H31R is a duo comprised of Brooklyn, NY MC, maassai and Union City, NJ producer, JWords. Their debut Ve·loc·i·ty is a rich and fly offering that fuses maassai’s forthright bars and JWords’s beats that meld hiphop and electronic dance music. From the dreamy bass-heavy, doubletime juke of “accountability” (which also features Brooklyn rapper Nappy Nina), to the grimey, synthy boom bap of “grtz”, JWords lays down inventive soundscapes for maassai to float on lyrically. Here they talk with John Morrison about building an organic musical chemistry and finishing their first album during quarantine.

John Morrison: For starters, could both of y'all tell me a little bit about where you're from and how you started making music.

maassai: Okay. Well I'm from Brooklyn. Born and raised here. I would say that I was definitely surrounded by musicians and rappers and producers. So I think that I found my start in my given environment.

JWords: I'm from Union City, New Jersey, very close. I was a junior in high school and I didn't really know what to do. I wanted to be an accountant cause I liked math, but my sister was like “Oh, you should engineer or do some shit with music, audio engineer stuff. I took an engineering class, an actual engineering class thinking that was going to teach me audio, but then took audio engineering! In my senior year, I started being in a band and started rapping, then started playing piano cause I didn't really want to rap anymore. And then the band broke up and I started making beats. I didn't want to depend on my band to make music. I felt I wanted to do it by myself.

The band thing is hard. Trying to wrangle people for a practice for shows, that's rough. So, you make a beat and you put together all the elements.

maasai: You are the band.

JWords: I see me and maassai’s duo as like a band. It feels like the most easygoing thing that I've ever collaborated on because it's not forced, it just feels natural. It comes together when we come together.

So how did y'all meet?

JWords: We played a show together in 2017. I played a beat set and maassai played with a band, actually. It was so dope. She really liked my music and I really liked her music. It was my first year performing and showing off my beats. I always wanted to work with an artist too, and at that time I wasn't really working with nobody, just myself. So, we always had aspirations to do this, even when we first met. I was like: “My beats are perfect with your raps. I like the gritty shit.” We just fit well, musically.

maasai: It was cool because it was an organic connection. We didn't really start making tracks until a little later, until we actually got to know each other. I feel like it was a connection not just solely based on the music, and I feel like that shows.

JWords: We started working on this record late last year. I started sending her mad beats, cause we always knew we were going to do a duo, it was just a matter of time.

What did that feel like once you had met? You're getting to know each other and you’re messing around with music a little bit, and you're realising “Yo, we have chemistry, a connection…”. What does that feel like when you're in it and developing that musical bond?

maasai: I feel like getting to know JWords as a person gives me a little bit of insight into what she makes. JWords’s beats are challenging for a vocalist to get on. I feel like I have an easier time approaching the music now because I have a little bit more insight into what her vision might have been or just who she is. I think that that helps me as a writer.

JWords: I would send maassai a beat pack and she would pick out the craziest ones off of it. So I already knew she really likes the crazy ones. I can't send crazy beats to just anybody. It's just like you have to kind of mentally be there, I guess. “toxic behavior” was the first song ever recorded for the album. That beat was just crazy – it's pretty wild. The way she came at it was just very different. I thought, “wow, she could get on this, so maybe she could get on this...”, and then all the other songs just came about. The album was originally eight songs but I just kept on sending her stuff during quarantine and she kept writing to it and then, “okay, we have 12 songs here now”. It was just very easy going. For the album, I always wanted to bridge the gap of dance music and music with hiphop stuff.

maassai: I have to say, I felt the same in terms of bridging the gap between hiphop and other genres. That's always been a thing that I wanted to do and this was a super organic way of making that happen.

Yeah, I did notice, while listening to the album, that a lot of the tempos and the textures in the music are different from what you would normally expect from a rap record.

maassai: I love jazz, so I always try to include those elements in my music. For me, it was about getting right one unique sound. That's what we wanted for the circuit – a new, light approach and not just one genre throughout the whole album.

Could you talk a bit about some of the lyrical themes that you’re exploring on the album?

maassai: As far as lyrical themes go – a lot of the project is definitely about feelings of anxiety, isolation and paranoia. We all go through periods of wanting to move solo or shrinking your circle of who you give energy to. This project lyrically was sort of a collage of affirmations about how to move and who to trust.

And how have people been responding to the album and the sound that you're exploring?

J Words: It’s crazy to see what songs people like. It’s interesting seeing what people think and it be different for all types of different people.

maassai: I think also because we have collaborated on stuff in the past, people probably had an idea that it was going to be kind of genre-breaking or bending. The hiphop heads are definitely going to have their favourites based on their purist attitude and the same for the dance heads, but it's cool seeing that everybody at least can enjoy it.

Ve·loc·i·ty is available digitally via Bandcamp and on cassette via PTP. Wire subscribers can also read an interview with Ve·loc·i·ty guest MC Nappy Nina in issue 433 via the digital archive.