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 It’s rare that you hear ‘the next big thing out of Tampa,’ but They Hate Change are just that. The hip hop meets booty bass producer-rappers Andre and Vonne are South Florida born and bred, carving a niche in their hometown scene with a sound that spans Chicago footwork to UK breaks. The duo have built a cult following around their eccentric releases over the years on Deathbomb Arc, now making their debut on LA-based label Godmode with an equally out-of-the-box collection of cuts titled 666 Central Ave. Sitting alongside scene-shapers like JPEGMAFIA and Channel Tres, They Hate Change fit right in with Godmode’s cutting-edge roster of breakout acts. Knowing when to nab a project early and take it to the next level has been a proven recipe for success at the label, this EP being no exception to the methodology. They Hate Change never tried to fit into the underground rap scene that eventually came to accept them. While they looked up to the pioneers of their local DIY movement, they were bigger than the sum of their influences - and that took some time for their peers to appreciate. They went from mastering the art of ambient rap to pushing the boundaries of experimental electronic, with lyrics that refer to themselves as “the Black Daft Punk.” Their dedicated approach to one-upping themselves with each new release transpires in 666 Central Ave. The forward-thinking EP doesn’t skip a beat in its delivery, from the chaotic nature of “Stunt Cams” to the futuristic vibes on “Ozone.” We got to peel back the many layers of They Hate Change in the interview below. How did the two of you meet and what led you to form They Hate Change? Vonne: It’s funny telling the story now cause we’re wayyyyy past this era, but basically I moved into this apartment complex and was trying to sell Dre some mid haha. We were like 14. Andre: My mom sends me to the car to grab groceries, I’m walking down the stairs and I see a Duke letterman jacket, light blue jeans and white Air Force 1’s, then I hear “Aayyeeee brruussss...... you burn??” I was like “Nnnaahhh…nah I’m good”. You’re taking such an unconventional approach to hip-hop - where do all your sonic influences come from? Vonne: Our influences are all over the fucking place. We listen to a bunch of music, like most people, but in early days of They Hate Change when we were like, figuring out the direction, we used to try to make every style that we stumbled upon. We’d hear Cluster and be like “oooh let’s make some shit like that” then find out about Teenage Jesus and go “oooh now let’s take that approach”, hear House music and crank out hella tracks trying to pin down our place in the style. We’d make whole albums worth of stuff in different styles, genres, etc. and just throw them up online under different random names as “Side Projects”, and eventually we were just like, Why don’t we just do that in the main project? Let’s rap on that Cluster thing we made, let’s do something on that Stereolab rip we worked on, haha. Combine all that with all the stuff we each grew up on, me with Tampa Jook music + classic Miami Bass stuff, and Dre with more East-coast rap shit, the sound starts to make perfect sense. Andre: Being influenced by a lot also presents us with a challenge going into whatever we’re making at the moment. It helps with progression in terms of evolving as producers, and figuring out something new that we might be able to present. Do you think the scene in Tampa supports the kind of music you’re making? Vonne: Oh for sure they do now! It took some convincing though haha. I mean the band name alone comes from when people were like, not fucking with us *at all*, like pre-scene stuff. When we first popped out in the scene it was like, “They Hate Change? What the fuck kinda name is that?”, or “How y’all gone perform with just that lil box? (An SP-404 lol)” or “Nigga don’t nobody listen to cassette tapes!”. We had to really make niggas like us, by showing and proving. Smashing every performance, constantly elevating our sound, our aesthetic and all that, plus just being real scene participants. We went to literally EVERY show for like 2 years, just to be there, just to have a presence. Andre: Yeah we’ve always supported other artists in the scene, all the local events. We built great relationships with people in the scene just based off of us supporting them, so people were shocked once they learned we also rap/produce. Were there any shows you went to in your early days that really inspired you to create something for the underground? Vonne: For me early on I was definitely inspired by the Teen Night scene in Tampa, like 08 - ‘10. That’s the other side of “DIY” you don’t see people talk about these days: Black DIY. Rent out a ballroom or Rec Center or an actual bar on an off-night, and have a party for the kids in the neighborhood, so they’re not on dumb shit all the time, harming each other and shit. Andre: Early on we’d watch a lot of Curren$y performances online, whatever we could find. That’s a big influence because he stayed true to himself and it *worked*. He wasn’t in huge arenas with expensive merch, he still had a true fan base.

