The Drums Behind the Uzi and Carti Era, From Don Cannon Himself

Between 2016 and 2017, a specific drum sound took over hip hop. Punchy, saturated, slightly crushed kicks. Snares with a tape edge. Hi hats that sat forward in the mix without getting harsh. You heard it on Lil Uzi Vert records. You heard it on Playboi Carti records. Producers have spent years trying to reverse engineer it from stock sample packs.

Don Cannon was in the studio shaping that era. And the drums he was using are not a secret anymore. He released them.

What Cannon was actually running

Cannon's drums from that period came off hardware first, then through tape machine plugins. That's the whole trick. The saturation people try to fake with a chain of plugins was baked into the source files before they ever hit a session. A kick from that era already has the weight and the edge in it, which is why producers who get their hands on the real files say it sounds like a record the second they drag it in.

The kit is called Cannon Vs. The World. It's the drum kit, meaning kicks, snares, hi hats, claps and percussion, plus drum loops pulled from unreleased records of the same run. Loops like Now Tell Me at 142 BPM, Mission To The Loot at 83, Pillz at 142. All 24 bit WAV, all BPM labeled.

The era before it

Before the tape machine era, Cannon's sound came off an ASR-X. That's the Atlanta mixtape run: Lil Wayne, Jeezy, 2 Chainz. Raw hardware drums with a different character, less saturated, more punch. That vault is Cannon's Revenge V1, the first official Don Cannon drum kit, with 38 loops and breaks included. Cannon's Revenge V2 is 33 more loops and breaks from the same sessions.

If you want both eras in one download, the BIG FACE bundle is V1 and Cannon Vs. The World together.

Why producers care about the source

Every big sample pack company sells a version of this sound. None of them have the files. There's a difference between a sound designer recreating what they think a Cannon kick sounds like and the actual kick from the actual session. The first one gets you close. The second one is the thing.

Cannon has said it himself: he never tried to gatekeep. He gave out sounds and samples for years. Releasing the vault through TmrO is the same idea, done properly. Royalty free, instant download, use them on records and placements forever with no clearance and no splits.

Hear them

Every kit page has audio previews you can play before you buy. Go to Cannon Vs. The World and hit play on Now Tell Me. If you know the era, you'll recognize it in the first bar.

Every official Don Cannon drum kit is at Sound Kits.