Who Are The Underachievers?

Brooklyn, New York is ripe with new hip-hop talent right now, and one of the latest groups to emerge from the borough is the quick-spitting, ganja-toking, enlightened duo of Flatbush natives known as The Underachievers. Comprised of rappers Issa Dash and AK, they created a buzz last year by dropping a string of compelling rap videos, including the one that recently garnered over one million YouTube views, “Herb Shuttles,” all of which impressed famed producer Flying Lotus enough to sign them to his Brainfeeder record label.

Earlier this month, The UA dropped their debut mixtape, Indigoism, a 17-track barrage showcasing their superlative, rapid-fire, tag-team rap skills, unique production ear, and interests in psychedelic drugs and spirituality. It set them apart from their local allies Pro Era and Flatbush Zombies, but also fell right in line with the powerful Beast Coast movement coming out of Brooklyn, rooted in lyricism, consciousness, and let’s not forget, dope ass beats.

In an effort to give us more insight into their music and budding rap career, Dash and AK fell through the Complex offices last week to talk about their influences in and out of hip-hop, their preference for psychedelics, how they got on FlyLo’s radar, opening up for Kendrick Lamar on New Year’s Eve, and their relationship with all the artists representing the new New York, from Joey Bada$$ to A$AP Rocky.

Plus, they broke down their debut mixtape, discussed how they’re approaching their first official Brainfeeder project, and remembered their close friend Capital STEEZ.

It’s time to get elevated and find out Who Are The Underachievers?

As told to Daniel Isenberg (@StanIpcus)

RELATED: Mixtape: The Underachievers Indigoism 
RELATED: Brainfeeder Adds New York Duo The Underachievers To Its Roster

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Issa Dash: “We’re both from Flatbush, a couple blocks away from each other. [Growing up there was] fun. A lot of weed smoking. It’s culturally rooted because a lot of the people from Flatbush came from the Caribbean, so everyone has some type of Caribbean descent. There’s a lot of culture around.

“[My family is from] Guyana. My father’s half-Chinese so I’m part Chinese. My father’s a nurse and my mom’s an occupational therapist. All my family really listens to [is reggae and soca and music from the Caribbean], but also a lot of old school R&B and soul music. My father liked a lot of Eric Clapton type of stuff, but not old Eric Clapton, new jazz Eric Clapton. [Not that] old rock shit.”

AK: “[My family is originally from] Trinidad. My father is a corrections officer, and my mother is a nurse. My father used to play Sade and Brian McKnight and all that stuff. [One thing I definitely remember about growing up in Flatbush is the] fucking gangs.”

“My friend Jacob that I knew from my block, he just brought Dash to my house one day to smoke some pot, and we talked about psychedelics, and that was it.

Issa Dash: “It was like 6 years ago. Because back then—me and my friend Juice from Flatbush Zombies—no one was into psychedelics at all, and especially from the inner city, so we were in a little secluded group. If we were to ever talk about it in public, people would be like, ‘What? Shrooms? Acid? What the fuck is wrong with you guys?’ But AK, who was just a normal guy, we were just talking about it in front of him and he was like, ‘What? This shit sounds interesting.’ And we were like, ‘Hmm, well if you’re interested in that, you might be [on the same wavelength as us].’

Issa Dash: “It’s my mom’s fault. I was always smart growing up, I guess, and my mom wanted me to be culturally diverse. And this is mad beautiful because this is how I am right now. She was like, ‘I don’t want you to go to predominantly black schools, I want you to go to integrated schools.’ So I went to the number one junior high school in New York state, Mark Twain I.S. 239. Then for high school, I went to The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences, one of the best in the state. It’s in Manhattan Beach. My mom thought that that was going to be good, but [when I went] there I met kids who were into all types of drugs.

“Since I was younger I knew I was going to do it, because I always recall this funny situation. When me and Juice were 10 or 11 years old, something like that, I remember him telling me about acid and how if you do acid you’ll turn into an orange, and you’ll think you’re an orange juice cup. Then, I remember being in class during the D.A.R.E. program, and the teacher telling me acid is like a tattoo and you put it on your arm and it seeps through and you start to see things. And everyone in my class was afraid. I remember this specifically, I was the only person in class like, ‘Yo hold on, you’re telling me if I do this shit I can see some shit that’s not there? What’s wrong with this?’

