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R&B Duo THEY blew us away on Sway In The Morning as they delved into their latest album, Nü Moon. With every release, THEY takes the chance to reinvent themselves while maintaining the coveted R&B sound their fans adore. This time around, THEY ventured into uncharted territory with a new dark and sultry vibe - it's pure magic!
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Exclusive interviews from Sway Calloway and the Sway In The Morning/ SwaysUniverse.com team with some of today's biggest celebrities, like Kevin Hart, Kanye West, Eminem, Usher, Jessica Alba, Steve Aoki, Torey Lanez, Julia Stiles and so much more.
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0:00
We were just talking earlier, citizens, about, you know, when you meet artists in the beginning of their careers
0:06
in the early stages of their career, and being able to align with them and watch them and support throughout the years
0:12
and then watch them blow up. I witnessed that last month when I was on a set of Transformers
0:17
Right. And the star of Transformers, Anthony Ramos, is someone that we had on the show before anybody knew who Anthony was
0:25
Early. The same with Dominique Fishback is someone we had on the show before anybody or I was communicating with before they knew who she was
0:33
Same with Toby and Wigway, who are all stars of the Transformers movie that's coming out June 9th and also featured on the soundtrack and some of the score
0:44
Toby and Wigway got to produce a track with Nas. For me, it was watching it come 360 full circle to watch what these people were doing when they were just dreaming and reaching for their goals
0:55
And then now to watch them walk in these moments and they're living out their dreams
1:00
And I get the same feeling about these young men that have just joined us today by way of L.A. and by way of Colorado
1:08
Andrew is here. Dante is here. They go by the group name of They
1:12
They've been putting out music for, I want to say, since 2015 when The Day View came out
1:19
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Right. First EP was 2015. Was 2015, and that was called
1:25
New Religion. New Religion. New Religion, and then you did the Hyena Joint, right
1:29
Yeah, New Religion, Hyena, right after that. That was in 2017, and then you did the Amanda tape
1:34
We have Fireside right in between them. Fireside, LCP, but then you did the Amanda tape, right
1:38
Oh, I'm sorry. And on that was the track that I really like with Wale, if I'm not mistaken
1:42
Was that on that project? Yeah, Losing Focus. Losing Focus. And so from there, I've been on you guys, man
1:47
So now y'all got this new project. Citizens, get to know them now
1:51
Get to know them now They already got the cut off t-shirts on
1:56
Showing arms That's when you know it's about to blow the hell up
1:59
Okay, they got the new music out They got shades on in the morning
2:04
They are R&B ready Let's welcome Vae to the show Y'all, Vae
2:09
That's good, y'all We appreciate you, man I hear it, man I listen to y'all music and it's fun
2:17
Yeah, man, we love to have fun with our music, man Especially, it means R&B
2:20
We're R&B heads from the top down, you know what I mean
2:24
So it's like we love to just take R&B and take a lot of different risks with it
2:28
So, you know, we have a lot of fun in the process. What did y'all meet? Are y'all relatives
2:34
Nah, people think that we related, but we actually just met, like, randomly in L.A. through some friends
2:39
And, like, it was one of them things where, like, the chemistry was just instantly there
2:43
You know what I'm saying? We definitely have, like, a brotherly type relationship. But, like, just from day one, like, when we started working
2:49
And we just had this chemistry, and within a couple months, we decided to be a group. We bonded over some E&J and waffle fries
2:55
Some E&J and waffle fries. Yeah, it's a good time. That's that early career liquor, E&J
3:01
They ain't got no money for Ace of Spades. No, no, no
3:06
Drinking E&J. How do R&B artists come together? I know I was in a rap group when I first started
3:14
and we all talked about who we liked, and we were aligned on how we wanted to rap and write songs
3:19
and the kind of music we wanted to make. R&B, how did y'all approach it
3:23
How did you decide that you wanted the same out of R&B? Well, I think what it was is because
3:28
so a lot of people don't notice, but Dante produces a lot for other people in the industry
3:32
He's already got a whole Grammy under his belt on the production side before. Congratulations
3:37
