Charlie Handsome, the Hit Producer Turning Down ‘Dream Come True’ Artists, Shares His Tips for Newcomers

“I was a few mistakes away from being some annoying guy at the bar who’s like, ‘I used to work with Post Malone,’ ” admits Ryan Vojtesak — the chart-topping producer better known as Charlie Handsome who has, in fact, quietly accumulated dozens of hits during the past decade. But after about eight years in Los Angeles, Vojtesak felt like he’d made the most of his time there; his list of credits, including one-offs with Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and Drake, had swelled, and he thought he had accomplished what he had set out to do in the city: “Get hot there and then move somewhere else.”

In 2021, he moved to Nashville, and since then, his career — and mentality — have shifted from sheer output to what he describes as “locking in.” Since moving, he estimates he has turned down offers to executive-produce 15 albums — “and pretty much all of them were artists that, if you would’ve asked me eight, nine years ago, I would’ve been like, ‘Holy s–t, this is a dream come true.’ ”

Born in Atlanta, the now elusive 38-year-old’s “favorite producer” growing up was Kanye West (now known as Ye). By his late teens, Vojtesak felt he had developed a strong enough self-taught skill set to start producing, too, “but I didn’t know anybody.” So he moved to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and worked a construction job — until he met someone at a bank (“legit,” he assures) who kick-started a chain of introductions that included producer Lifted, who previously worked with Ye on “Mercy” and connected Vojtesak with G.O.O.D Music president Che Pope. In 2013, Vojtesak moved to Los Angeles and adopted his own producer moniker (he’s also a songwriter and musician in his own right) and, soon enough, he met two people who knew Ye and T-Pain. “Those were my two connects,” he says.

Still, connections didn’t equate to immediate success. “It was frustrating in the beginning,” he continues. “I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any food. I weighed 50 pounds less because I wasn’t eating. It was like trying to solve a puzzle constantly.”

By 2014, Vojtesak scored his first credit, on Travis Scott’s “Drugs You Should Try It,” off the rapper’s second mixtape. “If you listen to the music, it’s emo,” Vojtesak says, noting that despite racking up early credits in hip-hop — with artists including Post Malone, Lil Uzi Vert, Gunna, Young Thug and Ye (on “Fade” from 2016’s The Life of Pablo) — he transcended any one lane. “As early as 2016, when I was working with Young Thug, we were doing folk songs — not all of them came out, but I was always on that.” He and Post even discussed a country project back in 2015, before Post’s debut album, Stoney, dropped — and nearly 10 years before he released one.

Vojtesak recalls accompanying Post to label meetings and the specific phrases Post’s team would use to market the then-unknown artist. “ ‘Reverse Taylor Swift’ was one, and ‘America’s Champion,’ ” he says with a barely stifled chuckle. “But really, the process is the reverse Taylor Swift, to an extent. Obviously for it to be a full reverse, Taylor needs to drop a rap album. Which I don’t think is going to happen.”

But the idea was there all along: Post Malone, country star. And along with it, Charlie Handsome: Nashville hit-maker.

After nearly a decade in L.A., Vojtesak found himself spending more and more time in Music City. “What happened was when s–t really got going, I got sick of paying taxes,” he admits. “So I weighed my options, and it was Miami or Nashville.” He had already worked with Morgan Wallen a few times — he says he “got lucky” meeting him in 2017 — and recalls thinking, “Morgan Wallen is probably the better artist for me… This could be something different and special and doesn’t have to sound like everything else.”

The first single they co-wrote was the title track to Wallen’s 2018 debut album, If I Know Me. On Wallen’s second project, the 2021 smash Dangerous: The Double Album, Vojtesak co-wrote seven tracks, including lead single “More Than My Hometown” and Vojtesak’s first No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, “Wasted on You.” By Wallen’s third album, 2023’s One Thing at a Time, Vojtesak was credited on 15 tracks, four of which he co-produced, and on this year’s I’m the Problem, he’s credited on 23 tracks, 12 of them as co-producer.

His trajectory with Post has been similar. Vojtesak scored two credits on Stoney (plus one on its deluxe version) and one on 2022’s twelve carat toothache. But for Post’s 2024 foray into country, F-1 Trillion, Vojtesak was credited on all 18 songs, plus the additional nine for the extended edition, F-1 Trillion: Long Bed.

Of the 67 songs he has charted on the Billboard Hot 100 that he has now produced or co-produced, 22 are by Post and 20 are by Wallen, including their collaborative No. 1 smash, “I Had Some Help.” (Vojtesak first topped the chart as a producer in 2022 with Jack Harlow’s “First Class”; he has remained on the Hot 100 Producers chart for 111 weeks, peaking at No. 1 in August 2024 and now sitting at No. 3 on the Aug. 9-dated chart.)

It’s no wonder Vojtesak has locked in with Wallen and Post, two artists who have themselves become friends and collaborators in the past few years and — especially in the case of the former — tend to keep to themselves. (Vojtesak himself admits to leaving his phone on silent “at all times.”)

Perhaps most importantly, both artists have the “gravity factor,” as Vojtesak puts it. “That’s a big part of it for me. I just look for a voice that I really believe in… But everything has to go your way, you know? There were a lot of ones that didn’t work out. Like 2015 me, DM’ing Doja Cat like, ‘Yo, I’m telling you, you could be the biggest artist. We just have to lock in.’ It cold got ignored.”

He’s even more discerning today, especially with young artists. It’s all about “finding the vehicle to move things forward,” he says. “Even with Morgan, the early sessions, maybe even the first session, I was saying, ‘What if we did this?’ And he was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if this is for me.’ And it was like, ‘It’s just not for you yet.’ But it can be — and we can build toward that.

