This Producer From Tommy Richman’s ‘Sacred’ Inner Circle Helped Unlock ‘Million Dollar Baby’

Shortly after the April release of his breakout smash single, “Million Dollar Baby,” Tommy Richman and his close collaborator and good friend Kavi made a “club pop-out” appearance together. The club, Abigail in Washington, D.C., holds about 250 people — but it was soon clear to Kavi that that wasn’t going to be nearly big enough.

“The second we stepped out, there was actually, like, paparazzi taking photos of us. I’m walking down to the club, and there’s a line around the block, packed out,” Kavi recalls. “Around 700 people showed up… It was just such a wonderful night.” He pauses, then stipulates with a laugh: “At least for me and Tommy. I don’t know if everyone else [thought so], because it was just so packed at the club!”

Such flashbulb moments have quickly become commonplace for Richman, Kavi and the rest of their inner creative circle — which also includes “Baby” co-producers Max Vossberg and Jonah Roy, recording artist Paco (currently opening for Richman on his Before the Desert mini-tour) and videographer Josh Belvedere, whose kinetic behind-the-scenes clips of the song’s recording helped it catch prerelease fire on TikTok. Kavi says his role on the team is as much executive producer as producer: “When [Tommy] sets down a vision, I can think of people that can collaborate on it that would be best for it and sounds that we can chase — just sort of creatively direct which way it should go.”

While the 21-year-old Los Angeles-based producer is one of five credited on the sublimely smoked-out, falsetto-led “Baby” — with Mannyvelli and Sparkheem rounding out the group — Kavi was responsible for the song’s “aha” moment. He was going through a sample pack of Canadian producer DJ Smokey’s that he found on Reddit and heard the vocal chop that ended up inspiring the song’s striking, pitched-down opening hook. “I was just like, ‘Oh, this is sort of hard!’ ” Kavi recalls. “And Tommy agreed… So we catered that vibe based off of the chop that I found and just built it into its own world.”

Born Kavian Saleh in Iran, where he grew up in Shiraz and Tehran, Kavi moved to L.A. at the age of 11. Growing up in Iran, Kavi says his musical influences were a mix of alternative rock bands like Muse and The Cure and EDM acts such as Skrillex and Knife Party, “a mishmash of what my parents showed me and what any 12-year-old on YouTube would find.” Not hip-hop, though: “Rap music doesn’t really exist in Iran,” he says. “And if it does, it’s pretty ass.”

That changed upon his U.S. arrival in the mid-2010s, when the future producer was exposed to rappers like Future and Chief Keef. “Wow… This is what it’s about!” he recalls thinking. “It really, like, tweaked me out.” His infatuation with those artists led him to study the techniques that then-rising producers like TM88 and Southside used on their records. “My main focus at first was very, very much just trap beat-oriented,” he says. “That’s all I did for a good four years.”

His relationship with Richman began about three years ago, when Kavi DM’d the singer-songwriter after catching his 2021 song “Chrono Trigger” on TikTok. The two began a creative relationship and friendship, and after pausing on collaborating while Kavi continued his trap production work, they reunited in 2023. When they started recording again, two of the first songs they worked on together were “Million Dollar Baby” and its follow-up, “Devil Is a Lie,” released in June.

Kavi admits that the immediate success of “Million Dollar Baby” — which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent its first 17 weeks in the chart’s top 10 — was not something his crew saw coming. “We were like, ‘Oh, this is a good vibe, this is sick,’ ” he remembers. “It wasn’t anything where we all sat down and were like, ‘Wow, this is a headbanger! This is crazy!’ It just was another record we worked on.” (Kavi says that he personally prefers the more “swagged-out” groove of “Devil Is a Lie” — which did not quite match the runaway success of “Baby,” but has shown impressive legs, debuting and peaking at No. 32 and spending 13 weeks on the Hot 100.)

Still, he is grateful for the exposure “Baby” has granted his close-knit team — “the best part about this is… all of us are coming up together, and we keep the sound and the circle very sacred and tight,” he says — and for the opportunities it’s now affording him, both as one of the central collaborators on Richman’s debut full-length, Coyote, and with his own work. Since his “Baby” breakout, Kavi has linked up with A$AP Rocky and also has been doing more pop-oriented productions for the first time with Disney Channel star Kylie Cantrall. Kavi says he has begun studying the work of pop super producers like Jack Antonoff and Max Martin as he tries to expand his skills and his portfolio: “I think I’ve developed my sound more now to not necessarily just be one-sided when I’m in the room.”

Meanwhile, Kavi is also working on his own solo music, which he likens to enigmatic alt-R&B singer-songwriters like Jai Paul, and plans on having his newly minted star buddy make an appearance on his upcoming debut project as well — though Kavi hopes that ultimately, his own name starts to stand out.

“Tommy’s my main priority because that’s like my best friend — we’re developing something great here,” he explains. “But I’m trying to build my own legacy as a producer as well. I don’t mind being the guy in the background… But also, I want my name to be known as, like, ‘Oh, this is Kavi’s production. Wow, that’s great.’ Build a legacy around it and just make some amazing music, you know?”

This article appears in the Oct. 5 issue of Billboard.