Man, my first cut was with Kelly Clarkson back in the day. What? Yeah, Kelly
3:41
From Kelly Clarkson to R&B, bro. Kelly Clarkson? What song? It was a joint called Mr. Know-It-All
3:49
Mr. Know-It-All. Yeah, that was my first cut that I ever had in the industry
3:56
And yeah, it won a Grammy very early on. So I was out in LA doing my thing and working
4:02
but I always wanted to kind of make something that was a little bit different. So that was right around the time that I met Drew
4:08
And the thing with us was just the ideas were just flowing from day one
4:13
You know what I'm saying? like I'd have a melody or like a track or production
4:17
He know exactly what to do with it to take it to the next level. And this is one of them things. It's like you get like three, four, five songs in
4:23
He actually randomly just called me. He was like, yo, bro, like, first of all, this stuff is way too different for anybody else to hop on
4:29
Like, we got to put this out ourselves. You know what I'm saying? Because we were still in that mindset of like, oh, you know
4:34
we want to try to get this to this artist to this Placements But he was the one that had the foresight to be like nah we need to do our own thing And it was they from there Wait hold on Let me listen This one right here This to Kelly Clarkson
4:46
Yeah. You produced this, bro? Yeah, bro. I was in my country bag back in the day
4:55
It's a tune. It's a band. Yeah. Nah, it was crazy. Wow
5:01
Literally, I moved to L.A. I moved to LA from I just finished school
5:07
or whatever moved to LA and within the first week of me getting there
5:11
like I arrived I was working with another producer this guy Brian Kennedy at the time and he was like
5:16
yo I actually had to leave town cause Kelly Clarkson was cutting to one of your tracks
5:19
and like within a month I had a single on the radio
5:23
like within a week of being in LA it was a crazy thing did you have a rep
5:27
at that time like did you know anything about publishing songwriters I made that in my bedroom
5:31
at the time I was going to school in Oklahoma Okay. And I just made it in my bedroom
5:36
It was like just sending stuff back and forth. And somehow it got to Esther Dean through Brian
5:41
Love Esther. Yeah, no, Esther Dean's legendary. She was like especially killing it at the time
5:45
Like one of the most talented songwriters. So she killed it. And then, like I said, it happened so fast
5:50
It was one of the things I don't even think I fully realized what was like taking place
5:53
I was just like, man. But no, I made that in my bedroom in Oklahoma. Yep. Did you get your writer's credit
5:58
Of course. You got your publisher money? Of course. That explains the jewelry on his neck
6:02
I get it. Okay. Don't worry about that, y'all. Because Andrew's jewelry is a little thinner
6:07
So maybe he's still a different style. We're going to upgrade. We're going to upgrade after his album
6:12
Producers get paid more than we writers do. Okay, that's what's up, man
6:16
And then you, so you more the front person, Andrew? Yeah, I'm the vocalist of everything
6:20
You know what I mean? I do most of the vocals, but we write, you know, produce everything together and stuff like that
6:25
So, you know, like I said, we met in L.A. because I was doing a lot of the songwriting stuff
6:29
on the side for the artist. He was doing a lot of the production side. So it's like We just collab
6:33
We click really Really easily And then like you said It was just a mesh
6:37
And once we had Those first few songs It was like Africa Back it up
6:40
Bad habits And then I was just like Oh it's different Ain't nobody else
6:44
Gonna cut it Like you said So I was just like We put it out And at the time You were best friends
6:48
With this dude Zoo Who was like A big EDM artist Come on man
6:52
We know who Zoo is Yeah You kind of plug Some things together Squirrel X Yes sir
6:56
Yes sir And this kind of Went from there And then before you knew It was the Bryson Tiller tour
7:00
The Trap Soul tour and then the Party Next Door tour, and then it just kind of rolled from there
7:04
We just kept putting things out, and we just keep churning. You was on tour with Party Next Door
7:09
Yes, sir. The Party and Jeremiah tour. In Jeremiah? So you looking at your competition, even though they're your friends
7:16
Yeah, 100%. No, it's all family. It's all family. They're trying to shut him down on the stage, though
7:23
In any stage competition? When we were coming up, like Jodeci was trying to shut down next
7:29
and they was trying to shut down. It ain't that friendly competition. All love to Bryson and everything
