 "Photo: Courtesy of Nadav Benjamin")
Don’t let Shwayze’s first album set their sound in stone. The duo, composed of Cisco Adler and rapper Shwayze, emerged in the hybrid world of rap/rock with a self-titled album that embodied their Malibu roots. Singles “Corona and Lime” and “Buzzin’” paired the two for laid-back summer time anthems and defined the band’s sound.
Adler is looking to change that. The former Whitestarr lead man, who sings the hooks to Shwayze’s verses, co-wrote and produced both Shwayze’s debut and it’s new release, Let It Beat. Adler says the two have a lot more to offer than beach side lullabies, and if Let It Beat’s lead single, “Get U Home,” is any indication, Shwayze's transition will keep them just as hot in autumn months.
Adler spoke on the phone with The Review about the band’s sound, creation and what fans can expect from Let It Beat.
Where did this name Shwayze come from?
That was just a nickname I gave him when we first started working. He was just Aaron Smith. When I found him, I was just going to produce him as a solo rap artist, so the first couple songs were just basically straight up Hip-hop tracks with just him. Then he needed a stage name so I almost just went ‘What about Shwayze?’ I don’t know, it kind of just hit me like a bolt of lightning. On the fourth or fifth song, which was “Buzzin,’” that was the first one I sang on the hook and we kind of found our sound and that’s when we decided to really become a group and just go forward that way.
I had read that there is some connection to Patrick Swayze?
No, no, no, that’s a misnomer. It has nothing to do with that. It was more like, there’s a Hip-hop term, ‘I’m Shwayze,’ — I'm kind of out of here. It has nothing to do with Patrick, but rest in peace Patrick.
Hip-hop is very much about region and representation. What do you think you guys are doing in that respect for your part of the map, Malibu?
I think Hip-hip being about region is sort of ridiculous. Or, music in general being about region is kind of ridiculous. We try to make music for everyone. And if you’re from California, you’re from the West Coast, hopefully you identify with what we’re doing and if you’re not, hopefully it gives you a little slice of what we’re doing and you can sort of experience it with us.
And there is very much that lifestyle and that attitude that seems to be very Malibu and that area that’s conveyed in all your music.
Yeah, yeah, we’re definitely selling the lifestyle as much we are selling a song. It’s really the soundtrack to our lives. We kind of met over a summer and started making music and just became friends. That’s sort of what it represents, that summer, of love. Especially the first album. Now this album, we took this music and we got to tour all over American and all over the world and we experienced so much stuff that when we came back to make the second record we tried to put all of those new experiences into it and we wanted to show people where else we like to take our music. So that it’s not just us sitting on a beach drinking Coronas with a couple hot girls.
Shwayze (the band) is made of these two components, one rock and one rap. How did the chemistry, or the synergy, develop between you two and eventually go into the first album?
Just as friends. The funny thing is, if you wanted to separate as individuals, we’re not just Hip-hop and we’re not just rock, individually. I started out in music an obsessed kid with Hip-hop, and I really wouldn’t listen to anything else at that time. And then through that I started branching out and eventually created a rock band and did all that. And Shwayze himself, it’s really hilarious, he grew up more as a rock kid. When I met him he was more into Rage Against the Machine and Tool and bands like that. So it’s almost a little opposite of what you would think. When we come together it’s definitely not just rock and rap, it’s literally every type of music, all of our influences. I love folk music, I love soul, I’m like a Van Morrison fan and all that. So we just try to put it all in one pot and stir it up to see what comes out.
Musically speaking, going from the first album to the second one, you touched on it a bit, but there seems to be a change in direction.
I wouldn’t call it a change. I would call it more of an evolution. We definitely didn’t just switch up our style and be like, ‘Okay, let’s make a dance record’ or, ‘Okay, let’s make a straight-up Hip-hop record,’ we were just like ‘Let's do a couple songs in each of the different avenues and get the full spectrum,’ rather than when we came out last time it was really a beautiful accident. “Get U Home,” the first single, is sort of a dance big pop-rock song, but if you really had to break that song down, I don’t think it’s one thing in itself. The hook is a big giant rock song at the end of the day and when it sucks out into an electro-Hip-hop beat in the verses, those two things are smashing together. So we’re looking for other things to smash together and sort of get people to vibe. There’s a song with Snoop called “Livin It Up,” which is really just a classic Hip-hop song with a full horn section and it almost sounds as if it’s a sample, even though it’s not.
As you guys grow as a band, are you looking to keep exploring those different sounds and keep doing different things?
It’s the same ingredients, it’s Cisco and Shwayze, but we’re just going in and doing a different kind of thing on every song. Yeah, we’re always going to keep trying new things; as an artist you get bored if you have to sit there and do the same thing. If we had to make another album with 12 “Buzzin’s” on it, I would shoot myself in the head. And I want our fans to grow, and we want to grow with them. We feel like we know them and we know their musical tastes. They love Bob Marley as much as they love N.W.A. They don’t just listen to one type of music.
Coming from the “Buzzin’s” and “Corona and Lime’s” to this new single “Get U Home” there seems to be a common theme of drinking and partying and girls. And that very much speaks to my demographic, the college students.
People just want to have a good time. Especially with what’s going on in the world right now as it sort of spirals out of control into no man’s land. I think music is the one thing that can take people away and just make them have a good time. We try to do that. We try to make fun, good-time music, and “Get U Home” is one of those songs. If you had to look at all the great songs ever made, 90 percent of them are about women. Women rule the world as far as I’m concerned. And love and love lost, and so on. “Corona and Lime,” at its heart is really not a drinking song, that’s a song about a perfect harmonization, which is really just a metaphor for a boy and a girl.
You had mentioned working with Snoop Dogg. With both you and Shwayze coming from that West Coast background, how was it working with The Doggfather himself?
That’s a dream come true. I grew up on those records and so did Shwayze. Even though we weren’t friends at that time, those are our heroes as far as West Coast rap goes. It feels like we’ve been accepted, if he agrees to get on a song with us. The funny thing about our music is, a lot of people, they don’t think we’re really one thing. A lot of the real hardcore Hip-hop heads might not say that we’re hip-hop just because I’m singing in the middle of the songs. And at the same time a lot of rock heads might not believe us as real rock because there’s a rapper on it and a beat under it. So, that’s why having Snoop bless us with that, it was him sort of knighting us. We were just like “Wow, we’ve done something right in that realm.”
Yeah, it's a nice validation.
Yeah, exactly, we’ve been validated, and for us, it’s those moments, you listen to that song and you’re like ‘Wow, is Snoop really about to drop his verse?’
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our feed
Contact us through email
