Joey Valence & Brae are kings of the club

The music leaking out of this club doesn’t even sound good. The line’s barely moved. There’s another one a couple minutes away that’s usually good at this time. Should we get some cigs on the way? Two vodka sodas, please. TWO VODKA SODAS, PLEASE. Shit, I spilled. The music’s kinda shitty here, too. Where’s some fucking Gaga? Can they play some Timbaland? The DJ’s not even looking. Everyone’s standing around, holding drinks and pretending they’re somewhere else. Why is no one even fucking dancing? Are you seriously kicking me out right now? What happened?

This is the world of Joey Valence & Brae’s HYPERYOUTH, the third album by the hip-hop duo whose motivation is fun before self-consciousness, joy before thinking. “Yes, I came to dance!” Joey yells on the title track, both a confirmation and a rebuke to people who don’t get it. While party records like Brat interrogated the self on the dancefloor, HYPERYOUTH is about ego obliteration before all else. The night is never-ending and our mental capacities are good only for recognising a song and shaking ass to it. It’s the distillation of our purest, basic instincts — the sweet spot after sober nerves fade and before embarrassed recollection.

“We’ve always been like that,” Brae says when I ask the duo where this energy comes from. During their time at Penn State University, they would always be the ones “physically taking up room” at bars or parties. “Brae and I just never cared what people around us were thinking while we were doing that,” Joey adds. “It’s just, ‘We’re here right now, and we fucking own the place.’”

It’s what makes HYPERYOUTH — their third album in as many years — so successful. The gloriously silly lyrics and gargantuan beats allow the duo to parody past rap music while carving out a niche in the contemporary scene. “I got 7UP in my cup / I got bubbles up in my tub,” Brae raps in all seriousness on “THE BADDEST”, the best distillation of their ethos on their genre-shifting NO HANDS. That record was a fracturing of hip-hop, dance, and house music, filtering their early Beastie Boys imitation through a range of styles and rhythms. Now on HYPERYOUTH, Joey says he wanted to double down on the experimentation and make a record for the club, blending what the boys listened to growing up with modern influences. The finished product lies somewhere in the crossroads of Timbaland, Charli xcx, Porter Robinson, MGMT, and Daft Punk (on Twitter, he’s candid about the record’s blueprint), and the result feels like wandering through different rooms in a club, enjoying the moment, then moving onto something new.

But even though the JV&B ethos is easy to get from just one song — on HYPERYOUTH’s bouncy, electric lead single “WASSUP”, the boys jab about “Oscar the Grouch looking ass” haters who make “shitty pop” around JPEGMAFIA’s guest verse — not everyone is down for the ride. “I saw people bitching and moaning about how stupid our lines were, still,” Brae says, entertained by the album’s polarising response. They estimate 99% of people love it, and the rest “despise” it. “Have you not been listening to us for the past years? Of course we’re going to be talking about butts and knock-knock jokes within the song.” They’re “screaming, hooting and hollering,” nearly passing out while recording to make the record seem like the most fun club of all time. There’s an art to the way Joey’s pitch swings to a bratty whine on a line like “I thought you used to hate me / Album just dropped, and now you wanna date me?” Joey’s in the process of making a mini-documentary about the recording process: “We’re just fucking stupid and this is what we do. It’s purely just out of enjoyment for music.”

Joey Valence & Brae aren’t joking, exactly, but a lot of their lyrics are ridiculous little quips that one feels comfortable making only in the presence of a great friend who’s there to laugh alongside you. This is an album filled with bars like “Earth must be flat the way you fuckin’ fell off” (Joey) or “I’m half amazing, and half Asian, I’m so good, you can call me am-Asian” (Brae). They’re delivered seriously, but there’s always a wink in their vocals (or an outtake filled with laughter) that reminds you they’re having good time. It’s what makes the enormous gong after the lyric “Went for some Chinese food and the fortune cookie told me I was goated” not only funny, but in character. Of course they would pull some shit like this.

It stands into direct opposition to contemporary rap, which is dominated by mostly serious music. Brae, who is more tuned into that scene, says it’s disarming when reviewers compare JV&B to the more esoteric, grave lyricists just because they’re near enough each other within the genre. “Joey and I are not even trying to hold a fucking candle to Malice and Pusha T!” he says. “If we were trying to do that, could you imagine the hate we’d be getting? We wouldn’t even be here!” Joey adds, “There’s a lane for hip-hop, and we’re certainly not in it. We’re not trying to be anything else except ourselves.”