7:34
But it was just like when I was, I remember being weird on stage. I was over there, you know, gyrating on stage, taking my shirt off
7:40
You know what I'm saying? We gave him the nickname Trap Bobby Brown
7:44
Trap Bobby Brown. Trap Bobby Brown at the time. Because that was just the energy he was giving off when he was on stage
7:50
But, like, nah, we was definitely trying to kill it every time that we stepped up on stage. We didn't care if we had 25 minutes or 45 minutes
7:56
We going to do our thing. That's how you do it. This is they. T-H-E-Y
7:59
They are here So when it comes to this name This origin
8:04
Are y'all like cousins of Gabby Douglas Her or is it they
8:08
Where it's like Lil Uzi Vert's preferred pronouns right now Nah I mean
8:12
All respect to Gabby But we was definitely first We was they since 2000
8:16
What 15, 14 Yeah yeah yeah All respect to her But um
8:20
Nah I mean they just It was just I remember we were making some music at the time
8:24
In a song called Back It Up That we were actually making And Dante just names all his beat file names
8:28
Just random Random names Is it Table or Christmas or Pineapple or something like that
8:32
And that one was called They. And I was just like, oh, dang, that's a really cool name
8:36
And so we think of something better. And we just, for being music creators
8:40
we're clearly not that creative because we couldn't think of anything better than that. I mean, once it was they, it was they
8:46
It was they. It had its own thing. Yeah, we had to go back ever since. Okay, I love this, man
8:50
Will you ever work with other producers? Or is this one of those things kind of like
8:56
I work with other producers all the time. But as far as on artistry, like, I don't like if it was a personal artistry or something like that, man, we just got such a customized sound
9:04
Yeah. Ain't nobody sound like him, bro. He's the best producer in the game, in my opinion. Nah, for sure
9:08
And I mean, there's definitely a lot of, like, people that we collab with. We got, like, the internal team
9:12
Shout out Big Slaw, Caleb. You know what I'm saying? But it mostly like a very close type of thing We just keep it in the family for the most part Who the internal team Shout out my boy Caleb Caleb Mate Mate no I love the energy Mike Muse
9:26
Yeah, I know what this is right now. Y'all bubbling. Look at Drew
9:29
He ready to... Man, you look like you want to sing something right now? Acapella, man
9:33
What are we doing? What are we doing? Baby, I just don't get it
9:38
Do you enjoy being heard? I know you smell the perfume. Makeup on a shirt
9:45
You don't believe in stories You know that there are lies Bad as you are, you stick around
9:52
And I just don't know why If I was your man, baby, you
9:57
Never worry about what I do I be coming home, back to you
10:03
Every night, doing you right Shout out Mario, man There you go, man
10:08
All right, Drew was right there on top of the beat and everything, man He didn't even know what the beat was
10:12
He was committed Yeah, committed I used to sing that to the shorties all the time to get the numbers
10:18
and it used to work. Really? I saw Mario backstage at one of these festivals the other day
10:22
and I told him that, and he's like, yeah, man. So I remember. I remember. But that was my go-to song back in the day
10:27
So anytime somebody asks me to sing something, I'm like, That's the one you go to? That's the one I go to. What did you guys think about the verses that you saw
10:32
the young R&B singers doing? I thought that was tight. Yeah. I thought that was tight
10:37
What did you think? We talk about when it was like Omarion. Yeah
10:41
Mario. Rager. I mean, I just like to see people getting the, you know what I'm saying, just getting their flowers and stuff like that
10:47
Get the attention. Because, you know, we're getting to the point now where a lot of that stuff is getting forgotten
10:51
You know what I'm saying? But also people are getting nostalgic for it. So I'm like, I'm happy to see anybody, like, getting their shot
10:56
So shout out to all of them. Omario, Omario. But do you think, what about the one where it was a Ray J, Bobby G, right
11:03
Who else was on that? Ray J. I thought that was also with Omario
11:09
That was, Marion was against Mario, right? Yeah. I won't lie. I don't keep up with his many of the verses
11:18
I won't even lie. It was a different, it was two of them. It was a different one
11:22
What I was going to ask you is, do you feel like R&B is being properly represented today
11:27
Or does it have room for growth? I think there's room for growth. Yeah. I think, and that's kind of like what we feel like we want to continue to do is inspire
