HipHopFiend Interview: TiRon & Ayomari break down the making of ‘A Sucker For Pumps’3

After the last time I talked to TiRon back in January I was excited to hear his new project with Ayomari, which would be entitled A Sucker For Pumps and would be dropping on Valentines Day. Of course when the day came and nothing dropped, I like many was disappointed. However when it did finally drop on September 13th, it served as a great reminder to what Atlanta rapper Hollywood Floss recently touched on in an interview I did with him, that we as fans never appreciate the music that we are given by the artists we love, we are obsessed with what’s coming next. Where many artists are rushed into making below average output by this ‘fast food’ mentality, we should be thankful that TiRon and Ayomari weren’t phased by this, and took the time out to carefully craft the well thought out and excellently assembled LP that they delivered once they were ready.

So without further ado, please take some time to hit the jump and experience A Sucker For Pumps, track by track, with the insights of its creators who divulge information on the LP’s conception, from the production, inspiration, the collaborative process, how the album was recorded and more…

Jack Kerouac

TiRon:
The song produced by Dahi and Drewbyrd, it’s kind of like a hitchhikers guide to relationships. Basically we look at the relationship before you find that perfect somebody; it’s kind of like hitchhiking. You’re hitchhiking from car to car to car to car, each car is like a different relationship, you get a little further, you learn a bit more, and you get closer to your destination. We are all trying to find that one person who we can just get in the car with and go really far.

And Jack Kerouac being like a post-World War II writer, he had this book called On The Road, where he hitchhiked and wrote down his tales on the journey, so that was the inspiration. We wanted it to be like the foreword of the album, much like the foreword in a book, where it almost like sets the tone for what you are about to be hearing, which is like complexities and conceptual. We didn’t want to do the standard, like “Oh, this is the intro.” So that’s the song and the inspiration. And we actually had that beat for a long time, but we just didn’t know what to do with it, but we knew we loved it, we just didn’t know how to put the puzzle together, but then it all fell into place.

Ayomari:
And it used to be called ‘Foreword’ and Exile actually gave it the name ‘Jack Kerouac’ when we went over there and pressed play on it for him.

Her Theme Song (feat. BJ The Chicago Kid)

Ayomari:
It’s like the anthem!

TiRon:
We wanted to make a song that women would really love! (Laughs) And I know that sounds real real… but that’s the only way to sum that up! Actually that song used to have a different direction, and then BJ (the Chicago Kid) heard it and he came up with a hook that completely went against the project, and then it was like, “Oh, ok. I guess it could be (that way)…”

That song used to be called ‘No Suckers Allowed’ and it was supposed to, it literally had a completely different meaning, and then BJ touched it. And then we added a couple of things here and there to bring the song a more friendly vibe. D.K. did that beat, he’s a kid we’ve been working with a lot, he’s out of Baltimore and amazing!

The inspiration was like, Superwoman. What would Superwoman’s theme song be?

Ayomari:
Quite literally, a woman’s theme song. We wanted that to be like the soundtrack for their day, like when you see the flyest, bombest, female, who has the dopest style, whatever, personality, everything…

How did the original version go before BJ had his input?

TiRon:
It was like the same thing, but I think the endings of both my verse and Omari’s verse, they were different. It was more like about a woman who doesn’t deal with losers. And she’s not necessarily like stuck up, but she knows what she wants, she’s a go-getter. And then BJ was like, “Well what about if she was your girl. Not looking at her like damn, she don’t fuck with no suckers. But more like you have her and she’s just amazing. And why not just do it like that.” So I changed the end of my verse, he changed the end of his verse and then it just worked!

M.F.G

Ayomari:
We came up with that originally at Chuck Inglish’s studio, we linked up with him, and it was originally over a different beat that he did.

