Did y'all ideas ever conflict when producing a track?

Swift: So far no, we had discussions where he may bring something to me and I'll be like "Nah I don't like that", but that's part of the normal process, we never really had a major disagreement or something.

Bruce: We not attached to it like that you know, it's like Swift would make something and I be like "I don't know" and that same beat somebody else would love and then I'll make a track and Swift would be like "I don't know" and somebody else would hear it and that's it.

Swift: Sometimes it's the stuff you don't like that someone will pick-up on. Everything you make can go somewhere at some point. We might do a video game a year from now and use some tracks we thought was wack and it might go on a video game or something, so you keep everything you make.

Bruce: But you know it's also good to add-on, say I make a track and Swift doesn't like it, so we'll put a R&B record on it and somebody will love it, even though Swift doesn't like it, he'll go to the side and say how can we make the best of what this is.

Swift: And were like that across the board, it's making me money so I like it LOL.

Q: So what's next-up for Midi Mafia?

Swift: We got a lot going on. We got our own artists Deemi signed to Family Ties which is our label over at Atlantic. We got a new kid we working on in Cali his name is Rank-One a 17 year old rapper, we developing some new acts. Right now we're finishing up Fantasia's album, we just did a track with Lloyd Banks for his new album. We got a lot of new stuff coming out with a new guy with Interscope called Haze, Sam Scarfo over at Def Jam. We just tryna really get into this industry and find the new talent and attach ourselves to that, because that always worked for us, so we tryna find the new 50 Cent, you know what I mean.

Q: For other aspiring producers out there, what does it take to get in the game?

Bruce: Keep doing what they doing, just do what you do. Keep making beats everyday and keep networking to find different outlets to get it (music) out there, that's really it. If you partner up with someone make sure you partner up with someone who balances up with what you do. I don't think it works if two people do the same thing, it's gonna clash. If he brings something you don't, that makes the journey a little bit quicker.

Swift: Also align yourself with people that are bigger than you, our thing was we gotta hang out with people that have more money than us, two broke people don't make a rich person. You really got to associate yourself with people that are more successful than yourself. Hook-up with a good manager that got the contacts and just believe in what you're doing and eventually something will happen.

Q: Anything y'all want to say to the readers of www.hhnlive.com and where fans can hit up "Midi Mafia"?

Bruce: Good looking man, check out our website www.midimafiaonline.com and link to our myspace page from our site, that's pretty much it and look-out for Deemi next year, we gonna get it poppin and tell everybody I said "Ahhhhh get connected".