Q&A: Hop Aboard the Yung Bae flight with 'Groove Continental: Side B'
SOUND KNOWS NO BOUNDS IN THE WORLD OF YOUNG BAE AND GROOVE CONTINENTAL: SIDE B. Following travel based journey of his previous album Groove Continental: Side A, Yung Bae continues to showcase his musical evolution all while keeping his listeners dancing. Effortlessly fusing vaporwave, funk, and electropop to create an irresistible mosaic of sound, Groove Continental: Side B will quickly be on repeat after just one listen.
Since his debut album Bae in 2014, Yung Bae has maintained an impressive momentum, continuously reinventing his sound with each release. The viral success of "Bad Boy" in 2019 on TikTok only propelled his rise, while Groove Continental: Side A, introduced us to an equally creative yet matured Yung Bae sound. His upcoming album, an “aerospace-inspired wonder-work” is a testament to his evolving tastes and the boundless allure of making music that's simply pure fun.
Featuring an array of collaborations from funk legend Nile Rodgers to Tim Atlas and Felly, his latest album furthers the Groove Continental world for fans while giving them something new to digest. With a dedication to creating music that resonates with long time listeners while pushing creative boundaries, Yung Bae manages to always strike that right balance. With the album release ahead and a 13 date Fall tour, Yung Bae's intentions for the upcoming months are clear: to keep the music flowing, the audiences grooving, and the creative spirit alive.
LUNA: Congrats on your upcoming album, Groove Continental: Side B! Can you share some insight into what listeners can expect in terms of musical evolution and themes?
YUNG BAE: Overall the idea I took to the label was to drop 30 tracks altogether. We ended up splitting it into two parts, so some of these were being produced at the same time as Side A, but other parts of it got switched up with different features. It's all an attempt to make it live all in this same realm...Side A and Side B are basically extensions of each other. It was all made at the same time throughout the year, and during the pandemic and all that. It was splitting it up after the fact was like figuring out pieces of a puzzle and figuring out which one made more sense for which side.
LUNA: Your previous album, Groove Continental: Side A, took listeners on a nautical journey. Can we expect a similar thematic storytelling in "Side B,”?
YUNG BAE: A little bit. It's all centered around a very travel-based theme. I really liked a lot of Pan Am and TWA stuff from the 60s, things like Catch Me If You Can. So we dialed really hard into that and took a lot of inspiration from the TWA hotel, all that kind of stuff. Ultimately it's still in the same world with the Corgi and travel theme, but this time, it's all flight-based concepts.
LUNA: That's very cool. Are you playing a big role in the visual side of things? Do you work directly with the team?
YUNG BAE: I try to spearhead everything as much as I can. You can dig back into like notebooks I have sitting here in my kitchen, with old Crayola drawings or colored pencil drawings where I'll have the idea, but I just can't execute it. Most of them have ended up becoming that album cover. I'll ultimately have the vision really early on. For the last album I was like, "Okay, it's me holding a Corgi in a sailboat. It can't be anything else." I have an idea of it all usually, it's just getting the team to execute it and finding the right people.
LUNA: Finding visual collaborators to bring that idea into existence is such a special process. You mentioned when you're making the music, you're already thinking about the visual side kind of naturally. On the other end, are you ever thinking about the listener at all and what the listener's experiences would be?
YUNG BAE: It's a little bit of both because at the end of the day, my job requires pandering of some sort, you know? I just don't care as much anymore in the sense of if I like it, and I'm rockin' with it, I've got to sit here and finish it. So I better really love it...Sometimes I will listen to some garbage tracks on Spotify, and I'm like, "Damn, someone who really thought this was okay?" But you know, that's my thought process, too. It's also trying to fit it all in the same world: not stepping too out of my or the listener's comfort zone. As much as I want to push boundaries and experiment, I still keep a little bit of myself rooted. I wouldn't be here without the fans, so I probably should be making music for them, too.
LUNA: Collaborating with legends like Nile Rodgers and contemporary artists like COIN and Mayer Hawthorne is a remarkable feat. How did these collaborations come about, and how did they influence the overall sound and direction of the album?