TiRon:
Well not the whole song, just a couple of lines from the first verse, or the first verse that me and Omari share or whatever. We were in the zone, we were just having fun. And me and Omari aren’t afraid to be wack in front of each other, I don’t care whose studio we are in, we just start bugging out. And Chuck was working fast, but me and Omari don’t work that way, if we are in the zone and we feel it, we will take however long it needs to get the job done. So we sat on it like, “This could be a crazy song, but damn, how are we going to finish it?” And then D.K. who also did ‘Her Theme Song’ had this record, and I was like, “Yo, we should rock it over this and re-flip it.” And then we finished it, and I liked it, but I didn’t like it as much as I do now after I finally mixed it. Then we played it for Yummy Bingham, and she was like “Yo, I love this, I need to get on it.” So she ended up stacking some of the vocals.

And yeah, that song is just a girl that looks so good, that what else does she do for a living besides look good! She must just get paid for looking fine and looking beautiful.

Ayomari:
We just wanted to capture that moment that you have when you see that woman walking down the street. Like that moment of, “Wow, she is banging!”

TiRon:
You know like, the moment when you’re really bugging out with your homie, and like the craziest shit that you would say, like, “She looks so good, I would kick my father in the back!”

Did you end up making anything with Chuck Inglish while you where at his studio, or did you just take that concept from the session?

TiRon:
We just took the idea from the session because we couldn’t get up with him, he was always flying around and time waits for no man. So we had the idea, like Chuck played a beat that he wanted us to rap over, and me and Omari came up with the idea on the spot to that, and then it was unheard again. And we were like, well I like the song, I like the concept, it’s ours, lets go!

If I Had You (feat. D.R.U.G.S & Thundercat)

Ayomari:
It took a while for that one. That beat is like four years old.

TiRon:
Older than that!

Ayomari:
It was made by the same people who did ‘Tooted and Booted,’ Chordz, Ty$ and them. That whole process was crazy, just to get that song finished.

TiRon:
We had the beat for a long time, and we always wanted to use it. We thought it would be so great to incorporate this (beat) into the album, but I don’t believe in rushing shit. So we sat on it for a long time, and for a while it wasn’t going to make the album, because we was getting close to the deadline, and we hadn’t figured it out yet. Then it just came, it just happened, it just worked.

Ayomari:
It was crazy.

TiRon:
Me and Ayo were just sitting down one day and we just got into this groove, we found that groove. And we only had the first four bars, you know the “If I had you, I’d take you out…” We just has that, originally that was going to be the hook, then I was like, “wait up, what if we wrote other versions of that.” So I wrote another version using that same kind of melody and phrasing and all that, and just changed some of the words. And I can’t remember who said it, but we thought it would be crazy to do verses over this, little quick ones though. Get in, get out, then have the music talk at the end. Thudercat was down to hop on the record, and D.R.U.G.S you know, of course did what they did and added more percussion to it, made it way bigger and fuller, then I mixed it. It was a great process.

Ayomari:
It’s almost by some divine intervention that that song got finished in time. It literally got finished like the day before. That and ‘All My Love’.

TiRon:
Yep. Damn, that’s so crazy. That was like literally finished that in hell week! It just seemed like everything started to go right.

All My Love (feat. Yummy Bingham)

Ayomari:
Weren’t there like two versions of that beat originally?

TiRon:
Ah yeah, there were two versions of that beat, but I didn’t like the sequencing. So I chopped up both beats and made it into one beat that I liked. And then I think I wrote my verse first. And that just worked, I can’t even explain that. I didn’t even go out of my way to not cuss, it just felt so good. And originally we wanted Miguel on it, but Miguel was too busy, so he couldn’t make it. So Yummy was like, that was just up in the air. And Tunji, shout out to Tunji, was like, “Yo, we should get Yummy Bingham.” And I was like, “That would be amazingly crazy.”

Ayomari:
And how he pulled that was very last minute, it was really just amazing how that whole thing happened. It was like spur of the moment, the day before, and Tunji was able to make that connect happen. She was actually about to leave town…

TiRon:
Yup, she did that before she got on the plane. And she had a flight at like 7 or 8 in the morning, and we got out of the studio at like 2 or 3.

