First Look Friday: Embrace The Uniqueness Fantastic of Adhoc

Photo of adhoc taken by Anthony Simoneau Dubuc (@thonycool) for Okayplayer.

The specific goal for First Look Friday is to turn you, the Okayplayer reader, on to new sounds and acts that you can share with others before the hype train arrives. With that said, allow us to introduce you to Montreal, Quebec's own Adhoc. This "bi-costal R&B monolith" has been bubbling below the surface for quite some time now. Led by James Campbell, Oren and Juice (not Oren Juice) — the three have linked up with a solid crew of producers (Adel Kazi) and instrumentalists (Clement Langlois-Legare) to offer transient and nomad sounds that delight the eardrums.

Their first offering, "Paradise Loft," did well to satiate fans of true tales, as the group explained that the song was a "humid celebration of monotheistic guilt." The two vocalists (Juice and Oren) and the talented beatsmith James Campbell fuses together a gumbo-style concussion of styles, standards and sounds that are flavorful and delicious to eager audiophiles.

We sat down with the bad boy, boy genius (Juice), the swashbuckling denim model (James Campbell) and the sensitive one, Oren, about their impact as a group, the obstacles they've overcame to get to this point in their career and premiere their music video for the infection track, "my city," which you can see below. Enjoy this week's First Look Friday chat with this outrageous group from the North-North!

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Okayplayer: To music snobs the world over you are making an impact. What is it that those in the music game are seeing and hearing that the rest of the world has yet to discover?

James Campbell: Big juicy chords.

Juice: Big juicy verses.

Oren: They're hearing bi-coastal R&B for the first time and they're caught off guard... as we are.

Juice: In all seriousness though, I think it comes down to musicality and authenticity. Before the three of us became adhoc, I was working on a solo project and it was honestly trash. I was rapping about things I hadn't really experienced, and didn't really believe in: bitches, money, whatever the fuck.

When I started working with these guys it forced me to take a more musical approach to rap, to allow myself to be more vulnerable in my verses and less of a caricature. I think for any artist to resonate with people, music snob or not, they need to have some degree of authenticity.

OKP: For those who have a passion for music, they honed their skills and practiced their craft. Who are your most cherished influences in music and why?

O: For me, I would say André 3000 and Mordecai Richler. I think what 3K has done with rap music (and music in general) is un-toppable. He's a superhero of the craft through and through. I studied creative writing in undergrad, and I  think that Mordecai Richler's sense of humor and broader societal satire is something I would like to bring lyrically to the game. It is my intention to combine the creative legacies of those two artists, and create a wonderful new hybrid baby.

JC: Justice is my number one musical influence. They got me into electronic music. It takes me about a year, post-release, to figure out what justice is doing on their records because their music is so complex in terms of music theory. It takes me a while to really absorb it. They have an epic quality, and can make whatever type of music they want. I love what they did with "Audio, Video, Disco". It was really dance-y, poppy and I dug it. In regards to hip-hop, Kanye West is my biggest influence. He broke down the limits of sampling, using voices, rather than just dump loops, horns and whatever.

J: The first influence I'd name is Young Thug. I mean, I haven't listened to every Young Thug song or anything...

JC: Soft. Sleeping.

J: I think his ability to keep a verse interesting, four bars at a time—whether by changing his pitch or syllable count—is sonically interesting. I try to make my verses that way. Thugger's a musical genius. The other influence I'll name is Kid Cudi. His delivery is unique too and I think the introspectiveness and vulnerability of his raps did a lot for people at a time when topics such as depression weren't in the mainstream conversation. Cudi changed the genre of hip-hop, while post-Cudi is drastically different than it was before.

OKP: Can you talk about how your life was while developing as an artist? how did you react to your first bits of press?

Photo of adhoc taken by Anthony Simoneau Dubuc (@thonycool) for Okayplayer.

JC: I never actually considered pursuing music before meeting these guys. It was more of a hobby. Suddenly, we make a song and then made a couple of good songs, and then we release them. They do well. Within a year, music's my life. That was a huge departure from where I expected to be three years ago, but I couldn't be happier with where I'm at now.