“Every year, I try to meet with young people and see who’s the next person I might be interested in,” Vojtesak continues. “And I already have, as far as music and ideas go, a bunch of stuff that, to me, sounds new. And it sounds like [something that] nobody’s doing.”

That desire to find his next “vehicle for moving things forward” is what led him to launch his own publishing venture, Krispy Pork Gang, which he says is “one of the best in the game” because of his contacts — especially Sony Music Publishing president/head of U.S. A&R Katie Welle (who signed Vojtesak to his publishing deal). “If I don’t know the person, she’ll figure it out,” he says. “If I’m offering you a deal, you’re probably going to have a hit song [that same] year. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel like I was doing my job.” In partnership with Sony, he has signed songwriter-producers Hoskins, Joe Reeves and Jamie McLaughlin.

In Vojtesak’s view, his organic approach to signing talent is just as important as the hits they may help create. “Let’s say a new Justin Bieber single pops off and there’s one name on there that no one’s heard before. They’re going to get a call from all the major publishers,” he says. “And that’s the game side of it. What I do is, if I naturally get in touch with a person and we start working together and I [see] value in it, I might as well sign them now. I want to work with them anyway. I’ve yet to pick someone because they’re the hot thing.”

Vojtesak’s willingness to build with an artist — while being transparent about how to navigate signing offers that come along the way — is a direct result of his own start in the industry, when he had to figure out how the business worked on his own. He remembers being burned in the early 2010s after hearing a song on the radio that he had worked on, only to be told his parts had been rerecorded. “I didn’t have any money at all. Didn’t have a lawyer. I went to get advice from the wrong person and I was just naive,” he recalls. “The advice that was given to me was, ‘If you think you’re this good at music, just do it again.’ ”

Today, he has made it his mission to ensure that any artist, songwriter or producer he works with is never in the same situation. His advice: Hold out on any deal until you have a hit song. “And then you can negotiate for yourself,” he says. “But obviously, surviving is the hard part. Balancing a job and doing music? It sucks. It’s not easy.”

He encourages such professionals to publicly share how much money they are being offered from respective deals. “We allow our peers to get put in compromised situations where they’re not going to make as much money as they should — that happened to me early on and it pissed me off,” he says. “Because there was no transparency, I had no point of reference in my early negotiations. Same with catalog sales. I always ask people, ‘How much did you get?’ And motherf–kers do not want to say. And I’m just like, ‘How is that helpful to anybody?’ ”

In fact, one of the things Vojtesak is most proud of is “having a lot of money now” — not only because it can afford him the luxury of starting a Rolex collection (including one gifted by Wallen), but also because it signifies how far he has come on his own terms. His career, he says, “bought the freedom to relax a bit” and take care of his mother and brother, both of whom he bought houses for, in addition to his own, and all of which were “less expensive than what I could afford,” he says. He admits he’s only comfortable with his watch collection because he knows “I could turn around and sell them all.”

“When I talk to some of my old friends who make music, they’re like, ‘Man, you’re just looking at it for money and you’re not looking at the soul of it.’ I’m like, ‘That’s not necessarily true.’ And the argument I like to make to people who make super-artsy s–t all the time is, ‘You can make a song that a hundred people love and it means something to, or you can make a song that 20 million people love and it means something to, and when they’re having a bad day, they listen to that song. Neither of those are wrong.’

“The problem for myself, and I think people who in general are competitive, even with themselves, is if I don’t have a No. 1 song in a year, I’m going to feel pretty bad,” he continues. “But now if I don’t have three, I’m going to feel bad. But now, because I’ve had eight in one year, I need at least six a year. I’m cool with that number — for now.” His goal is to eventually have 50 No. 1 hits, which he says feels “doable” — and to make over $150 million from his production and writing work.

Although that sounds ambitious, he’s on his way. Vojtesak is working with Post on his upcoming second country set, which the producer teases has a “more traditional or classic country” sound. “There’s some ’90s vibes, some Toby Keith elements to it.” He’s ­especially proud of one song that modulates five times. “Every time I play it around a bunch of music people, they’re like, ‘Oh, s–t. What the f–k is happening?’ It’s this old Western type of record… I don’t want to speak too soon.”

And while he’s working on a project with his longtime friend and gambling buddy Marshmello (they often hit Las Vegas together), he’s still intent on keeping a tight and intentional workload. About a month ago, he says someone reached out from Ye’s camp asking if he wanted to collaborate again: “I was like, ‘No, I’m all right.’ ”

Though Vojtesak’s priority is to stay locked in with just a few superstars for now, he still has two that he would add to his plate any day: Swift and Ed Sheeran. But he’ll never reach out.

“I don’t try to interject or impose myself with artists necessarily; I don’t want people to do it to me, if I can be on some golden rule bulls–t,” he says. “My lawyer is Billie Eilish’s lawyer. I met her brother. I don’t try to reach out to them. They’re doing fine. And in the same way, I don’t want FINNEAS to come work on Morgan’s album.”

Vojtesak may be proud of his dominating run — in country music, specifically, for now — but his success is the very thing driving him to figure out what’s next. “I don’t really want to be responsible for making everybody sick of country and being like, ‘Wow, it’s oversaturated,’ ” he says. “With a lot of rappers in particular, I’ve had to have that conversation where I’m like, ‘Listen, you’re one of five guys who are all about equal success levels who want to do this right now.’ Just being in this space because it’s hot? It’s cyclical. Rap was hot for a long time. Now it’s this, but I want to make sure that I get to the next thing — and I want to get there preferably before everybody. Which I feel like I’ve done in the past — but now I have to do it again.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.