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"Coach K became my mentor, and I was involved with Quality Control from the beginning. If you are a person who is kind of like a leader, and you show yourself to be valuable, you get in a position where you take control and help everybody come up with an end result. In many situations the engineer becomes the most powerful person in the room. When you're around someone 24/7 you become like family. "It was one reason why I started working more as an engineer, and when you spend a lot of time with artists in a room, you develop a relationship of trust. When I delivered my files, I saw how Rocko asked his engineer for his opinion. In my case, I started out as a producer and I was working with an artist called Rocko, who was managed by Coach K and signed to Def Jam. "There are indeed many engineers that move into a more front–row position," comments Mann, "because they take control of the room, and show themselves to be valuable. As a result, we now not only have star mixers, from Serban Ghenea to Tom Elmhirst, but also star engineers, like Josh Gudwin (Justin Bieber) and Patrizio 'Teezio' Pigliapoco, who become an essential element of music-making machinery - particularly when they function as the right-hand man of an artist. Produced by Deundraeus Portis.There was a time when the engineer was close to the bottom of the pecking order in a recording studio, but because of the digital revolution, traditional studio roles have shifted and changed. Written by Dominique Jones & Deundraeus Portis. In so doing he had a large hand in helping to develop the sounds of Atlanta trap acts like Migos, Quavo, Lil Yachty and Lil Baby.

But his reach and activities go much further than that: he's also an A&R for Quality Control Music, the Atlantan label founded in 2013 by Kevin 'Coach K' Lee and Pierre 'Pee' Thomas, and has spent many years locked in studios engineering and helping artists hone their sound. Speaking is Thomas Mann, better known as Tillie, and with his feel-based approach he is today one of Atlanta's star mixers. I close my eyes in front of the speakers and adjust things, and when I later look at the settings, they sometimes don't make sense. I used to mix super technical, but now I mix on feel. Instead you have to bring back the musical side and just focus on how what you hear makes you feel. By contrast, when you're looking at a computer screen, you think technical, about numbers and specific boosts and notches. Back in the analogue days, when you were on a desk, you were turning knobs until it felt right. "At the end of the day it is all about the feel of the record. In just seven years at hip-hop label Quality Control, Thomas 'Tillie' Mann has helped shape the sound of Atlanta rap. Thomas 'Tillie' Mann in his Hit Gallery studio.