We’ve all seen the headlines about people leaving the Bay Area: artists and teachers, families and twenty-somethings fleeing the housing shortage, the cost of living and the traffic. What about the people who are staying put? In this monthly column, Creative Lives, we’ll talk to creative professionals about living in a rapidly changing Bay Area, why they stay and how they make it work.

Name: Drew Banga, a.k.a. Andrew Arnett

Work: Music producer, musician

Home: Oakland

Years in the Bay Area: 28

Why I stay: “The sound from the Bay (Area) is not like anything else. We’re having a Bay Area music renaissance.”

“It’s Drew Banga on the beat” kicks off the album version of Bay Area rapper Siddiq’s new single, “Road Trip.” Hip-hop artist Basi’s “Pray for Me” opens with “Hey Drew, pass me dat right there.” The list goes on. More than half a dozen songs released by Bay Area rappers, hip-hop, R&B and soul artists over the past three years mention producer and musician Drew Banga in the lyrics. “I don’t know why, the artists I work with like saying my name in their songs,” says Banga with a slightly embarrassed laugh. Shout-outs notwithstanding, over the past decade, Banga has created a collaborative web that permeates the Bay Area music scene. “& Drew Banga” shows up in the credits of songs by artists across a swath of genres.

Banga (born Andrew Arnett) is a classically trained musician. He graduated from the Oakland School for the Arts in 2009 and plays piano, bass, drums and guitar. He made a name for himself as a bass player and by creating beats (the musical core of a song) for rappers and hip-hop artists before transitioning into the role of producer.

In “Hold Me Back,” another Banga collaboration, Basi raps: “I got a goal in my iris/seein’ the sky.” Banga knew he wanted a career in music, so chasing his personal sky, he dropped out of college to refine his sound while working retail jobs to support his family. He has three children, ages 5, 7 and 9. “I had to grind to get my sound to where it needed to be to get paid what I should get paid for it,” he says. Today, he has worked with almost every major and emerging local artist of note — including Toro Y Moi, Kamaiyah and GuapDad 4000 — and his infectious energy, talent and passion for the Bay Area sound have propelled him to a full-time career in the music industry.

Soulful beats

Building a song is like building a house. Nothing can stand without the foundational beat. Banga’s beats — tracks he creates on his computer by layering bass lines with instrumentals and other sounds — have something you can’t quite put your finger on. They’re hard to get out of your head. He flows seamlessly between rap and hip-hop tracks with the black-and-white Parental Advisory stamp and classic R&B, soul and funk, sometimes branching out into styles that verge on pop.

The song “Bay Area Funk” by rapper IamSu personifies what Banga sees as his — and the Bay Area’s — unique sound. “The song came together totally by chance,” he says. “I created the beat randomly at home one day, and I texted it to IamSu. He sent it back to me as a complete song. We weren’t even in the studio together.” Collaboration took a different form on instrumental track “Catharsis” with EDM artist Mr. Carmack. “We were all in the studio, and I was just noodling around on the bass, and this flamenco riff came out,” Banga says. “So we built the whole song around it.”

As a producer, Banga is currently splitting time between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, spending at least a week each month there working with artists. He takes a global view of the process. “A lot of what I do with artists is trying to take their music to the next level,” he says. The producer role involves anything from writing lyrics to making a beat to exercising creative control of an entire album. “Producing is holding all the strings that control the music,” he says. “Like being a conductor.”

Building the rhythm

East Oakland born and raised, Banga’s music obsession began at age 5 when his parents bought him a drum set. Soon, he was performing at their church, Bible Fellowship Missionary Baptist. A “beats and flows” class in middle school at Melrose Leadership Academy led him to Oakland School for the Arts, where he started playing bass in 10th grade. After graduation, he bounced around a few college programs before deciding to pursue music. In 2018, Banga signed as an artist and producer with Text Me Records, an indie San Francisco record label. The young label is part of Different Fur Studios, a Mission District recording studio founded in 1968.

On a recent Tuesday, the air inside Different Fur smells like burned popcorn — someone just made a snack in the kitchenette. On the couch upstairs, DJ/producer Nanosaur and rappers Ricky Lake and Horsepowar (she’s not signed to Text Me but is part of the label’s community) are sharing their latest projects. Banga says that creative flow is the norm in the studio. “Everybody is working with everybody on everyone’s project. We have every level of artist in every single genre, and all from the Bay (Area). It’s why Text Me Records is getting a lot of light right now.”

Balancing act

While navigating the music industry, Banga is also co-parenting his three children with his former partner. “We work really well together,” he says. “She’s as busy as me, so we try to balance each other’s schedule. Sometimes I have to miss doing a show to be with my kids, but I never mind it — it means I get to spend time with them.”

Finding the balance between family and music was a long road. “I had my kids in my early 20s, and the hustle of that time was exhausting,” he says. “There were times when I didn’t know how I was going to make it work.” While fighting for a toehold in the music industry, Banga paid the bills by working everywhere from Target to Best Buy to FedEx. His big break — musical and financial — came in 2014, when IamSu invited Banga on tour as a bass player. His first producer credit quickly followed, working with rapper Kamaiyah on a song called “I’m On” from her 2015 album. Roles as musical director for IamSu and Los Angeles rapper Duckwrth followed before he signed with Text Me Records.

The hustle

Banga now makes a living from his music. Once or twice a month he organizes a party with other artists at a local venue, such as San Francisco’s the New Parish or Oakland’s Starline Social Club. “I started doing parties because I was a little socially awkward, and it was a way for me to connect with people. But it’s become part of what I’m known for now,” he says. Each event brings in as much as $3,000, divided among the artists participating. “My goal is to pay the rent with parties every month,” Banga says. He also uses the events to highlight artists he’s working with, playing their music or asking them to make guest appearances.

Banga’s bread-and-butter is his producer fees, which vary widely. For an emerging artist he’s excited about, he may charge just $100 or nothing at all. For an established artist, his fee might run upwards of $3,000. Other income comes from DJing — $300 to $500 for a two-hour set — and intermittent checks for royalties from the songs he’s helped create or beats he’s made.

Rising tide

Banga’s mission is to help elevate other artists from the Bay Area and the region’s unique sound. Long-term, he sees starting his own label as one way to do that. “It would be philanthropy-based — I would want to use it to support more than just music,” he says. “We need to create a hub for entertainment. I want to figure out a way to help everyone win in the Bay Area music industry.”

Samantha Nobles-Block is a Bay Area freelance writer. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com