Music Producer Illmind Turns Basement Beats into ‘Filipino Fire’

The end of Ramon Ibanga Jr.’s 2016 was full of contrast. On one hand, the music producer — better known as !llmind — worked on multiple songs on “The Hamilton Mixtape,” which debuted at number one on the Billboard chart on Dec. 2. Three weeks earlier, he had a song on an another album, which peaked at number five on the U.S. charts — the soundtrack of Disney’s “Moana.”

Those performances capped off the latest successes in Ibanga’s 13-year-long career, in which he has worked with Drake, J. Cole, and 50 Cent. It’s a sign, he hopes, of even bigger things to come.

“Going into 2017, you have this resurgence of the producer-DJ — the Diplos, the Skrillexs and DJ Snakes of the world,” Ibanga told NBC News. “These guys are music producers at heart. And for a guy like me, being involved in all these different projects, puts me in this category of not only being a producer in the background but also being in the forefront, which is something I’ve always embraced.”