Ayomari:
And she doesn’t write at all!

TiRon:
At all! Well she might, I don’t really know, but that session she just went in the booth, came up with the harmony, vibed out with us first just to kind of get the feeling of where we’re going, and where we’re coming from. Then she just hopped in the booth and freestyled it.

Ayomari:
It was incredible.

TiRon:
We wanted that whole song, and the whole feel, to be like some shit that we’d have loved to dance to when we were kids. Before you were embarrassed to dance. You know you get older, and you’re embarrassed to do shit like that; to just lose your mind and dance. I really wanted it to be like something Teddy Riley would have written, Teddy Riley is from Guy and Blackstreet, I really wanted my verse to just sit in the pocket and feel that way.

The Neighbours

Ayomari:
Exile.

TiRon:
We went to his house, we were reaching out to producers to be on the project, and he was like, “Yo I got some shit, roll through.” And when we walked in, I think he was making that beat when we walked in…

Ayomari:
He was actually taking a break, sitting on the porch, and he was just playing it in his room.

TiRon:
It was playing real loud, and I was like, “Oh my god! What is that?” And he had played us other records because I don’t think he intended on that being the record. I think he thought we wanted some other shit. But it just worked. We were like, “That’s a no-brainer.” And then we sat on that for a couple of days, like “Ok, what are we going to do?” And then I started writing this really simple ass verse, and then for some reason, the last line, I said, “Turn the volume up just a tad for the neighbours.” And then I just kept repeating it, and I was like, “Well fuck it, lets just make that the hook. And stack it or do whatever.” And then at the end we were like, “Well what if we just made it sound like somebody pounding on the door.” So Omari hopped in my closet. Because we just recorded that in my room, no booth or nothing like that…

Ayomari:
Most of the album actually.

TiRon:
Like ninety percent of that album is just in my room kicking it, with a mic in the middle of the room, reverb, sometimes the windows were open. So he hopped in my closet, and he just started beating on the wall and then we just recorded it, and he was like screaming and saying stuff, and we edited that, chopped it, put it at the end and that was ‘The Neighbours.’

And that was inspired by looking for that sexuality that we didn’t have. That was like one of the last songs that we did because we felt like the album was missing those elements of sexuality. And we didn’t want it to be like a vulgar record, not even vulgar, but…

Ayomari:
Sexy.

TiRon:
It’s sexy! It’s like vulgar, but we don’t say any bad words- I think Omari might say “shit” or something like that- but we really don’t cuss, we ain’t really saying ‘pussy’ and ‘fuck’ and you know what I mean. But it is a sexy song, so when a woman listens to it she’ll be like, “Oh, I get this!” It’s like innocently dirty.

Ayomari:
And Exile’s crazy the way he sequences his beats too, he does everything live, straight from the MPC into Pro Tools and just plays it, rather than recording it in sections.

TiRon:
He actually thought he was going to have to re-sequence it.

Ayomari:
Shit was perfect.

TiRon:
I chopped it. I definitely chopped it… At least I think I did…

Perfect

Ayomari:
I think that was like the second song we actually did for the project. We’d been sitting on it for a while, and TiRon came up with the idea to make it like an infomercial.

TiRon:
That was because we couldn’t figure out what the hook was. You know like, sometimes when you’re in a creative rut, and you hit a roadblock, it’s like, “Yo, lets just do something stupid and weird. Lets do something out the box. Fuck it, if we can’t think of nothing in the box, lets get out the box. Lets just call the homie Cap (Captain Is Cool) and have him talk on it, and sell a product, that would be funny.” And then it kind of plays on the whole idea of ‘aspiring to be perfect and chasing perfection is silly.’

Ayomari:
It’s perfection at the end of the day anyway.

TiRon:
Exactly. So it’s like, lets just have fun and clown around. Lets make people realise how silly it is to chase perfection.

Ayomari:
We see this stuff day in and day out with women, and men too. So it’s good to have a song like that, just to raise that conversation amongst people.

