Producers are an integral part of music creation, but so few of these sonic gurus get the recognition they deserve. HEAT RISING looks at the best beats by an up-and-coming producer, and talks about where they’re from (ROOTS), what they’ve done (RESUME), and why they’re an exciting presence in music today (REASONS TO WATCH).

ROOTS: Born and raised in Brooklyn, Harry Fraud’s musical roots go deeper than your average button-pushing beatmaker. Fraud was directly exposed to the legendary mid-nineties east coast scene, but before finding hip-hop, he enjoyed a very musical upbringing courtesy of his parents. Harry Fraud’s parents were in a band together (and he’s very tight-lipped about what band that was), and his father eventually transitioned from performing to concert promoting. Fraud’s father produced shows for mega-acts like The Rolling Stones and Elton John at venues such as Madison Square Gardens and the Jones Beach Theatre, which gave Harry a behind-the-scenes look at the music industry at its highest level. Fraud first felt inspired to make music when his father was hired to throw the VIBE Magazine launch party in 1993, where a young Harry got to kick it with Lords of the Underground and RUN-D.M.C. and see them perform.

Ten years later, Harry Fraud was defining his hypnotic, sample-based production style on an MPC 2000XL in a basement apartment at his mother’s house. After making a dent in the New York mixtape scene, Harry hooked up with French Montana, one of the scene’s most promising up-and-comers, after an artist Fraud was working with purchased a feature from French in 2008. The pair instantly clicked, with French’s hard-hitting rhymes offsetting Fraud’s hazy beats. Harry Fraud became French Montana’s go-to beatmaker, and when they collaborated on “New York Minute” in 2009, an old beat that had been sitting on Fraud’s MPC for years, it gave them both next level exposure.

RESUME: “New York Minute” opened a lot of doors for Fraud and French, especially when Nicki Minaj and Jadakiss hopped on the remix. Another beat for French, “Shot Caller,” proved that “New York Minute” was no fluke, and landed French a joint-contract with Bad Boy Entertainment and Maybach Music Group, and fittingly, a remix featuring both Diddy and Rick Ross. Since then, Harry Fraud has built a catalogue running the gamut from mainstream to underground, notably featuring Wiz Khalifa, Juicy J, Curren$y, Smoke DZA, and Action Bronson.

REASONS TO WATCH: Harry Fraud is already a name producer in hip-hop circles, but 2013 could be the strongest year yet for the prolific Brooklyn producer. If not for its ham-handed corporate origins, the forthcoming mixtape collaboration with fellow New Yorker Action Bronson (Saab Stories) could’ve been a career defining project for two of the hottest out there right now. Regardless, anyone who has touched a Harry Fraud beat in the past year seems to be rising exponentially, so we can only predict the same fate for the wavy godfather himself.