11:34
people to take risks with R&B and not be so safe. Uh-huh
11:38
if that makes sense. Nah, for sure. Especially for me, like, I think there's a lot
11:43
of really dope R&B artists out there right now. Like, you know, I'm a big fan of like Brent
11:47
Lucky Day, people like that. But at the same time, like, I remember when R&B had like a lot of tempo
11:52
Like, I'm a really big like New Jack Swing fan. Like, that's honestly like one of my favorite eras
11:56
of R&B, alongside like 90s R&B, Donnell Jones. So like, that's something
12:01
that we also try to do is bring like a little bit more energy to the R&B. Because I definitely remember
12:05
like, you know, girl you know what's up or like you know what i'm saying only you joints that you could like also
12:09
dance to at the same time so we definitely tried to do that on this album particularly the joint
12:13
with uh with young blue okay we definitely wanted to have something that had like a little bit more
12:17
energy to it and not just like you know kind of the slow laid back vibes bring back bring back the
12:21
club r&b like you should be able to be hearing hearing r&b in the car in the bedroom but also
12:26
in the club you know and i feel like i don't have i don't hear enough r&b records that you can go and
12:31
you know jam to in the club and i don't hear enough also i don't hear enough groups i grew up on i
12:35
grew up on the groups man like my first cd one of my first cds was hanson which was like a pop
12:40
yeah and then it went to nsync and then from there it went to like backstreet boys and but
12:47
then it went to the r&b vibe and went to like boys to men then it was like 112 and jodeci and
12:52
jagged edge and yeah you know i'm saying drew hill and stuff like that so i always love the
12:57
group dynamic and all the different voices and things like that combining you hear all the different passions together that's for me it just feels different when it's a group dynamic i love
13:03
that i want to hear that more i want to i want some more r&b groups out here well i'm curious
13:07
i'm curious because you know what you guys are talking about in terms of the era and the vibe
13:12
and the new jack swing vibe and you know the groups that you guys just mentioned i'm curious
13:17
about the writing then because today's r&b the lyrics are completely different lyrics than they
13:24
were back then the writing back then was very metaphors it was allegories it was beautiful it
13:30
was about love. Today's R&B is lyrics. It's about sex and like direct language
13:36
around sex. We heard that in Riptide. I'm curious, your style, are you guys more
13:43
of metaphors and allegories and storytelling? Are you more about direct, this is what it is
13:49
this is the, like what type of lyrics are you guys? I feel like it depends on the joint
13:53
You know what I'm saying? Like there'll be some things like a joint off the new album In the Mood where it just I mean that just point blank It like I trying to get you in the mood But we also have joints like Blue Moon which is a little bit more like conceptual and stuff like that But also too we grew up big hip hop fans
14:06
So that's a lot of where we draw like, you know, some of the lyricism and stuff like that
14:10
But like, I don't know. I feel like we do a little bit of both
14:14
You know what I'm saying? There's always going to be like the real poetic type of stuff. We love doing that
14:18
But also sometimes you just want to get some stuff off your chest and it's best for saying how you want to say it
14:22
Explicit. And I mean, especially this album, If you just even look the way it's set up, New Moon in the beginning, it's just a lot more of the lovemaking or a lot more of the sensual type of songs
14:32
But then if you get towards the end of it, it's a lot more introspective. And we're talking about our life and we're talking about what we're going through, like a song like Brutally Honest or a song like Set Me Free
14:40
Or even at the end, a song like Going Through the Motions, which is really just talking about mental health, which is not talked about enough in the black community
14:46
Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? So it's definitely something that we like to touch on and be real about what we're going through
14:50
I really appreciate you saying that, Drew, because I think for a while it felt like R&B sung by men was catering to women
15:00
And sometimes that pandering would turn me off. And I'm like, well, how do you really feel about your own life
15:05