TiRon:
Yeah that was a fun day! Also produced by D.K.

No Wonder

TiRon:
I think that might have been the first record. Recorded in my room, just vibing out one day. I don’t know how that just came to me, I just remember saying it. Sometimes I don’t understand it, it just happens.

Ayomari:
That shit was immediate kind of.

TiRon:
It kind of was. We literally did that whole song in one night.

Ayomari:
And that beat kind of set the tone for the album being something that was a step away from what people was expecting for us to do.

TiRon:
Exactly. We just got tired of being in the box, and I like records like that, so we just went in. We just sped it up. Produced by Dahi.

Ayomari:
(Dahi) Who produced the first track, ‘Jack Kerouac.’

Thing Go Right

TiRon:
That was produced by Tiffany Gouche and Iman Omari. It was just this crazy, crazy beat, that I heard and fell in love with, and always wanted to do something with it. And then me and Omari were just sitting and really really really trying to figure out, and Ayomari came up with this idea, “It takes two to make a thing go right.” The hook used to go a different way, so Omari came up with the initial idea and we were playing with it and playing with it, and then we thought we came to the conclusion, and we let it rest for a minute, then we just figured it out. We just put the pieces together. And we were like, “Lets just go back and forth. Instead of you get a verse, I get a verse, lets just pass the ball around.”

Ayomari:
Yeah, we actually wrote that song from beginning to end, like straight through. It’s interesting writing songs like that, because usually you come up with songs in sections, like you might come up with a chorus first, and then, “Lets do our verses now that we have the concept down.” And this one was an interesting process because we just sat down together and wrote the song from beginning to end.

I’d Rather

TiRon:
This kid Hollywood JB, we were on UStream one day, and when we were working on the album we were always like, “Yo, send through some beats, whoever’s watching, send us some records, we definitely want to hear what y’all are working on.” And this kid sent that beat through. And I liked it, but I felt like… Originally the beat changed, and it had a snare in it and all of that, and I was like, “Well what if we just not use that section, and just loop the beginning, and have the drums be on the fifth bar after the four bar change. What if the drums came in and we just looped it like that, and just rocked over that.”

And the hook just came to me; I wish I could remember how. It’s just like being in a relationship with someone, and you fight to make it work, you literally fight. Like I’ve been in relationships like that, where you’re literally like, “I don’t know why I’m with this person. I’m with this person because I love this person. And nobody understands why we’re together and why we put up with each other, and why we care so much.” Like I’ve been slapped, I’ve punched trees, man you know, just like the things that we go through in the name of love. I think I wrote my verse first, and then Omari just spazzed out, and then wrote his second. So I was like, “Oh man, your verse got to go first!”

And then the arguing. There’s a song called ‘Domestic Violence’ by RZA, and I was inspired by that. But I was also inspired by ‘Death Around The Corner’ by 2Pac; at the beginning you hear this girl just going off, and I kind of wanted that feel. But I was also like, “The hook isn’t enough by itself.” Because the hook is, “I’d rather fight with you/ Than be happy with anybody else.” And it was repetitious and infectious, but I was like, “We need something else in there to make it feel heavier.” So, shout out to the homegirl Hemza, we just got drunk one day, and she got drunk and then we had fake arguments. And like, we were drunk, so we believed in our fake arguments so we really started just really talking shit about fake people. Like I was talking about a girlfriend that I didn’t have. Like I literally pretended like she was my girl, and we had arguments, because we were that drunk!

You Got It (feat. Iman Omari)

Ayomari:
I feel like this was one of the first tracks we did also. And we had been sitting on it for a minute. And at first, when we first finished it, it was dope but I don’t think it was probably until like a few days later we was like, “Ok this song could make the album. It’s kind of dope, I think we like this shit.” It was produced by Iman Omari, he’s singing it also. The original concept was about a man being the mirror for his woman. You know how women go out and they try to find validation in other people and other things, in order for them to feel good about themselves. And the concept for ‘You Got It’ came from the point of view of a man telling his woman like, “Don’t worry about what’s going on outside of that or outside influence, just look at me if you’re ever feeling down, or you need a confidence booster or a compliment, just look at me because I have all the confidence in the world because you’re beautiful in my eyes.” And that’s why that Slick Rick sample is in there, “Mirror mirror, on the wall.”

