Get To Know Brooklyn’s Finest Certified Crew, Phony Ppl [@PhonyPpl]

Brooklyn’s own five-man band, Phony Ppl, featuring vocalist Elbee Thrie, string duo Elijah Rawk and Bari Bass, drummer Matthew Byas, and keyboardist Aja Grant, dialled in for a virtual interview with GUAP. Locked in from various locations, with two of them being studios, we delved into their influences, collaborative culture, and the behind the scenes of their recent Euphonyus tour.

For a crew like Phony Ppl, inclusivity is their driving force and their genre-fluid approach is the magic behind their freely constructed music. The synonymy of the two is something we see in all of their projects but also a point they discussed in their interview. With special mentions of PinkPantheress, Jorja Smith and Mick Jagger, find out more about what keeps this group connected.

Bethel: You have some great content on Instagram, where you’re hanging out, having fun together as a group. How would you describe the chemistry that you have with each other?

Elijah: I would just say, very siblingy. It’s past the degree of friendship. It’s become this integral part of our life, our daily, weekly, and our monthly look-aheads. I always consider the four boys with whatever I’m doing in my life. There’s been ups, there’s been downs. It’s been everything in between. It’s been over 10 years.

Bari: When we’re hanging out together, anyone can hang out with us and feel comfortable too. It’s jovial and inclusive.

Bethel: You’re all extremely talented, and the beauty of being an artist is that if you haven’t learnt to do so, you know how to sing or play another kind of instrument. If you can rearrange your roles, what would that group look like? You have to trust the person to be able to play that instrument or sing very well.

Bari: I put Matthew on the base. I put Elijah on the keys, Elbee on drums and Aja on the vocals. I guess I’m playing guitar.

Aja: It makes the process fun entertaining, spontaneous and cool. I think this is like a life changing thing. When we talk to people and they’re like, “what do you play?” It’s like, I play keyboards on stage for Phony Ppl, but in life I play drums.

Elbee: We just end up gravitating towards different things. So it’s cool that we have that ability to adjust, juggle different instruments.

Bethel: In your upcoming projects, what kind of genre would you tap into that you haven’t tapped into yet?

Elijah: It would be difficult for us to approach making any song with the specific intention of it being a certain kind of genre. 

Matthew: We encourage everybody else to play the instrument that they’re not comfortable with. You’ll get a lot more genre bending and little novice situations that grow into full grown ideas.

Bari: It does give us a little advantage that we switch. It keeps a level of innocence in the creation process when someone hops on a different instrument or we switch it around. 

Bethel: I want to know what kind of inspiration you’ve gathered from outside of the US, that has helped you build this album.

Bari: One of the songs on the album was made outside of the US, from scratch. It’s called ‘splashing’ on ‘Euphonyus’. We made that in Grafenhainichen, Germany, at the Splash! Festival.

Elijah: Myself and Matthew discovered that there was like a random studio in the back, artist hospitality section of the festival. It was just like an impromptu, let’s just see what we can make on this like really limited setup, on this laptop that’s not ours. Elbee came in a bit later, and was just like in a very spirited, freestyling kind of mood. The song isn’t so much about being in Germany, but it was very much influenced by our experience and our time in Germany. Aside from that, I’ll go on record and say that my favourite artist last year was PinkPantheress, ever since I first started hearing her music so that’s been a big influence for me specifically.

Bethel: Over the years you’ve had the pleasure of gracing many stages. Do you have an individual or a group pre-performance ritual that you do to hype you up?

Matthew: I know that right before we hit the stage we’ll link with each other, in our little circle. Not on some prayerness. We’ll breathe with each other. Everybody syncs up. There’s a couple of laughs and all of that in that circle. That’s a big ritual. I remember back in the Blue Note days when we had the Blue Note Residency in New York, we used to take Jameson shots. We had two sets. Jameson shots to start the first set, and then at the start of the second set, the late night show, we would just take a shot of tequila, Patron. 

Elijah: Aja has us doing push ups before we go on stage, and I love that.

Aja: Oh, yeah, I started last year out of nowhere. If you could do it, you could do it, If you can’t, it’s all good. It’s just about just getting the blood ready, you know.

Bethel: What song from the album does your audience resonate with the most when you’re performing?

Elijah: I would say a good old classic of ‘fkn around’ or ‘messing around’. That seems to be very resonant for a lot of people. It seems like everyone has some kind of scandalous story of some kind of infidelity in their history.

Bethel: Yeah, and we all love Megan as well

Elijah: Shout out to Meg!

Bethel: You’re all credited as songwriters on pretty much every single song apart from ‘don’t knock’ and ‘common courtesy’, which is just Elbee and Aja. What is your process when working with so many different kinds of voices?

Elbee: It gives me the visual of those pottery classes where you have this rotating disk, and you just have this slab of clay and you just mould it. We’ll try different things, and some of those things stick, and some of them don’t. Like how we’re saying before, we’ll switch instruments and it’s usually a natural thing. We don’t really have any rules or like formulas or systems to it.

Matthew: There’s patience and discipline that you have to have. Respect the song. Not every song deserves a crazy low end and not every song deserves a crazy drum part. Maybe my contribution goes as far as to add one little triangle hit. That’s all it required from the drum department, and me doing anything more to that on some drumbeat stuff, that’s diminishing the song.

Bethel: We have a lot of great talent in the UK. Do you have anyone in mind for upcoming projects?

Matthew: Shout out to Jorja Smith!

Elijah: Oh, definitely, definitely shout out to Jorja Smith, but imma say it again. PinkPantheress dawg. And we label mates now, so I’m trying to have that happen!

Matthew: There’s this drummer that somebody from the UK put me on to, and they’re like “man you guys will make some beautiful music with Yussef Dayes.” 

Aja: I would say I’ve been loving Sault lately and Inflo is amazing. Cleo Soul.

Elijah: Ama lou is really cool to me. Bru-c. I really like him, also.

Bari: Yeah, Adele, let’s work with Adele. I want to work with Slowthai. I feel like we could do something interesting. 

Elijah: If we’re doing Adele, I’m trying to say Mick Jagger. I’m trying to go to the top. Let’s go!

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