J: We started recording as proto-adhoc in October 2015, and we released our first song in September 2016. It felt like a super long time before we released anything, and that period was kind of uncertain, y'know? Maybe we've put all this work in and nobody wants to hear it. Then we released our first song ("China White") and the reception was more positive than we anticipated. Me and Oren would celebrate every play count milestone tighter at home (we're roomies).

Then we got the Noisey premiere and that was kind of like, "Holy shit, we must be — well, we're not trash." That was our first big press and that was crazy for us. Every little milestone is a great thing to achieve, but the success of the first three songs was an incredible feeling. Now, it is up to us to prove ourselves even more, but we've shown that we're a cut above the trash.

O: "A Cut Above the Trash: The adhoc Story".

OKP: With incidents involving people of color, police and racism occurring almost on a daily basis around the globe — how can your music (and/or others) help to relieve the trauma that is being experienced by the masses?

J: We don't shy away from politics in our content. In regards to the issue of police brutality, for example, we actually recorded a song last year on that topic called "Casey" that we never released. I think in the process of developing our musical identity, we realized that it's possible for a song to have a powerful, implicit message embedded within it, without having to yell it into people's ears.

O: We're releasing a song in the next little while called "Cosmic Sausage" about temporarily releasing the weight we carry to the wind for the sake of self-enjoyment. We think it is obviously important for people out there. Activists and those who are becoming activists, to face the darkness of the world in its face, and battle through the demons that are out there. We also want to provide a space for people who do that work, and those who are just really sad about the world right now, to escape for the sake of their own mental health.

OKP: What have been the most definitive obstacles that you’ve overcome in your career thus far?

J: Obstacle number one has got to be time. James is a bartender and he works late into the night. Oren and I do full-time 9-to-5 work, so it is opposite hours. The amount of music we could be making if we could do it all day blow my mind, and I hope that one day we can do that.

O: The eternal struggle for time and space.

OKP: Can you also talk about the importance of the music industry scene as how you’ve experienced it? how do you see it evolving in the next five years?

JC: Our experience with the industry is primarily confined to the scene in Montreal. Our first exposure to it has been through the people we record and make music with because a lot of them have projects outside of adhoc. We also meet people at shows within the scene, and you find out how they do things. You make friends, collaborate and just generally enjoy a dope time. Playing concerts with people a couple times and you get to know them. They're your co-workers essentially.

O: The music industry in Montreal is unique because the city itself is a total anomaly. It's got this insane age-old creative pulse, and is also super cheap to live in, which attracts a whole lot of people who want to be artists. Montreal has incredible talent per capita.

J: We're very fortunate to have the connections out here that we have. We're surrounded by incredibly musically talented people, and we get to work with a lot of our friends. Claire Ridgely, Rico Watts. In my opinion, it is important to build those connections locally before you start reaching out beyond. Odds are your geographical space has a certain sound and style to it.

OKP: What are some things that you’ve learned about yourself that comes out in your music?

O: I used to think when I was making music before this project that I had to make myself heard by brute force. I realized through recording with the adhoc bries that a relaxed tone that doesn't try too hard can, in fact, be far more powerful. I think I've applied that lesson in my pursuit of being a mensch in the real world.

JC: I didn't play many team sports growing up. I was more of a solo sport kind of guy (namely squash). So being in a band, suddenly there's a team that you're working with, and now when you make a beat you've got studio musicians on it. You've got additional production and two vocalists. I love it. So, one thing I've learned about myself is that I love working in a team.

OKP: What were some moments from your recent travels that will forever stick with you? Why?

Photo of adhoc taken by Anthony Simoneau Dubuc (@thonycool) for Okayplayer.

J: Oren and I went to New York a couple weeks ago, and we ended up playing a show at Piano's, this venue in the Lower East Side that was popular with Donald Glover back in his NYU days. It was my second time in the U.S. ever, and my first time in New York, and it all felt like a sign of bigger things to come.

O: We also played a show in Hamilton, Ontario, recently with our boy (and Juice's cousin) Saleem, and drove for like seven or eight hours from Montreal to get there. Juice and I had to rent a car, so we saved money on the trip by transporting randoms we found on Craigslist each way on the journey. We made some friends, ran through the adhoc greatest hits and didn't get murdered. A success all things considered.