Lot On Your Mind (feat. Beatnich)

TiRon:
I was over at Fisticuffs studio, over there drinking and hanging out. I hadn’t seen them in a while so I just went over there and really just started pressing play, and was showing them what I’d been working on, they were showing me what they’d been working on. And Beatnich hit up Brian Warfield from Fisticuffs and he was like, “Yo I’m on my way I’m going to come through for a minute.” And I’d known Beatnich for a long time, because he’s Miguel’s little brother. So like I always used to just see him around like you know, little Young Nick. And then I didn’t even know he made music, so he came through and he was like, “Yeah you know, I’m working on my album too.” And he pressed play and he came across that record. So I was like, “That record is amazing, can we please use it for our album.” He was like, “Of course.” But he only had like the hook and his first verse done, so we sat on it, and kept talking and we went over to his house for like maybe a week straight and worked hard on that record. You know what I mean, like called through people to talk and have conversations in the background. Like we really did work hard on that record. Shouts out to Beatnich who produced and wrote that record.

Ayomari:
That was a fun experience.

TiRon:
Hell yeah it was.

And that’s (about) like women, and men, we often think way way too much, instead of just letting it be naturally easy. Most things in this world are very very easy if you just let it flow and let it be natural. You can get a lot of the things you want out of this life if you just chill and relax. A lot of the things we stress about it’s because we’re stressing about them, like no one can make you stress out, you stress yourself out by allowing whatever’s around you, to influence you. So it was just one of those records like, I was like, “We should make it sound like a party.” So I referenced Weezer, The Blue Album, there’s a song on their called ‘The Sweater Song (Undone)’ and there’s like a party in the background and you hear a little conversation, and the conversation progresses after each verse on that song. And I was like, “Yeah, I want our song to have that feel.” You know that feel that every time you listen to it, it sounds new, because you’re hearing new things in the background that bring out a lot of the life in the background. So we just kept stacking the hook and we made it really really big, but it’s dedicated to the people who get dressed up and go out to look and act like they don’t want to be there.

Denouement (feat. Dream Hampton)

TiRon:
That was really a shot in the dark. Dream Hampton who wrote Jay-Z’s Decoded, and she was like the first female editor for the source, she was like contributing editor for Vibe. She liked MSTRD and she said it on Twitter like, “I really love your project.” And I was like “Wow!” So that was crazy, so it always stuck with me.

And I wanted someone to speak on the album, because we needed someone to give a woman’s perspective, like we needed it and we didn’t have it. And I was like, well we don’t want it to sound corny, we don’t want it to be like some spoken word so we didn’t want to go with a couple of people that we were thinking about. And really it was like, “Yo, Dream would be the perfect person.” And it took me a while to ask her, because I was like, “Man, she’s not going to do it. Tunji, you ask her!” And he was like, “Just ask her, the worst that she could say is no.” And it was getting close to the end of the album, I was like, “Fuck it. If I’m going to ask her, it’s got to be now.” So I hit her up, and she was like, “I’d be honoured to.” I originally wanted her to talk at the beginning of ‘Jack Kerouac.’ I wanted her to write the foreword for the album, which is why the song was called ‘Foreword,’ which was why we came up with the whole idea and the concept for the song and all that. But it was amazing how into it she was, so I was like, “Man, lets just do a whole track.”

And then, shouts out to J. Pounds who did that track, he had given us a beat prior, that we couldn’t use because he sold it. I think he gave it to SchoolBoy (Q) actually, and then he was like, “Yo man, my bad. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get you the record that you wanted, but I’m going to come through, and we’re going to work on something from scratch.” So he came through to Spaced Out studios, which is where we did, ‘If I Had You,’ I think it might have even been the same day, and he made that from scratch. I told him exactly what we wanted, I told him about Dream, I was like, “Yo, lets try and make that work.” He did that, she sent over her vocals and I felt like it just needed a woman’s touch and she delivered that perfectly.