“I was interested when I was younger. But at 14, once it popped up—I was athletic also, I was into basketball—but once it popped up in front of me, someone was like, ‘Yo, I got this shit, shrooms.’ I did it, and it was just amazing. I told Juice, because Juice was weird my whole life. Growing up, I thought Juice was just this weirdo all the time, because me and Juice grew up in the same building. After I did psychedelics I was like, ‘This motherfucker’s not weird, he’s just a psychedelic dude.’ So I went to Juice, ‘You’re psychedelic, you should do psychedelics.’

“He started doing psychedelics, and then Meech came on afterwards, maybe two months later. Then we met AK, and AK came on, and we just put on hundreds of kids from Flatbush. So if you come to our neighborhood, everyone’s on psychedelics. Kids that shoot guns and do goon shit, they’re on psychedelics, happy, into spirituality.

“Kids aren’t krilled out on psychedelics everyday. But kids like that psychedelic escape like twice a year. It’s fun. Summertime. Once you get people over the hump of like, ‘Yo, it’s not going to be as crazy as you think it is,’ [they love it].”

Issa Dash: “[Mine was] probably DMX like, “Stop. Drop. Shut ‘em down...”—"Ruff Ryders Anthem." That’s definitely the oldest hip-hop song I can remember, but I wasn’t really into it. It was just popping music at the time. The first time I really got into hip-hop I was probably 13 or 14 , when I started to enter the New York streetwear type of scene.

“Early in the game, it wasn’t really about real trappy music. Everyone was listening to ‘90s rap, so I guess I felt obliged to listen it. I got into a little Hieroglyphics, a little Pharcyde, a little Souls of Mischief, and it’s funny that they say that’s who we remind them of, because the only rap era I stepped into was that one.

“I don’t know much about them. I just went and Googled ‘90s rap and those were the artists that came up: The Pharcyde, Hieroglyphics, and Souls of Mischief. Limewire had just come out so I downloaded the projects at the time. It was sick.

“In the streetwear scene, that’s where it would start out, wearing Jordans and doing that old school type of vibe. The same scene that’s going on right now that with A$AP, and us, and the Zombies, originally that’s [where that] whole scene evolved from. That New York [streetwear] scene, that was the time when all ‘90s rap was in. I mean, I was into it because I was supposed to be into it if that makes sense.”

AK: “Yeah, it was around us. I listened to Nas. Outkast, too.”

Issa Dash: “Yeah, Outkast, definitely. [And Jay-Z’s] Blueprint. I remember jamming to Blueprint mad hard. I remember being into the whole Nas and Jay-Z beef. But I stopped listening to rap personally around the age of 14. After that, it was just no more rap. I’m not into rap, really [anymore]. Maybe friends and people on the come-up, like recent rap like ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Rocky, Ab-Soul, and Kendrick Lamar, but not really. I guess I probably left when rap was going downhill.”

AK: “Yeah, like after 50 Cent it went downhill.”

Issa Dash: “I love 50 Cent though, that’s hip-hop. After 50 Cent was definitely the end for me. The full, final end was 50 Cent.”

AK: “I still fucked with hip-hop.”

Issa Dash: “Lupe Fiasco is probably my biggest influence in rap. I only admitted that to myself recently because everyone keeps asking, ‘What’s your influences?’ And I always say I don’t have any rap influences but I think Lupe because I listened to all three of his projects full straight through and loved all of them. He was the best.

“I feel like we’re the evolution out of the Lupe era in a sense. What he was trying to do, but with a different approach. I wouldn’t say he messed up. It’s hard, I guess. Especially being one of the only ones doing what he was trying to do, and being such an early pioneer. He made mistakes but, I don’t know, he’s a little aggressive with everything he does, that’s the thing. I don’t know if it’s beneficial for him or if it’s making people tired of hearing him, because whenever you see Lupe on TV it’s never something positive.