But saying HYPERYOUTH is a frivolous, comedic effort would be to miss its central themes. The duo wanted to marry their thrill-seeking impulses with some more serious messaging — it’s billed as an “album about growing up,” with a narration by Adventure Time’s BMO, who asks questions about aging through the record. Through some refreshingly candid tracks, the boys reflect on how far they’ve come in both their careers, and in life. “I’m kind of scared to admit I’m afraid of growing up,” they yell on the chorus of “LIVE RIGHT”, a hazy, electronica MGMT-esque take on nostalgia. That song was the hardest to write, Brae says, as it’s the total opposite of what he listens to in his free time.

“When Joey had the beat up for it, I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be able to write to this shit, I don’t know what I’m gonna say,’” Brae mentions. “It’s not really a rap song. What am I supposed to do here? As soon as we pushed through the uncomfortableness of it, especially the sing-y aspects, it came much easier.” That song came from the scary feeling of “looking around [and seeing that] people have stopped enjoying themselves,” Joey says. Has growing up changed people?

To combat this, every corner of HYPERYOUTH makes you want to bust a move. It’s Brae’s Lil Jon commands on “GO HARD”, the reimagining of the Nelly Furtado x Timbaland Y2K magic on “SEE U DANCE”, the gritty beat switch on the title track, the crunk on “BUST DOWN”, the frenetic, jagged “THE PARTY SONG”, the ecstatic takeoff on “DISCO FOREVER.” It’s an album made for the kids who heard about apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur on the radio in 2008 and didn’t understand what that meant, but liked the vibe. “Beat has got me feeling like a fool,” Brae stumbles on the title track, drunk on the magic of FL Studio. As a producer, Joey is agile, quick to throw in a reference or sample (there’s a plethora in addition to the BMO narration, including what Joey said was Skrillex’s difficult-to-integrate “Bangarang”).

HYPERYOUTH was born out to obliterate self-inhibition on the dancefloor. “First thing’s first, man, fuck your ego,” opens the squelchy, erratic “GIVE IT TO ME.” In the lead-up to the album, Joey posted some tour rules, including “DANCING IS MANDATORY,” “MAKE A FRIEND,” and “LEAVE COVERED IN SWEAT”; they’re really a way to gently nudge concertgoers into being okay with having a good time. Sometimes that may be all you need. “That’s the shit we want to see when we go to shows,” Joey says. “Sometimes people need to be directed! They don’t know. They need to be given a sign that says, hey, you’re allowed to do this. Come here and enjoy yourself, it’s okay. Judgement-free zone.” When I ask if they’ve seen a difference at concerts so far, he pauses and says, “I think our shows are naturally fuckin’ nuts.” (It’s hard to disagree).

The prestige of live music has diminished recently — the string of performers being slapped, attacked, or curiously gifted wheels of cheese has thankfully come to an end, but it still seems like people don’t know how to act. The pandemic uncovered hidden seeds in the global psyche, whether it’s paranoia, fascism, or awkward social antics (perhaps Vin Diesel previewing his tropical house single to a slew of remote audience members was the point of no return). But even now, five years removed from an etiquette-shifting earthquake, are spectators still demonstrably worse at being in a public space. Recently at a BANKS concert I had to ask two chatty people to quiet; at Tove Lo, a gaggle of guys spoke over her acoustic “Moments”, then had the nerve to cheer for her after. At a Father John Misty show I watched a hammered guy take out his phone to FaceTime his friend in on the gig. I sound like Larry David, sure, but I’m trying to sway to “Real Love Baby” over here!

Joey agrees the phones alone aren’t the problem, and suggests it stems from a newfound physical awkwardness. “People don’t know what to do with their bodies, so their natural instinct is to pull out their phone and see [a concert] through that,” he says. I’ve had to mentally check myself when I’m in the line for the grocery store and move my hand to my pocket. Is it really hard to just remain present for a couple seconds? It can translate to the club, too. “As we break down this stigma around dancing, it’d help with that.”

“You can actively hear the struggle, especially in some of my verses, where I’m trying to be serious, but maintaining this dumb silliness,” Joey says. “It really is a battle. Where do you draw the line?” That song, of course, is funny too: Joey apologises to a girl, says he’s “married to the game.” But does that leave the door open for sincerity when it’s what the two want to write about?

