THEY.'s New EP is Fire[side]

THEY. is an enigma in name and in definition. Comprised of singer/songwriter Drew Love, 24, and producer/singer Dante Jones, 28, the duo’s sound has been called everything from R&B, to grunge, to electronic, to pop fusion. THEY.’s collaborations are equally diverse, an early collab with ZHU and Skrillex is now followed by a song with each of the following talents—Jessie Reyez, Vic Mensa, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla $ign, Jeremih, Gallant—on their Fireside EP, out today.

Smooth and moody, it’s a bedroom, a ballroom, and an alone-in-your room soundtrack in equal musical measure. “I'm just excited to put out that body of work,” says Jones over drinks in an artsy midtown restaurant. He and Love had just flown in from their home base in Los Angeles for Fireside’s release party the following evening.

“I wanted to create something that was different, that was special, that I felt was going to last and not just be like a disposable artist,” says Jones of his initial success in the pop world, before meeting Love. “The chemistry was there immediately. We've just been building ever since. We basically have the same principle that we want to make noise and that we want to—for lack of a better word—fuck things up.”

Love agrees: “When I saw what [Jones] could do, his avant-garde approach to production, it really blew me away and I knew I wanted to keep on working with him.”

In their creative honeymoon period, the guys dropped their first EP Nu Religion, in 2015, followed by their debut studio album Nü Religion: HYENA in 2017—a harder sound, trappy and experimental, tinged by darkness. Fireside feels lighter overall, the more comfortable phase of a happy marriage, balanced, mature. Much like Love and Jones themselves.

JANE GAYDUK: How did you guys come up with the name THEY.?

DANTE JONES: It was really simple. I named a beat 'they' and he just saw it on the computer screen and he was like "Oh, that shit is tight. We should make that the name." And that was it!

All caps is the official brand?

DREW LOVE: Yeah, bold statement.

Dante, what do you love about music producing?

JONES: I love that, at the end of the day, we're all given the same tools. It's not about whatever program you use, it's about what you do with it. You can give twenty different guys the same program and they're all going to make music that sounds completely different. For me, I always look at music like it's a puzzle that needs to be pieced together. A lot of times, people just think "oh, I've got a beat, I'm going to lay it down" and that's it. But, for me, it's about problem-solving: "okay, how do I get the perfect first verse and the perfect second verse...how does that transition from this, from that." I guess it's problem-solving and putting something special together. That's just always been my approach to work. I'll piece away at it for months, sometimes it takes a year before it finally comes out. So, that's what I love about it. There's endless possibilities and you're exploring each different way that a song can play out.

What do you do if you're facing a mental block or music block?

LOVE: If i'm facing any type of writer's block—and this is something that I've really had to work on to figure out—the best way to deal with that is to write yourself out of it. Or produce yourself out of it. Because if you sit there and let it take over your brain, and tell yourself that it's some kind of block, it's kind of like an excuse honestly. All you've got to do is continue to write more and more and more, .just write yourself out of it. A lot of times, I would sit back and be like "oh yeah, I've got writer's block so I'm just going to take a break for a while" and then that break would go from one week to two weeks to three weeks, and I just wouldn't get anything done. So, just face it and write. That's my mantra.

JONES: It depends on what the contract says. If it's just one day and nothing seems to be coming, the best thing to get my mind going is if I get moving. If I start moving around. So, sometimes it's just about taking a walk somewhere or I'll start doing push-ups or sit-ups, I start pacing around—whatever. I just have to move and do something physical. A lot of times, I like to do what's called a 'power cleanse' where I'll just play a bunch of random stuff back-to-back-to-back, from N'Sync to some obscure rap to Taking Back Sunday, all within a 20-minute period. Just to get my mind out of whatever I'm working on. It's about hearing everything with fresh ears. Like Drew said, the best way to keep working is to do it every day. Writing a little something every day is stimulating. It's like any skill: I grew up playing basketball and every single day, you've got to show up and and take a shot. Show up to the gym, take your shots. Some days you're going to miss all of them, some days you're going to make most of them. But what you have to do is show up every day and just take those shots and train that muscle.

Drew, I read that you were bullied in school. How did that affect you growing up and how does it affect your music now?

LOVE: It plays a huge part. All the way through middle school and high school, whatever, I didn't really have friends or anybody who really liked me too much. It's motivation because I'm the type of person that, when somebody tells me that I'm not going to be able to do something, it makes me want to do it that much more. So, I definitely use that for motivation—I really wanted to prove those people wrong. Even my mom and dad—of course, my mom and dad didn't bully me [laughs]—but, obviously, music is not the conventional route as opposed to going to school, getting your degree and being a doctor. That's not really what I wanted to do so I moved out to L.A. to try to figure it out. Now, I met somebody like Dante who's just as eclectic as me—who got into just as much trouble in school as I did and had just as many doubters as I did—so, I feel like us joining forces and being those outcasts really allowed our music to resonate.

Is there any advice that you would give to somebody dealing with the same challenges?

LOVE: Well, the reason that people don't like you is because there's something that you've got that they don't, that they're jealous of. Honestly, if you're an outcast of any type, it's for a reason. It's because you're meant to do something special later on. You might not see it right now but it's there. You're meant to be different for a reason. You're set aside for a reason because God picked you to do something special. I truly believe that. I didn't think that then but now it's very apparent.

Of all your songs, 'Dante's Creek' seems to be the one that has really blown up the most. What do you think is the recipe for a hit song like that?

LOVE: I don't think anybody really knows whether a song is going to be a hit.