Fin

TiRon:
That was Oddisee from DMV. I love working with that dude, he has the most positive spirit and energy and that beat was actually given to me back when I did MSTRD, because he also did ‘The Richers’ and ‘60901’ and I always loved it. I always loved it, but I just couldn’t make sense of it at the time, which is why it didn’t go on MSTRD, and I was just kicking it one day and ‘Fin’ came to me. And like being the end of a relationship, you know calling it quits and that moment right before you call it quits and you feel like, “Aww man, it’s really over.” You know when you’re in arguments and stuff like that, in the heat of the argument you really don’t care about the person. Once you actually leave and it starts to sink in, and it’s over, I wanted the record to feel like that, like that moment of realising it’s really over. “No, this isn’t one of our little fights like we always have. It’s a wrap!” It just came, I knew whet I wanted the end of the album to sound like at that point.

How would you describe the group dynamic when you guys work together, as opposed to your solo work?

TiRon:
I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re a duo. We just like making music together. I’m not afraid to be wack in front of him, so we make some really really dope shit. All because he can see my best and he can see my worst.

Ayomari:
It’s not about capitalising off of his career, whereas a lot of collaborations that go on nowadays, people are trying to capitalise off that, get that co-sign, rather than just make music to make dope music.

TiRon:
We just influence and inspire each other just being around each other. Like there’s very few people in this world, who you meet and they not only keep you on your toes, but they make you be like, “Ok, it’s alright.” Like I’ve been in the studio with rappers right, and someone will play the beat, and I get up like extra happy like, “Man, we should do this, we should do that…” And there’ll be a rapper who is just like, “Man whatever, lets just do whatever.” Instead of contributing ideas, they’re just rappers. “Man I’ll write my sixteen right now.” But what you going to write it about? How are you going to break it down? What is the cadence you’re going to use? I like to talk about the complexities of the record, and making the complicated simple, as opposed to making the simple complicated.

Ayomari:
Yeah, a lot of people across music, are just trying to make as much work, make as much music as possible, like they’re in a factory or something.

TiRon:
Not even that but also like, I’m not trying to be better than Ayomari when we’re on songs. Like I’m not trying to outdo him, and I’m not trying to make my verse kill his verse I think a lot of rappers who collaborate, they try to do that shit. When people listen to me and Ayomari’s records it’s not like who’s better than who, it’s like, “Damn, the whole song is crazy.”

I think once we figured that out it was like lights out. Lets just keep going, because I’m not trying to be better man, lets just make a great song. Lets consistently do that. Pull back on your verses when you need to, I’ll pull back when I need to, give it all when you need to. Don’t cheat the song because you want to be arrogant.

Ayomari:
Yeah, because we could rap our asses off, but we’re not out here trying to prove every living waking moment, that we’re the best rappers in the world.

TiRon:
At all. I don’t care about that no more. Because people don’t care about it. I’m a person, so I’m not over here trying to show off my talent. My god given talent can be taken away from me, so I’m trying to connect with people, I’m not trying to prove that.

Ayomari:
Especially when you realise how powerful music is.

TiRon:
When you realise how important it is. Like music is important in peoples lives. Things are fucked up and people need to listen to something that makes them feel, and gives them security and clarity. And I felt like there wasn’t a lot of music that was coming out that was doing that. I felt like there was a lot of music that was a little too braggadocios. Nobody’s talking to the people.

There was quite a long delay with the album, it was originally going to be released in February. Why did you decide to wait until now to put it out?