OKP: What was the first song that you ever wrote entitled? Can you talk about what it has come to symbolize since you’ve entered into the professional life?

JC: My first rap beat was "China White," and I had produced electronic stuff before, but that was my first hip-hop beat and our first song as adhoc.

O: The first rap song I ever wrote was back in grade 10, a song called "Toast". It was a song about global warming, and how everyone needs to wake the fuck up and deal with climate change, or we'll be... toast.

J: The first song I remember making was a collab with me, my cousin Salem and my older brother. I was like 13 or 14-years-old. We were at a family gathering somewhere, and we decided to sneak off to another room and record a track. I thought it was pretty alright, so I posted it on Facebook.

Next day, I went to school and get roasted by literally everyone. I was already two years younger than everyone else in my grade, and the only British kid, so it's not a surprise that posting a rap song online tethered me. It was pretty brutal, but I think it taught me to not give a fuck. When you're getting roasted for a couple of days, you're kind of like "fuck it," you can choose to embrace it or you can get sour about it. I chose to embrace it.

O: I also had a similar experience when I started rapping. I got roasted all the time, but it never really bug me back then.

J: You're allowed to be trash when you're starting out.

O: I know a couple people here and there who wanted to rap, but bowed out because of the teasing. Maybe it's actually important to have people hating on you. You gotta be able to see that it's meaningless hate. The roasters typically aren't strong minded. They're going to flip to your team when you start doing good things.

OKP: How can your music speak truth to power in an age where people are so quickly digesting sounds and disposing of artists in a nanosecond?

J: Something we all shoot for, at least sonically, is for our music to be an event. We want each moment, from the very beginning, to hook you in and never let go. Every moment has to be important, so you're hypothetically gonna listen 'til the very end, rinse and repeat.

O: We try to build the lyrical content of our verses that same way. If we're going to say something political or controversial or thought-provoking, it's going to be done in the most entertaining way we can muster. We know our generation isn't acclaimed for its impressive attention span. That's the world we live in. We're adapting.

OKP: Collaboration is uniquely a key to the success of certain creative individuals who wish to change the game. Who would you want to work with this year going into the next and why?

J: I just want to bring someone to the stew that would make our sound engineer Adel happy.

JC: So, Young Thug... He would be dope on anything.

OKP: What is the overall message that adhoc is trying to present in their music?

J: I'm not sure there is one cohesive message.

O: I'd say if we had to boil it down to one specific message — let's say four words or less — it would probably be, "Bernie would have won."

JC: Bernie could have won?

O: Should have won.

OKP: Can you break down the inspiration behind a song that you created but never put out?

O: There was a song on our scrapped first EP called "Labelle," which was built around this beautiful Patti Labelle sample that Nelly and Kelly Rowland used on "Dilemma". I came up with this super poppy melody that was cute and lush, but I was worried it might be too cute, so I came up with a fucked up concept to juxtapose it with. The song was gonna be titled, "Dead Man Walkin' Creepin'," and it was the idea that we're a group of friends — guys and girls — and one of the girls in our group of friends is sexually assaulted by some other dude around our age. His dad is some important judge or politician, so the rapist will inevitably evade criminal charges. So, a group of us plan to kill the rapist — hence the warning, "There's dead man walkin' creepin'."

JC: Yeah, so needless to say I nixed the concept, and Juice and I managed to negotiate it down to prostitution. We negotiated Oren down to men in love with sex workers.

O: I never paid for sex, but at the time, I was pretty sexually frustrated, and I tried to explore the mindset of a man who would go see a sex worker, and the shame involved.

J: I wrote my verse on that track from the perspective of someone who has been casually paying for sex for over a year, so it was a bit less "emotionally distraught" than Oren's verse. I actually ended up sussing myself pretty hard when I sent the track to my girlfriend at the time, without thinking about how my verse was about a dude who cheats on his significant other with a sex worker. I think she thought I was sending her a confession or something [laughs].

OKP: If the reader’s learned one thing from this First Look Friday chat with adhoc — what would it be?

JC: Bernie would've won.

O: Check us out on Soundcloud, you won't be sorry.

J: Also, we've got a bunch of stuff coming, so stay woke.

O: ...Bernie would've won.

Be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for more from adhoc (and us!) by following them on Twitter @adhocalypse.