JONES: You do feel a sensation when you know you have something special. But how the world is going to receive it? You can never really determine that. I think my approach to that song was an experiment of "let me see if this works." I really wanted to try to encompass something that had that mid-90s feel. So I studied the chord progressions of people like No Doubt then, randomly while we were writing it, I started out with the Dawson's Creek theme song. You know, he flipped it in a way that made it work. The whole time we were doing it, it was about capturing a feeling. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is what it feels to be back in the mid-90s and to have a song about being young and not knowing with yourself. I think, yeah, it really resonated with people. When we perform it, no matter where it is, he announces "this song's called Dante's Creek" and everybody just erupts. I think it also really shows a different side. You never would've expected that from the first EP. Hearing a song like that shows the range that we can do.

Did you like Dawson's Creek while it was running? Do you guys have any favorite characters?

LOVE: [Laughs] I think I was little too young. I know it was on TV but it was probably something more that my brother watched. I do remember every single time just sitting in the living room, playing with my toys or whatever, and I would hear that theme song going on in the background and I'd know my brother or my mom was in there watching TV.

JONES: No, I never really watched it. [Laughs]. But, the thing is, my whole life I never liked movies or TV shows that were about high school. For whatever reason, especially now that I'm older, I had a wack high school experience but I just don't like watching things about High School.

I don't want to speak on your behalf—but could it also be that these TV shows weren’t exactly diverse in their representation?

JONES: Yeah, I won't lie. Those WB teen dramas all ran together for me. You know what I'm saying? Just because it's all white kids, nice upbringings, so, it didn't resonate with me but I mean there's an audience for that out there.

Your music is being labeled a variety of different things from meditative rock to grunge'n'b. How would you define your music, if you were to define your music?

LOVE: We were definitely running with the 'grunge'n'b' for a little while—shout out to Paul Lester for that. We're definitely R&B at the core. Me and Dante are R&B heads all the way. Dante, first and foremost, had a huge influence with the emo and the grunge so he definitely influenced me to listen to a little bit more of that and the alternative stuff. My love for that grew. It was already there but it grew. Now, each project we kind of evolve and bring in new sounds and new influences. So, it'll always be R&B at the core but we'll always mix it with different stuff.

JONES: It's tough with genres for me. Even just day-to-day, I have a really tough time compartmentalising. I'm thinking about yesterday and five years ago, I'm just all over the place. It's just my ADHD. It's just how I am. So, I think that's kind of reflected in my music too. I want to do rock and I want to do pop and I want to do R&B but then I want it to hit hard. I don't really see the separation of genres or anything like that. I just do what I'm trying to do and work every single day to make it happen. I don't think that anybody who's in a genre—especially people who are pioneers—have an "oh this is what I'm doing, this is what I call my music etc." I think history says that. We'll look back in five to ten years and see what this era of music is really defined as. In the meantime, I'm just going to do my thing. The main principle is that I don't hold back anything. The second you try to put a label on something, then you have to like bottle or box it "this is what I do, I'm grunge" or "I can't do this, I'm a trap artist." I don't even try to think of it like that, I just focus on each song.

Do you explore other creative outlets besides music?

LOVE: I started with poetry first. I was named after Langston Hughes, that's my middle name. So, I was always into poetry and that kind of got me into writing music in the first place. Sometimes, to go back to your earlier question about writer's block, I'll try to start writing poetry because that's honestly what a song is best on. It's a poem. So I try to start writing poems here and there, to try and get myself out of it. That's my other form of creativity: writing poems and things like that. I like watching a lot of movies, I'm really getting into film. So, maybe that's another venture that I'll have after this.

JONES: When I was about 17, I kind of made my mind up. I was like "Alright I only want to do things that I love. So, what do I really enjoy doing?" For me, I love doing music and I love to write. I went to school for journalism and advertising just because that was my outlet. Just, like, comps. I just have a way for putting stuff together, I guess. I just enjoy expressing myself in that way.

 Do you want to write for us? We definitely have a spot for you!

JONES: [Laughs] Yeah, maybe one day! I'll do a little op-ed or something. I'm down. But I really just enjoy writing. When I came out to L.A., I had a bunch of plans but music was the first thing. I was like, "Okay if music doesn't work out, then I'll be an engineer, maybe I'll try comedy writing, maybe I'll try this..." The music kind of took off first so that was my main interest. But I was definitely trying to learn screenwriting and reading a lot of books. You know, I don't want to make beats forever. I want to do other things with my life and with my mind. I definitely see it in my future—to really make writing a part of what I do every day.

You have so many great collabs on the Fireside EP—what is the trick for a successful collaboration?

JONES: It's got to be genuine! It's got to be organic. That's the thing with this whole EP: these are all our friends, these are people that really rock with us, that really believe in the movement and want to be a part of our world. So, it's different from somebody just phoning in a verse after paying for a feature. We didn't pay for any of these, these are all people that genuinely wanted to be a part of the project and you can hear it in the songs.

Is there anything you want to add about the new EP?

JONES: I always say about our music: not everybody is going to like our song but there's one song on there for everybody. I encourage everyone to listen to it. I think it's going to be an exciting time, it's something different. We've never done something like this before. So, we're excited to pull the trigger on it.

LOVE: Yeah, to build off on that. We're still growing. We have a lot of ground to cover to get to where we eventually want to be in the music space. There's going to be a lot of unexpected turns and a lot of elements, we're still figuring out who we are as artists. One thing about our mindset is that we're not going to stop. We're always going to be pushing the envelope. Always going to do us. We're going to make sure that we make an impact on this world. That's the goal and we have the skills to do it.