Having a successful music career is not an easy thing.  Quality is non-negotiable when it comes to production.  Even the best rapper, artist, or singer can be underrated because of sound production. And even the worst rapper can have a hit if the beat and sound is on point.

Your finished song needs to sound just as good as the mainstream big shots, and it’s not as hard or as expensive as people think.  It’s just about quality control, and it starts with the instrumental.  You need professional recording, hopefully a great sound engineer, great mixing and mastering, etc.

It all starts with a great instrumental, some would argue that it’s more important than the vocals, but that’s another conversation!  Regardless, we all agree the song needs to sound awesome.  Even if you wrote your lyrics years ago, it’s not a song until it’s laid on a fire track.  Choosing the right beat is what can separate you from the rest.  Whether it’s trap, drill, boom-bap, R&B or any other hip hop genre, the instrumental will make all the difference in your song.

Mastering is another important aspect that underground artists often neglect.  Getting a legit .wav instrumental with the beat stems is vital if you plan on mastering and mixing your tracks.  It’s also important for making CDs especially if you want your track to be versatile and sound optimized on all platforms.  There is also a lot of metadata that can be embedded in your track.  Some of this is vital for digital downloads and can help you with the business side of your music career.  It also protects your song in some ways.  High-resolution files can withstand conversion and is required so it can be good for digital distribution and streaming.  Your master files need to be high in bit rate and have a high sample rate, staying as high as possible in those numbers and potentially downsampling and/or using dither for your sub-masters.    Upsampling does nothing for your music.

Here are some helpful resources to help: