Interview: Friendzone on Making Beats for Main Attrakionz, A$AP Rocky and Kendrick Lamar

You’ve been working on some tracks for 808s & Dark Grapes III for more than two years. Do you feel as if a shift in mindset has occurred at all in the lengthy period of gestation? “Summa Time,” for example, is a track seemingly custom built for a hot day; a consciously more joyous turn. It seems a world apart in mentality from your first tape.

James Laurence: Sitting on these songs for so long has definitely changed our view towards the music. I don’t think that turn was intentional by any means. It just came naturally. Both production and rap-wise, lots of the songs on 808s III are very emotional and almost “dark,” maybe?

Dylan Reznick: It’s interesting you responded that way about “Summa Time.” To me that song sounds tense, determined and dark for sure. I think a lot of what we do seems to be a sort of Rorschach Test in terms of mood, which is the way I like it. It feels amazing, seeing the variety of responses to our work. It’s becomes very self-affirming, makes me feel like we’re doing things right. What we’re doing now is different from our early stuff; we’re not doing “lo-fi” music at all. We are trying to make a big, bombastic production, something that lies closer to a “real” “album.” One of the most classic rap records to me is ATLiens by Outkast. That’s the kind of record I aspire to make with 808s III.

The tone of COLLECTION 1 was at times somber and the production austere, whereas DX absolutely possesses more of those signifiers Dylan mentioned: larger sound, bursting at the seams, and definitely feeling more upbeat in places; to my ears, at least.

Dylan Reznick: It is definitely coming from a different place. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I think it reflects our state of mind and the evolution in conception since then. When we were doing COLLECTION 1, we were shooting in the dark, with no idea where what we were doing was going to take us. We were building something up from nothing. With DX, we’ve been riding the excitement of all of these projects, and it has definitely affected the sound of the record.

James Laurence: It’s also crazy how COLLECTION 1 has become the nexus of Friendzone. It was just that, a collection of songs we have released.

Dylan Reznick: I do think it was important to do something radically different. A lot of artists get stuck in a niche, allowing themselves to be associated with a distinct label. I think that’s a fundamental mistake, as it puts an expiration date on your art. We’ve been associated with a few things – like “cloud rap” to give an obvious example – but from the beginning we’ve both consciously stayed aware of the bigger picture. People call COLLECTION 1 a cloud rap tape but there are a lot of tracks on there, such as “!!-MAJOR” for example, that sort of declare that we refuse to be defined in such a simple way. No shots at Clams Casino whatsoever, he’s a friend of ours and we admire his stuff a lot, but journalists were putting us in a box with him, writing us off as just a “Clams Casino-esque” artist. This record is basically us proclaiming our individuality in the loudest way possible.

On the new record, there seems to be more of a textural emphasis. Take “Poly,” for example: uplifting, but also rubbed up against some washes of harsher sound, and that happens a few times across DX. Was that a further exploration of pushing your own limits? Or is that the natural product of growing up absorbing Sade and Lightning Bolt in tandem?

Dylan Reznick: Haha, yes, I think it’s a little bit of both. We’ve both been omnivorous music listeners since a very young age and the music that comes out of us definitely reflects that. We were most definitely consciously pushing the limits of our music as well. It was a lot of time just developing the techniques we had used before and exploring new ones. Originally, DX was actually just a bunch of songs we had made after getting hit up by TDE [Top Dawg Entertainment] for beats, around the time Kendrick [Lamar] was making good kid, m.A.A.d city. When that happened, it got me very energized. I wanted to shift into high gear and really blow them away with some crazy next level shit... and it ended up being way too experimental for what they wound up doing, so we just ended up with all these songs that needed a home.

James Laurence: Haha, I bet they heard those tracks and were like, “What is this?”

Dylan Reznick: In retrospect it’s pretty obvious that what we sent must have totally weirded them out! But DX in its current form is pretty different from what we made even then. At first it was just a way to get those unused tracks out there, but after “Fashion Killa” dropped we felt like our next release had to be a big statement, so we spent a lot of time refining it and rewrote the majority of it.

There seems to be a resurgent interest in all things Japanese at the moment. I know it stems from a considerably deeper reverence for you both, rooted in actual experience. What do you make of it all? The Weeknd, for example, has caught a bit of flack for seemingly misappropriating it with the video for “Kiss Land.”

James Laurence: Yeah, I just saw The Weeknd artwork the other day, and I was pretty underwhelmed. I went to Japan when I was 14 and it changed my life, it changed the way I look at colors and art. I guess you could call me a “weeaboo” at the end of the day but I’ve always had a connection to Asian art styles and the artwork in anime/manga. We also work with artists from Japan – there’s a pretty brilliant hip hop scene over there.

