No one knows Atlanta’s biggest rappers quite like audio engineer Alex Tumay. In the span of just a few years, he’s been responsible for helping to kickstart the career of one of the biggest rappers in the game, and making sure that listeners get a quality sonic experience. Without his creative expertise, it’s possible that Young Thug’s 2015 (which saw him be arrested AND have over 200 songs leaked) may have been disastrous. Tumay was behind Thug’s arguably classic Barter 6 album, his Slime Season mixtapes, as well as his newest project, JEFFERY.

In a genre where mixtapes are released haphazardly without any type of quality control, Tumay has managed to bring a sense of integrity to any release he’s involved with. For Metro Boomin and 21 Savage’s Savage Mode, Metro chose Tumay because he knew that it’d give the project a stamp of approval from people who were on the fence about the unproven 21. It worked—Savage Mode was critically acclaimed not only for its sound, but because of HOW it sounded. Tumay’s knowledge of what makes the artists he works with happy, and what makes the listener come back is unparalleled—and its giving audio engineers a newfound respect in the digital age. To celebrate this, Red Bull Academy asked Tumay to join their “Studio Science” series in Montreal—where he gives a room of budding engineers a lecture on how he helped create some of the most popular mixtapes of the era. Watch the video below, and follow Alex on Twitter @alextumay.