Vonne: After that, I think just imagining ourselves in legendary scenes inspired us the most for what we do today. Late 70s/Early 80s New York City, all the eras of the Manchester scene, Low End Theory/the LA beat scene. We didn’t have anything exactly like that around us, so we just lived through the videos, documentaries and stuff, and thought, okay if there’s at least a FEW people thinking the way we are, we could make something like that happen, we just gotta go outside and show people what we’re trying to do, and everybody else will come out of their bedrooms too eventually! What is Stunt Cams really about? Andre: Artists that put up a front. We’re really just stating that we’ve been carving out our own lane in music, sticking to our guns and making better songs because of it. Vonne: Right, “Ya’ll do Stunt Cams for the Gram”, basically like ~viral~ type people, the ones that do whatever whenever *Besides* music to build some type of following. We also just like talking shit in general haha, saying shit that’s kinda audacious. “The Black Ramones, the Black Daft Punk”, “Need my Own Nike”, etc…We want your ears to perk up when you hear that stuff, like “Who the hell is this??”. So it’s really just about talking shit. Who comes up with the beats and who writes the lyrics? Or is it a collaborative process? Vonne: Definitely collaborative, it’s 50/50 everything, Writing, Beats, all that. We both write our own lyrics, and kick ideas back and forth to make sure shit ain’t corny haha, like “maybe change that word” or “come in like this, then I’ma pop back in”. The video for Stunt Cams is wild - was that a one-take shot? Where are you guys? Vonne: Yeah it is a one-take! We’re outside Pho Quyen, a local Vietnamese staple, sipping champagne and Chahn Muôi. That’s like a lil tradition for us, buying bottles when we do some cool shit or put out a project, on some rapper shit haha. That was basically us celebrating our deal. We went through a few video concepts with our director Xandra until we all like fuck it let’s just go hang, pop a couple bottles, flick up in the parking lot and shoot this video at the same time. This is the first track off your forthcoming EP, 666 Central Ave., and the first time you’re releasing with Godmode. How is this EP different from the ones you put out in the last year? Vonne: This is the first time we made Demos and multiple versions of our songs. The live show is such a big part of where our sound comes from, that’s where we test out everything, before it’s ever recorded. We’ll make a beat for a joint, write it, rehearse it and perform it out for months or years, literally, before we ever lay down a recorded vocal. By the time we’ve done that, all the kinks are worked out, we found different pockets, different ways to say certain words, and know exactly how the crowd response is. We got hit up by Godmode right at the beginning of Quarantine, right after our tour and some other big shows got cancelled, they wanted to hear some demos and we didn’t have *shit* haha. We could tell they weren’t quite interested with the first pack we sent through that was like mostly beats, so we broke quarantine, right when shit was really scary and ambiguous and FL was on lockdown, you weren’t supposed to leave unless you were going to work. Told Dre come to the crib early in A.M. and let’s knock out some songs we had sitting, and we sent another pack, an EP worth of new joints in less than 24 hours. Not being able to try out something live just made us say fuck it, let’s lay this down right quick, just to see how it sounds. Any new beat we made, we just wrote something quick, laid it down, no matter what it sounded like. It actually helped us refine the sound and the style even more than the other EPs, helped us really pinpoint the best parts of “our thing”. We used to read about artists like Frank Ocean having hella “versions” of songs and shit like “Fuck that!”, now we got hella versions haha.

When it’s allowed again, where do you see yourselves playing live? Vonne: In Tampa Bay we’ve played damn near every venue, all the bars, most of the House Shows + DIY spots, all the Galleries and Boutiques and all that, so we’re super hyped to spread the sound around elsewhere, hop in the whip and take this shit to Virginia or New Jersey or something. But of course we gotta have a big joint at home for the Scene. What’s the one record you’ve been rinsing in quarantine? Andre: “Just a little” by M-Beat. It just feels good, I’ll bend a few extra corners just to let the song finish. The samples and breaks really keep it moving. Pretty inspiring. Vonne: There’s this record “Alpine” by Sharda that I play a couple times almost every day, it sounds like driving a car, which I haven’t done a ton of in a minute, so it feels really good haha.