TiRon:
Just knowing that I didn’t want to give the people less than my all. I wanted to give them a classic. This is the problem with me, I’m not competitive, I just want to be the best. I’ve always wanted to be this. Like when I was a kid, if I did anything I was really really really really into it and I got real good at it. I used to skate, and I skated so much that I started to get sponsored and make commercials and I used to make a lot of money doing that. Then I used to play football, and I was captain of the football team freshmen year. And then I used to act, I used to do musical theatre, and I used to win trophies. If ever I really love something I take my time and I do it a lot, and I didn’t want to give people less than our 110%. So we’d wanted to put it out in February just because of marketing, oh you know, “Releasing it on Valentines day. That would be cool!” Then I was like, “Lets be honest, the music is not… It doesn’t taste right yet.” And then we took some time and saw the world a little bit, and went over there to Sweden and did the Swedish EP just as a sign of good faith, like you know, “If you’re a fan of ours please trust us, this is just a little something we did in three days, just so you can have faith in us. Just keep a little faith in us, because as soon as you get that project you’ll understand why it took long, and you’ll appreciate that we took that little bit of extra time.”

Ayomari:
And you know what’s funny about September 13th, the day we released it on, that was Dream Hampton’s birthday.

TiRon:
And it was the day ‘Pac died.

Ayomari:
And Dream Hampton said that the last time she recorded something for an album, it was for 2pac.

TiRon:
It was for Me Against The World.

And was the album a different collection of songs back in February?

TiRon:
Nah, it’s just how, you just know when it’s right. You put certain songs on, you take certain songs out. We could have released anything, we just wouldn’t have been completely proud of it. We can easily do the ‘drop something every week’ because we actually started doing that at the beginning of the year. We could easily just drop things and drop songs, we could easily… I mean, we did that EP in three days, so we can easily do that kind of stuff. But it was like, sometimes when you really love something, just take your time with it. Don’t drop something because they want you to drop it. Do it when you’re ready to do it.

Ayomari:
And we also realised that songs mean less when they’re not attached to a project. They go under the radar a lot faster.

The album has a very novelistic quality about it, was this something that you did intentionally, what with the album having a ‘foreword’ and all?

Ayomari:
Yes. It’s also dope how, because my boy hit me up after he heard the album, and he hit me up and he said, “Ok, I just broke up with the album. I’m going to get back in the relationship tomorrow.” Because the album kind of plays like it’s a relationship, and you get to start a relationship at the beginning of the album, and at the end of the album that relationship is over and you kind of break up with it. But it’s something you want to go back to. I thought that was dope.

What was the concept behind the cover artwork, and who created that? It really fits the feel of the album perfectly…

TiRon:
That was definitely Black Marmalade and Cedar Pasori, Dalya Taman, they’re amazing. And there was this movie called Funny Games U.S. and there’s this poster of Naomi Watts…

And I thought, “Oh my god, it would be amazing if we had something like that for the album cover.” Where you see that and your like, “Damn, like, something happened, she’s looking a little dishevelled, she’s crying… ” That was all Amy Phamous, is the model that we used, who is also like an incredible DJ (and) close friend, and she threw in that smile and it was perfect, it was just like wow. That album, everything we wanted to say, everything I wanted to say, everything Omari wanted to say, it was captured, like she just did it. It was complex, it was ups it was downs it was beautiful, it was just a relationship in a photo and it just worked. They’re all crazy, they all collaborated to make the album look like what it looks like.

Anything to add before we wrap up?

Ayomari:
Go buy the album!

TiRon:
Thankyou to all of the fans that have been supporting us, and thankyou for being patient and letting us explore our creativity, taking a little bit of time. And shouts out to the Cafeteria Line, Tunji, Mario, Lateef, shouts out to Black Marmalade, Cedar and Dalya.

Ayomari:
And Amy Phamous, the one who was on the cover.

TiRon:
Thankyou to everyone who helped out with the album, and go buy it on Itunes or Bandcamp. And put everybody you know on it! In my opinion it’s one of the best albums of the year.

Ayomari:
Put at least five folks on it, and we will slowly take over the world!

Buy the album via Bandcamp here…
Buy the album via Itunes here

Images by Cedar Pasori
Films by David Hellman & Jerome D