The lens can't always be on me. Was that ever like a challenge for you guys in determining, all right, how many songs are we making with our core audience member in mind versus the song Simply For Myself
15:19
Sometimes it gets tough. I mean, especially as you put more and more songs out, more and more albums out, you get
15:23
different fans that are like, oh, I want more of this or I want more of this. And it's like sometimes you have to like, we just make a bunch of batch of songs and
15:29
then eventually we just kind of narrow it down and what we feel the strongest about regardless
15:33
Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel like we really too much right for other people
15:38
You know what I'm saying? Like at the end of the day, it's got to feel authentic for us because we got to be able
15:42
to stand behind everything that we putting out there. So sometimes it will be like, you know what I'm saying
15:46
Like your central R&B joint. But sometimes it's like, you know, I'm in a bad headspace or I'm going through some things or whatever
15:52
And that's what I want to speak about. You know what I'm saying? But it's still going to feel like R&B. It's still going to feel like they
15:57
But I don't think we really think too much about what other people are thinking or what they're looking for when we're creative
16:03
We just do what we feel and we put that out. And I think that's why we've been able to last this long because we just do our thing
16:08
You know what I'm saying? You press play, you know it's they. There you go. They are here. New album is New Moon spelled with the NU. What's the meaning behind the NU
16:15
So the NU has been a part of our brand forever. Even like my SoundCloud. Like I said, I'm a big New Jack Swing fan
16:21
so I used to call myself New Jack Jones with the NU. So it's something that I've always been like
16:25
kind of have incorporated in there. But New Moon, you know, it's a new era for us
16:30
You know what I'm saying? We done gone through a lot of changes. We independent for the first time. Congratulations. Yep
16:34
We done made changes on management. We done grown. We done been through a pandemic and everything else
16:39
So it's just about signifying the new era. Also, too, it's like a little bit darker vibe
16:44
You know what I'm saying? It's definitely like a nighttime car ride, you know what I'm saying
16:48
Whether it's like you could be going out somewhere to a function or something like that or what you're thinking about on the way home and you're like, okay, the night's over
16:55
I'm thinking about my life. Variety. You know what I'm saying? I love this, man
16:59
Give it up for these guys, man. Dante and Andrew, they are they. I want to say it was in the intro
17:07
There was something I found interesting about the intro. There was something that was said, and I'm paraphrasing
17:12
and what do you truly want from the next phase of your life? Yeah
17:16
What is that answer? So that was actually something that I had written out
17:21
I think for us it's just continuing to grow and just continuing to connect with our fans
17:26
and feel like they know us through the music, through the art that we put out there
17:30
And you know what I'm saying? This is actually going to be the first time that we're getting back out on the road
17:34
You know what I'm saying? So ever since the pandemic, it's been a few years
17:38
so we're excited for that. I think that it's just connected with the people. a lot more and just continuing to progress
17:44
and continuing to get better. You know what I'm saying? And also just giving people something to look up to
17:49
You know what I'm saying? And like I said, we always trying to push the envelope, always trying to vary up what everybody's listening to
17:56
So I hope that that comes across in the whole album. I think it does, man. You guys make sure you check out this new album
18:02
It's called New Moon by They. I'm going to play the song In The Move featuring Blue
18:07
someone we had up on the show years ago. and blew it and took it to a whole nother level
18:12
Did he produce this track? Who produced it? I produced it. Okay, cool
18:16
Shout out my boy, Ghost Hendrix. He helped me out with that. Okay. All right, man
18:19
That's what's up, man. Thanks for coming by the show, fellas. Thank you. Thanks for having me, man
18:23
I appreciate you. Can't wait to see you in concert. Can't wait to carry your bags backstage
18:28
I know Andrew's a beast right now. I appreciate you. I'm right there with you, man
18:34
Gentlemen, continue success. Thank you
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