Brent Kolatalo is an American mixer, record producer, engineer and songwriter based in New York City. Kolatalo has worked with numerous artists and musicians, including Kanye West, Jay-Z, Eminem, Drake, Bruno Mars, X Ambassadors, Future, Chris Webby, Ella Henderson, Taylor Swift, Lorde, OneRepublic, Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey among others.^[1]

He has worked on several albums such as, To Pimp a Butterfly, Uptown Special, If You're Reading This it's too Late, Based On a T.R.U. Story, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Watch the Throne, Just Charlie, Late Registration and The College Dropout among others.

Kolatalo was born in Barberton and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio.^[2] He began practicing guitar when he was a kid, one of his tutors was Jeff Martin.^[3][4]

He attended Lakota West High School in West Chester, Ohio and graduated in 2000.^[4] In 2002, he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, during summers he was a trainee at Avatar studios.^[5] Kolatalo dropped out in 2004 after working on Kanye West debut studio album, The College Dropout which earning several nominations at the 47th Grammy Awards.^[5][6]

In 2007, Kolatalo started The Skywalkers, a production team with his partner Ken Lewis which has been renamed, Katalyst in 2011.^[7][8]

Kolatalo's songwriting credits include "The Blacker the Berry", Kendrick Lamar's track, which appeared on his album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015).^[2] He is the engineer on multi-platinum Mark Ronson's single featuring Bruno Mars, "Uptown Funk".^[9][10] In 2016, Kolatalo recorded and played on the track "Come to Mama" from Lady Gaga's album, Joanne.^[11] In 2019, he has worked on Taylor Swift's album, Lover.^[12]

He is a three-time Grammy nominee by name and has worked on over sixteen Grammy nominated albums.^[13][8] Having nominated for his work as audio and mixer engineer on works such as Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (2015),^[10] Eminem's Eminem (Recovery) (2010)^[14] and Kanye West’s The College Dropout (2004).^[15]