One Joint With Phony Ppl

Watching Brooklyn-based band Phony Ppl perform is fun. There is a vibrancy bouncing among its five members, clear talent, care, and the evident interest each brings to their instrument. There’s also an element of play which feels specific to the band. It’s infectious, cultivated from playing together since high school and for the 11 years since. Phony Ppl and its individual members have backed, opened for, and collaborated with artists including Erykah Badu, Kali Uchis, Fetty Wap, Pusha T, the late Mac Miller, and now Meg Thee Stallion who features on a new single. Their sound is mutable—they are self-described as genre-less—and it serves them well. We spoke in the alley behind Issa Rae’s coffee shop in Inglewood after a performance.

Alyssa: Would you mind introducing yourselves?

Elbee Thrie: It’s Elbee Thrie on the mic.

Elijah Rawk: I’m Elijah Rawk, I play guitar.

Maffyuu: It’s Maffyuu on the drums.

Bari Bass: Hi I’m Bari, I play the bass.

Aja Grant: My name is Aja and I play the keys.

Phony Ppl: And we’re Phony Ppl.

Elbee Thrie: This weed is nice.

Alyssa: Do you remember the first time you guys all ever got high together?

Maffyuu: On my roof, back in Brooklyn, Bedstuy. And it was a nice summer day and as a band, there was one member that had yet to smoke. We all went up to my roof and had one of the most amazing sessions, cyphs ever. It was great. I remember that, what was that, like 2011?

Aja: We couldn’t roll so we used to make an apple bong—

Elijah: Yeah apple bongs was definitely a big start up.

Aja: To do the apple bong, you gotta have the top of the apple, you take a pen or a pencil or whatever and you dig like all the way through from the top to the bottom and then from the side of the apple, you would go halfway, boom, meet it halfway. And then you put the weed on top of the hole and you smoke out of the side.

Alyssa: How to Make an Apple Bong, with Phony Ppl.

Elbee Thrie and Aja: How to make an apple bong!

Elijah: You can do it with a lot of fruits, not just one.

Alyssa: Do you guys find that weed facilitates creativity for you?

Elbee Thrie: Yeah, it depends. My relationship with weed has changed. The less I smoke around the clock, the more creativity I can be led to through the portal of weed. ‘Cause it’s like anything: the more you use it, you get normalized to it, and if you smoke every day, you probably won’t feel that creative burst that you feel when you don’t smoke all the time. But it’s still, yeah, it still does something for me.

Maffyuu: It puts me in a different place. You make something sober and you make something high—

Aja: For me it’s like, I can smoke and I can be like, yo, I’m about to smoke and do music, and then my mind is like, damn, but now I wanna cook. My whole mind just shifts, I’m just on the internet like searching mad stupid stuff like, “Who invented the piano?” When I’m with y’all and I smoke, that’s when I’m like, alright, I wanna do music.

Alyssa: You guys started making music together when you were basically kids, right? Do you think because of that, you keep that kind of childlike energy around each other? That kid-like wonder about creativity, performance, and exploration?

Elijah: I think we get away with more aspects of that because we’ve known each other for so long. If we were around strangers, they might be more inclined to think or judge a certain kind of action that we do but we’re probably a little more comfortable with each other because we’re so familiar.

Elbee Thrie: That’s a part of it, but I feel like through the years, our conversations have been changing through the years. We talk about a bunch of things, just different art forms, you know, but really the business has been increasing, we’ve been talking about that. Understanding how to view contracts with each other, Aja has this huge book called All You Need to Know About the Music Business.

Aja: It’s a very confusing book to this day.

Elbee Thrie: We talk about existence, metaphysics. We talk about perspective, wisdom. We have a lot of what-ifs or hypotheticals and, “Yo, we should do this.” Bari will come in with the “You know what,” and then add to the idea, and then just boom boom boom.

Bari: I tend to think that we do keep the childlike, creative aspect when we’re together. And it could be because we started out really young, but I also like to think that we like to bring positive energy wherever we go.

Aja: I never thought of it as childlike. We might still like the same thing we did as kids, I mean Maffyuu still loves playing video games as much as he did.

Alyssa: By childlike, I mean that there’s an obvious joy in everything you guys do.

Elbee Thrie: I aim to allow innocence when it comes to picking up an instrument sometimes because that leads to something that you would [otherwise] overlook. Maybe it’s the technique that’s based on how you’re supposed to do things. Like, Elijah’s been showing me guitar for the past few years and he’ll give me the “Actually, you can do it this way.” But I have my innocence of not knowing and just trying. I think that innocence is half, and then the fearlessness just to try, to hold an instrument wrong or to try to speak a language. The innocence is there in that it’s another vessel of our creativity—if you put a keyboard in Aja’s hands, it’s probably a frequency that he’s already clicked into. But if you put a mic in his hand and tell him to freestyle, that’s innocence right there.

Aja: Even with certain keyboards, I’m still innocent. Because keyboards are so different, as with any instrument that we have. You gotta get the personality, your personality and the keyboard’s, into sync to understand and be like, Alright I understand you, I wanna use that. I guess in a way that’s like a childlike thing: I wanna explore and see what this is about.

Alyssa: Do you think that creating music together has changed the relationship y’all have with each other, that there’s another level of intimacy or understanding through music?

Elbee Thrie: Definitely.

Elijah: If you’re going to be in this creative zone and really try to be vulnerable about it, you can’t be worrying about certain kinds of social conditions that get in the way of shit. You just gotta trust yourself and hope the other person is on the same boat as you and fucking the same life path journey.