“[Kanye West] is awesome. I like every Kanye project that ever came out besides 808s & Heartbreak. And even now, listening to his current music, I feel like I need to go back and listen to 808s because it might’ve been just ahead of its time. That’s the only one I didn’t like because I don’t know why he switched it up. At that time, that type of song was like, ‘What! Kanye! What happened to ‘We Major,’ and...?’ You know what I mean? So it was hard to get into it, but you can hear his current music and still hear how 808sevolved into him right now.

“I always talk about when Kanye says, ‘50 told me go ‘head and switch the style up and if they hate then let them hate...’ I feel like, he switched the style and boom, we love it now. We can’t get enough of Kanye. For any rapper, anyone right now to say that Kanye isn’t an influence on them [is being dishonest]. I mean, consciously I don’t think [he’s directly influencing us], but unconsciously I know he definitely is embedded somewhere in there, because those first couple of albums were just godly to me. Late Registration, and [that era], dancing in my house and shit. It was sick.”

AK:“It’s like how Nas is for [the generation before us. Kanye is] like that for us.”

Issa Dash: “For me, the reason I don’t listen to hip-hop is because it’s too bland, I guess. I listen to hip-hop, but it’s not the most prevalent thing I listen to. Fleet Foxes is my favorite band ever. They’re my favorite band of all time, period. And John Mayer is my favorite artist. I’m obsessed—well, not obsessed with him, but his music. I know every song he ever created. His live stuff is better than his album stuff. The album stuff is obviously [great], but when he takes his album stuff to the live stage and he starts to improv and talk with his guitar, that’s when he’s at his best. [I also like] Grizzly Bear, and those type of guys.”

AK: “Local Natives. My Morning Jacket.”

Issa Dash: “We love Local Natives ridiculously.”

AK: “I was listening to Local Natives today, when I woke up, [like I do] every day.”

Issa Dash: “Yeasayer’s fire [too], man. OD. Their live stuff is crazy, too. The way [the lead singer] acts and shit. That’s the kind of stuff I’m into. Those type of bands. I like guitars and instruments and stuff like that. Band of Horses is one of my favorites, [too]. ‘Comin’ up only to...’ Coachella’s looking crazy. All the dudes that we mentioned just now are at Coachella.

“Grizzly Bear is on the same label as Flying Lotus. So I was talking to the owner of Warp, and he was like, ‘Oh you like Grizzly Bear? Let’s set something up.’ And I was like, ‘What? Don’t tell me that.’ If I actually get them to personally work on a track [that would be so dope]. Their song ‘Yet Again’ is OD. It’s trippy as fuck at the end. It’s kind of scary.

“[I saw Fleet Foxes live], it was crazy. My friend, the Zombies manager, the day he played them for me, he was like ‘Whatever you do, you’ve got to see them live.’ And I forgot. Then I went to see them live, and they’re amazing live. People crying and shit. Like a crowd of people around me crying like, ‘Wow, what did I just experience?’”

AK: “I started from when I was little, probably 10 or 11, writing rhymes and shit. I started recording when I was in high school around ninth grade, and I’ve been rapping since then. I was spitting over people’s beats. Little freestyles here and there, but it was nothing serious. I tried to formulate a mixtape but I didn’t really have a direction where I wanted to go.

“I liked a couple recent freestyles that I did, like to this French Montana beat, it’s called ‘New Day.’ I like that type of stuff that I did. It’s nearer to where I’m at now.”

Issa Dash: “[AK] was always nice at rapping. Like, I’m nice because [he’s] nice, probably. I started rapping last year because what happened was the [Flatbush] Zombies were rapping together, and I noticed that it was so much harder for an artist solo to really do something. [AK] was my friend. I wasn’t rapping, but my other friends were rapping and it was all around. And maybe a year before that, my friends had convinced me to do a song with [one of our boys], so I was in the rapper’s field, but I never was rapping after that. But as a joke, me and my friend made a song and people were like, ‘You should actually do this.’ So it was always prevalent in my brain. But I was in school trying to get a PhD.