YUNG BAE: Everybody asks why I chose features and initially I'll hear a general sense of what I want in a feature. They're always people I'm fans of first and foremost. So it's always somebody that I've wanted to work with in some capacity. I'll have the idea and then bounce it off my manager or someone, and it's like assembling all the pieces to the puzzle. It's another fun process for the album.
LUNA: How did the Nile Rogers collaboration come about?
YUNG BAE: His team got in touch and we ended up going out to his house for a few days in Virginia during the winter, it was just snow everywhere and super pretty. We just worked for a few days and cooked up a few tracks and just hung out. He cooked us some food and we just chatted. I'm glad music is back at a place where we can actually work together in person without having to be six feet away from each other.
LUNA: Your music effortlessly fuses various genres, from vaporwave to funk and electropop. how do you ensure that each element finds its place in your compositions?
YUNG BAE: I tried to apply certain things sonically to each track, but it's still hard some days. I'm really influenced by the 60s, the 50s and Motown and stuff like that. So it's my way of kind of carrying that stuff around but also making sure it's danceable and fun in the moment. I'd love to sit there and just record like myself in a band and just make some Motown all day, but that can only go so far. It's back to the happy medium where it's finding my footing and just having fun with it. That's more where I get to do what I want, but also making it fit in that world. Even when I started the album, from the get-go I usually will have a bunch of demos that are just like 30 seconds or something. I'll conceptualize a bunch of ideas and thoughts and then compile those and be like, "Okay, now I'll build 10 of these, and that's an album." I usually work that way...I pretty much fully had the idea for this album, more than the first two. I was already living in this Groove Continental world so it was easy to slip myself back in there again.
LUNA: You've graced stages at prestigious events like Coachella, Outside Lands, and Electric Forest, and now have a big fall tour coming up. How does the live aspect of your music compare to the studio experience?
YUNG BAE: The studio experience is pretty casual for me. Most of the time, I just work at home from my MacBook speakers like on the couch if I'm too lazy to go upstairs to my studio. I've got my rhythm like that. I'm not the biggest fan of travel, but I love playing shows. For me, shows now are really funny because I'm just sitting on like three albums worth of stuff. I just get to rip 100% all Yung Bae sets now and just try out all these demos like a testing area. That's been my favorite part too. I've been having a blast with it and it gets me excited for this fall round.
LUNA: With your newer projects it feels like you're bridging that gap between more nostalgic city pop vibe, and then more innovative now that you're leaning a little bit more into contemporary electro-pop. How do you strike this balance to ensure that what you're making now is something for the OG Yung Bae fan and for fans that came in just from the last album?
YUNG BAE: I've always been rooted in sampling, and I got bored and almost annoyed of sampling for a period, just because I was finding garbage samples for three months straight. We were already using a replacement service where they'll replay your sample, and get you cleared on the master side, but you still gotta pay on the pubs. I was just like, "Wait, I have all these ideas written out with fake instruments, and I've got the guitar and I've got my bass and everything. What if I want real strings?" So I just started sending it to them and asked if they could make it real, and so I just started crafting a lot of my own samples that way. The main focus is making sure I'm still rooted in this sound that sounds like I'm ripping something from YouTube and it still feels like classic me but we're just doing it in a more legal fashion and fancier way.
LUNA: It shows truly an evolution of your sound. You got better at making some of the elements and have a slightly different process and that's why it sounds a little different.
YUNG BAE: Now my favorite question I get asked is "What's the sample?" And I'm just like "If only they knew!" With this album, it feels like a complete full circle because I was sampling Nile Rodgers back in the day and now I got a tune with him.
LUNA: Looking beyond the album release, what intentions do you have for the upcoming months?
YUNG BAE: Put out as much new music as I can, tour as much as I can, build as many Legos as I can and that's about it. Just keep active, keep busy. Keep having fun. Keep making music. I love playing it for all the people that I love and having fun with everyone.