Dylan Reznick: To me, Japan is pretty much the artistic capital of the world. They have reached a level of refinement much higher than anything I see or hear coming from virtually anywhere else. There are many exceptions to that of course – there are amazing artists everywhere – but there is something very special about the country. Personally, I don’t like accusing people of cultural appropriation or whatever. I feel like art is universal and nothing is out of bounds for anyone. If you see something and think “they have no right to use that,” it’s probably more because it is lame or tasteless, rather than some higher moral reason.

James Laurence: That’s very true.

Seeing as you predominantly release your music for free (as many do nowadays), do you draw a distinction between artistic value and material value?

James Laurence: Wow. Hmmm…

Dylan Reznick: To me, I think the idea of a price tag for music enhancing its value is a big misconception and is just a side effect of people not being able to adjust to change: a piece of music is not more valuable just because of a physical version of it existing; a free release is not inherently less important than a paid one. In fact, I’d say the opposite is more often true in the sphere of modern music. With regards to physical releases, I can see the value in vinyl. That makes sense because it’s something truly different than the digital version. But CDs, to me, are just a waste of natural resources, needlessly taking up space in landfills.

James Laurence: There is as much value in a Mediafire link as a physical CD in a store to me. I don’t honestly believe that there is a time or place for CDs anymore. Vinyl just makes more sense to us – they are cool and vinyl is simply pretty to look at. You get that big ass cover!

Dylan Reznick: To me, if a piece of music I made is really important to me, I do not want to put any boundaries at all between it and the listener. If I don’t want to let people listen unless they pay a certain amount of money, that’s basically insinuating “it’s more important for me to make money than for the maximum amount of people to hear this,” and also “if you don’t have money, you’re not good enough to hear this,” both of which are extremely ugly attitudes to cling onto. On the other hand, it is callous of me to suggest that it’s selfish to charge money – artists need to eat, and if that’s the most realistic way to get food on the table, then do it. But at the end of the day, to me it seems as if exposure is far more valuable in the long-term than the short-term benefit of charging for an independent release.

What do you make of the general climate within modern hip-hop? The majority of artists you guys have worked with all stand against usual tropes: the big dogs (A$AP, to an extent), the longstanding collaborators (Main Attrakionz) the one-time link-ups (Yung Lean) and even hopeful future ones (Lil B). Why do you feel this overt positivity and unguarded sensitivity is having such a broad emotional response right now?

James Laurence: With the age of the Internet a lot of people are starting to become open with their emotions. It’s easier to expose yourself to a screen than an actual person in real life, and this mindset has bled over to the real world. And I think that’s beautiful.

Presumably that’s why we’re doing this via a chat as opposed to a call, too?

James Laurence: Yeah, that’s a part of it for me personally!

Dylan Reznick: Unguarded sensitivity, and uninhibited positivity are both extremes that are major rule breakers. That’s why Drake is relevant. He is sensitive which is uncomfortable for a lot of older rap listeners, but his work, objectively, is hard to deny – it’s exciting and different. There is so much unexplored territory there: Lil B is a major warrior on that front, as well as Main Attrakionz, which goes without saying. And those are just examples within rap; it is happening across the board in all styles of music and art.

James Laurence: Lil B changed everything.

Dylan Reznick: Music had a lot of rules in the past. Rules that defined the genres and allowed people to judge things based on those rules. Rappers had to be hyper-masculine, rap producers had to use soul, jazz, or funk samples. But those old structures are tired now. They’ve been done to death. A lot of people, especially journalists, have been slow to accept this, but for music to survive we have to change it up. We have to experiment and do things that are risky or seem crazy. It’s either that or just be boring.

You’ve spoken in the past about not being aligned to any specific genre, but despite your best interests the tag “cloud rap” has purveyed. It has probably drawn people in, but as you say, DX is a chance to display your individualism and step outside of anything you feel uncomfortable with.

James Laurence: I think that labels like “cloud rap” are toxic to music, but everything needs a label. People are drawn to tags and names; we can’t help that, music fans can’t help that. I don’t blame anyone and I don’t feel angry when people call us cloud rap.

Dylan Reznick: Some people view the music scene today and assume there’s not a lot left to do. I used to hear it all the time, “all the good music has already been written.” I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. What those people are sensing is that their preconceptions are getting tired. Their expectations from music are no longer fruitful ones. As I see it, we are actually at the beginning of a major explosion in music, and what we’re seeing is the linear evolution of music from previous generations coming to an end. We have more tools to make music today, more power than musicians from just 20 years ago would’ve ever dreamed of. It would cost a million dollars to make the sounds that anyone can make on a laptop today; we have just barely begun to scratch the surface with these tools. Now is the time for new Chuck Berrys, the new Miles Davis’, major innovations… Now is the time to replace the old genres and start over.