Rap band WHATMORE are the sound of New York adolescence 

On the day before their sold-out show at The Bowery Ballroom, I met the band WHATMORE at a rehearsal space in South Brooklyn. The band’s members, Cisco Swank, Elijah Judah, Jackson August, Sebastiano and Yoshi T, trailed into the studio in pairs, still recovering from the previous night’s show in Washington, D.C. Since their self-titled debut album WHATMORE came out last October, the genre-defying group have become known for their fusing of rap, jazz and indie-pop. Their recent series of successes – going viral on TikTok, cultivating a devoted fanbase, booking Coachella – may feel like it’s happened in the blink of an eye. In reality, it’s been years in the making. 

The music collective’s five members first met as teenagers, which explains why hanging out with them feels like all the most comforting parts of reuniting with your high school friend group. They drop inside jokes, riff off each other’s bits and are loose and at ease with each other in the way that only friends of over a decade can be. At one point, Cisco begins likening the group, which has “so many different flavours”, to soup, comparing each of his friends to a different ingredient. This goes on for several minutes before Sebastiano interjects: “Are you done with this bit yet?” When I ask how they all first met, Yoshi deadpans, “in the Russian bathhouses”, without a hint of irony. His bandmates need no warming up before joining in on the joke, chiming in in agreement.

The real answer is this: the now 20-somethings met as freshmen at The Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts, where they were all instrumental majors. Sebastiano, Jackson and Elijah played the saxophone, Yoshi played the clarinet, and Cisco played drums and piano. “It’s a corny music school for corny people, but I mean that in an endearing way,” Yoshi says of LaGuardia, also the alma mater of Timothee Chalamet, Kelis, and other famed names. “There’s no traditional American jocks. It’s all filtered through some creative thing, so if you’re the lead in the musical, you’re like the equivalent of the cool guy.” 

After high school, each member worked on their own solo projects, but still collaborated frequently. It wasn’t until Cisco was set to play a showcase at Williamsburg’s Baby’s All Right that WHATMORE joined forces more formally, soon putting together their debut self-titled album. “We made it pretty quickly,” Yoshi recalls, explaining how they would set themselves a two-hour limit to make a song. “When that timer ended, if we were still fucking with it, we’d keep going, but usually we’d just switch.” Sebastiano adds: “It was like Frankenstein, we would just pick and choose what we would take out, and what we would keep.”

The smorgasburg approach paid off: WHATMORE is a record so self-assured, it’s hard to believe it’s a debut. For any one who was in high school during the early peaks of artists like Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, and Rex Orange County (myself included), it’s music that has a distinctively nostalgic quality, but still feels in line with the current moment. Maybe it’s the bias of knowing the band’s high school origin story, but when first listening to WHATMORE, it’s hard not to be reminded of what it felt like to listen to music as a teenager, when discovering a band still felt personal, and every song seemed to speak to your current youthful circumstance.

“It was like Frankenstein. We would just pick and choose what we would take out, and what we would keep”

Though, as a mostly hip-hop collective, the Brockhampton comparisons have been plenty, it’s hard to pin down WHATMORE’s sound to any one artist or band, considering no two songs of theirs are quite the same. The hazy, introspective opening track “never let me go”, for example, does indeed feel reminiscent of late 2000s alternative rap, with lyrics that read like a meditation on what it feels like to rapidly come of age. Later on, though, the album leans further into the indie-punk realm with “jenny’s”, a guitar-heavy ballad about fear of failure and wasted time. There’s also rowdier, more high-energy hits like “chicken shop date”, a quick and assertive anthem that’s music video is set in (where else) a Brooklyn chicken shop.

Overall, the 12-track album is a tapestry of styles and forms that makes the musicians’ backgrounds as instrumentalists evident. And, considering the group’s New York City upbringing, it’s not surprising that their sound draws from a wide range of influences and experiences. From a young age, the band members had the early independence that’s unique to city kids, taking the train solo and listening to music along the way. “I feel like as soon as we started doing that, we were also creating soundtracks to those commutes,” says Elijah, the band’s producer. He also points out that those sounds then become associated with different memories and emotions. “It all blends together to create your taste, and all those experiences are what led to us making music that sounds the way it does.” 

Most recently, the band’s trailer for A-Side / A-Side, a series of double singles released last Friday (March 13), opened in a lecture hall. The video, inspired by fourth wall-breaking scenes in works like The Big Short and Euphoria, ends with a reveal of new singles “still loitering” and “2000’s pop punk rnb.” “We’re just trying to build a world,” says August. “I feel like with a group, you have this superpower where there are so many different influences, stories to tell and characters to build around.” 

If their recent hometown show in New York was any indication, it’s a world that fans have bought into. Outside The Bowery, the line of concertgoers snaked around the block twice. One of those concertgoers was Lindsay Harner, a 27-year-old who saw the band just a few days prior at their Philadelphia show, where she bought tickets for The Bowery set on the spot. Also in from out of state was Sophie Wei, a 25-year-old WHATMORE listener from New Jersey. “I don’t know, they’re just a couple of guys who just sound like they have a really fun time, and I really respect that,” said Wei. “And, I can tell they get hype.” 

Inside the venue, WHATMORE delivered on Wei’s hunch. They sang, rapped and moshed into the crowd repeatedly, creating a whirlpool of excited bodies. For as much hype as the band brought, their fanbase matched it right back. Not only did concertgoers know all the words to WHATMORE, an album hardly six months old, but some had also already memorised the lyrics to “still loitering” and “2000’s pop punk rnb”, then out for less than 24 hours. The highlight of the night, though, came when the show closed with “east side with my dogs”, clearly a favourite among fans. After a classic encore fakeout, the band returned to the stage to play it once again, and the crowd went wild.