I bring up “DISCO TOMORROW” since it’s a good encapsulation of what the album is about — get all the hard shit out of the way, then dance. It’s a five-minute odyssey ending in an euphoric breakdown, but before that, Joey and Brae write their sincerest verses yet. I bring up Joey’s line that “one day, I’ma pour my heart out on the beat,” since it felt like the album that preceded it did just that. “It’s difficult for me to say what I want on songs without sounding a certain way,” he explains. “For this one specifically, you’ve only sort of seen a baseline of emotional writing, when it comes to my stuff. Even if it has a deeper meaning, it’s me getting out of my comfort zone, and returning to what I’ve always enjoyed doing, which is being a songwriter. Look forward to more of that — that’s what that bar was. We’re about to grow up and it could get more serious, but right now I’m just enjoying myself.”

Even though they get more intimate across albums, Joey still has some hesitation about opening up completely, which could break the goofy image the boys have conjured thus far. “As much as we make music for ourselves, it’s scary to think about what people are going to think about it. You can’t deny that as an artist. They’re the reason we have a career. It’s kind of scary to be one way and say, ‘I’m not always like that, and I have other things to say.’” It reminds me of the comic strip from Diary of a Wimpy Kid; someone says, “Hey Wacky Dawg, say somethin’ FUNNY!” but he responds, “Actually, I have something serious on my mind today.” Will people still stick around for it?

It works for Brae, who uses “DISCO TOMORROW” to narrate how his partnership with Joey changed his life — “I finally found my spark,” he raps. He was a “fuck-up” in college, following his parents’ footsteps in the healthcare field. He wasn’t passionate about it, though, and started failing classes and was put on academic probation. Meeting Joey, he says, gave him a purpose. “It was the first time I thought, ‘This is what I’m supposed to be doing.’ I really enjoyed it, the further along it got, I realized I could really do this shit. It really fueled my fire in terms of work ethic — I learned so much over these past four years. Now we own a business! We have a team of people. I never ever in a million years thought we’d be at this level creatively and business-wise. It’s crazy, man. I was a fucking idiot in college. Thank god all this shit unfolded the way it did.”

Joey feels similarly — he had been producing music before, a mix of house, dubstep, and emotional indie music where he’d mostly sing. “I was always struggling to find this medium between this emotional songwriter and the silly person I am,” he says. When he met Brae and they made “Crank It Up”, they fell into a groove where they could both be themselves. Joey changed his name and deleted his old music for a symbolic fresh start. “Everything I’ve been doing has led up to this point. When Brae came into the mix, it was like, ‘This is what it’s always supposed to have sounded like.’”

That sound has fractured and evolved to create HYPERYOUTH, a zany ping-ponging of textures and vibes, and the duo plans to continue to push themselves. They hint at it with the last few words on the album — “you never know what we’re gonna do next, bitch” — Brae is constantly writing and now producing with a hard drive full of samples Joey gifted him for his birthday, and Joey is already thinking about what to do next (“You shouldn’t say that for marketing purposes, but it’s true.”)

Since the record is about growing up, I was curious if the boys felt a personal shift in themselves (Brae: “I’d say so. Joey and I look the coolest we’ve ever looked”). It’s been three years since they started producing and immediately putting out records. “The first music we ever made is the first stuff people ever heard,” Joey says, so people have seen them mature as songwriters, producers, and people in real time. I ask them the same question BMO poses at the start of the album: Does growing up change your soul?

“I think we answered it how we wanted to,” Joey says, “No, it doesn’t! You let yourself change how you want to be changed, so we wanted to let people know it’s okay to feel, to enjoy yourself. Just because things are changing around you and you’re maturing and life is changing, you don’t necessarily have to become a bitter person, to stop being the way you once were. Don’t lose that childlike enjoyment of things. Always see the brightness in things.”

Being able to pull from Adventure Time, Joey adds, meant a lot because of the parallels between it and the album — “it’s a lighthearted show but there’s a bunch of deeper themes of maturing,” sort of like a Trojan Horse but for introspective lyricism amongst butt jokes. Brae agrees, and his response reveals that even though the project has gone farther than ever before, there’s still a part of it that remains rooted in the kids who found each other in college and realised yelling on a mic can be financially and spiritually lucrative. “There’s always room for growth,” he says. “We’ll see where the landscape of JV&B ends up going. It’s one of the scariest and most fun parts about this — not knowing where anything’s gonna go. It’s pretty fucking awesome and pretty scary.”