Bari: It’s sorta like we’re all painting one picture and everybody only has one color, so it’s better to actually have multiple colors and you just gotta trust where the next person’s stroke is gonna go, or their vision for it.

Aja: I definitely think so. Even throughout the 11 years of being together, there’s always some surprise. There’s always some type of like, “This your new love,” or “This is your old love that you’re bringing to the table finally.”

Elbee Thrie: We have a level of wanting everybody to be happy, especially with our art. So that forces us to have conversations about the details of things. We’re always changing, too.

Alyssa: You’ve talked about being flat as a band, that there’s no hierarchy or ego—

Elijah: There’s a whole bunch of ego.

Elbee Thrie: No, there’s ego. We just have to respect each other’s ego and keep our own in place. And keep each other’s ego in check too. It’s a trade-off.

Aja: ‘Cause I know when I walk into the studio and there’s a beat that’s fire, I can be like “Yo, I’m about to kill this beat,” or I’m ‘bout to be like “Nah, I can't, there’s nothing I can do.” If I’m ‘bout to kill the beat, I’m ‘bout to be like, “YO I’m ‘bouta kill this beat right now!”

Elijah: In those moments, we all welcome that ego. It's like “Oh yeah, bet, Aja wants to kill a beat.”

Aja: You have to have ego. You have to stand your ground and let people know you can do this, you belong here.

Elijah: It’s just because we believe in ourselves individually and collectively.

Aja: We got pride, too.

Alyssa: It sounds like there’s a lot of respect.

Phony Ppl: Yeah, definitely.

Maffyuu: We gotta.

Alyssa: What’s your songwriting practice like?

Elijah: As we go along, as we make more songs, we try to think of more ways to do it and what could contribute, and it never ends. Elbee wants the four of us to sing so bad, so like, he’s gonna get his wish at some point.

Alyssa: How was working with Meg Thee Stallion?

Elijah: We were out of the country when we got her verse [for Fuckin Around]. We were in Germany, we were super excited. The first line we all remembered was, “I got me a European papi.” We haven’t had a lot of features historically, so her being the first significant one, especially the first one for the first single for the next album and everything, it felt very new chapter-y. It was really cool that she was the one to start that new chapter with. And every time we’ve met or hung out, she’s the coolest person ever so it just worked really well naturally. It wasn’t like a forced thing.

Aja: Yeah, she feels like family.

Maffyuu: Like a young cousin. We had to ask her about a specific lyric in her verse. When we heard it, we was like “What is this line?” and everybody had a different idea, and then when we were having the NPR rehearsals for Tiny Desk, we was like “Yo, Meg, what is this line?” Everybody said their wrong shit, she was like “Oh it’s just ‘flying overseas in these Giuseppes.’” We were like “OHHHHH.”

Aja: As a musician, her timing is very tight. That’s what people who go to school for music, that's what they practice, their timing. And she has really good timing.

Elbee Thrie: She has a metronome in her body.

Aja: She’s one of those people gifted with great metronomic timing. She’s dope. Yo and it’s crazy, the first time I met Meg, you know I had been following her online, I thought she was older than me (I’m 27). And I’m like, “Oh yeah, she's about to walk in…” And I’m like “YO she’s mad young!” Y'all know what I’m talking about.

Elbee Thrie: You’re saying that her energy commands the room.

Alyssa: She’s got presence. She’s a boss.

Aja: Yeah exactly! And then you see her in person and it’s like, yo, you remind me of a cousin that’s always the dope cousin at the barbeque, you know like everybody loves her, she just got the dope taste. Hopefully this record is not the last record we do together, and I know we’re gonna come up with some fire once we’re in the studio.

Alyssa: Can we go back to your metaphysical conversations? What exactly are you guys unpacking?

Elijah: When you really think of the concept of a collective human history, is it really that implausible to think that you could have been implanted—we could have been implanted—collectively and not be as old as we think we are? Or maybe we’re a lot older?

Elbee Thrie: There was a day I was smokin’ a L across the street from my house and I thought about it. Exactly what you said, what if I was put here with a history? If I just got here three seconds ago, but my whole history, it came with that included? Are we dreaming? Are we this? Are we that? You know what I’m saying.

Consciousness: you are where you put your consciousness. So standing here talking to you is where my consciousness is. But if I’m on deep into Instagram with two feet in and I don’t even hear you calling my name, that’s where my consciousness is. So I think about things like that and each app is it’s own dimension and when you put your full everything there, your attentiveness, you’re not here. Your body is but then it’s just like a vessel. Thinking about where am I, asking myself the question, where am I? How am I? How long will I be?

Alyssa: Does that make you live and act more consciously? Do you try to be more present?

Elbee Thrie: I like to choose times. Sometimes presence is what I don’t need in a particular moment, sometimes presence is exactly what I need. And using each one carefully, thinking about how well am I, how am I doing. I see things in my everyday habits, like smoking with fonta leaf which is tobacco which is not the best thing. So because I do that and I plan to do that in the future, I make sure that other things don’t add on to that. If I got this shit that’s not treating my body the best way but I’m still agreeing to do it, let me make sure that ten other things don’t add on to that. I’m tryna be balanced. Everything in moderation, just makes me aware of that. I should say, “Ok, I’m smoking, I can at least put some good food in my body or I could drink a lot of water if we’re drinking alcohol at every show.” Just things like you got the skincare products on lock, meditation, all these kinds of things. Healthy thoughts, positivity, recognizing where energy is going.

One of the things I try and do for my health is I been getting the time, the amount of seconds that a negative thought is here, is present. And you could not even notice, so I been identifying it faster like, “Oh no, fuck that shit, we getting rid of that.” Positivity, boom. It’s just as important as what you’re eating.