“Eventually I was like, ‘Maybe I can take a crack at this rapping stuff.’ So I was like [to AK], ‘Yo dude, would you mind if I came aboard and featured on some songs, just to help get the ball rolling, as a teammate?’ And we met a producer, and the producer and all our friends were like, ‘You guys need to rhyme together.’ But that one producer was just really motivational, like, ‘You guys should really be doing this. You guys should really rap together, it really goes good together.’ We meshed together and we’re just one unit now.”

AK: “I’ve had my nickname since high school, but I was just by myself, the Underachiever. It was [really] me and the producer back then, but then he went off to college, so I was just the Underachiever. [Then Dash came in, and we became The Underachievers]. It’s just [basically] to make something positive out of a negative name.”

Issa Dash: “I feel like the things that we do could be considered underachieving, like we smoke pot. People would probably meet us at first and be like, ‘They’re probably just potheads.’ And then they’ll talk to me, or talk to AK, and be like, ‘Alright, they’re intelligent.’ So it’s just a flip on that. Like, The Underachievers, even though technically we’re doing underachiever things, we’re bringing positive energy.

“I noticed this also later. Like ‘Hold on, there hasn’t been a duo in a long time.’ It’s nice when you have someone to bounce back and forth with off of tracks.”

AK: “It’s easy.”

Issa Dash:“I had an understanding for melodies and stuff like that. I knew I could write choruses, that’s one thing I knew I could bring to the playing field for the both of us. I knew that if you had someone else to bounce off of, you could hear one voice, you could hear another voice, and we have the same opinion on almost everything. We’re like identical brothers almost. It just made sense to have another teammate on deck that can throw ideas back and forth like, ‘Yo let’s do this for the video, let’s do this, let’s try this song, oh you don’t like this beat?’

“He didn’t really have anyone like that, and I noticed that my Zombie friends had that. They had a whole team around them besides just the Zombies. Like, 12 people around them that are giving them real constructive criticism. AK didn’t have that. Friends around him would be like, ‘Yeah, that’s fire,’ and I’d tell him, ‘Yo, that was wack.’ He needed someone real, like a real friend. So it worked. It’s funny how it worked out to be perfection but that’s really how it went.

“In the beginning, I never really thought I was going to become a rapper. Only recently, now I’m like, ‘Yeah I’ll be a rapper.’ At first it was like, ‘I might write some verses,’ because I read a lot, and I know mad words, so I was like, ‘I could do this shit.’ And I could write songs because I like music. So it fit. But it came later.

“Two years ago, if you asked what my favorite thing was on the planet, I would have told you, ‘Music over pussy. Music over anything.’ [I’ve always been a] huge music fan. I had these musical notes tattooed, it was the first tattoo I ever got, and I wasn’t even making music. I’d always look at it and be like, ‘You don’t even make music.’ I’m a music fanatic. I’ll camp out to see one of my favorite bands if I have to. It’s not surprising why I came to music, but it’s just like, ‘Wow, I actually did come to music.’”

“Who are those dudes that made that ‘Luchini?’ Camp Lo. We get [compared to] those dudes a lot. OD. We get [compared to] them more than all the other groups, because they’re actually a duo. And, they’re a dark-skinned and light-skinned dude I believe, also. It’s funny, because I love that song, ‘Luchini.’ I never mind the comparisons, but I want to create a new type of everything.”

Issa Dash: “I definitely say I take influence from mostly from AK, and Meech from the Zombies. It’s not like I consciously did this. I always like to take a step outside myself and look and assess like, ‘Maybe this is what happened,’ because these are people I like. People like him, Meech, Erick Arc Elliott from the Zombies, those are my three favorite lyricists. Those are the people that are around me that I probably learned different styles of rap from.

“I knew Meech and Juice since I was 12 years old, little kids. Every day hanging out. It goes past the music, but they started rapping maybe five months [before us]. They started rapping recently, too. Juice started rapping first. He stopped smoking weed for like five months and he just decided he was going to start rapping, and that turned into the Flatbush Zombies because eventually he told Meech, ‘Yo, dude, maybe you should try, too.’ And Meech was like, ‘Alright.’ Because Meech also had the biggest music archive. He would have every Gucci Mane mixtape. He could write for Complex because he’s a music critic, so it’s not surprising that he came to music .

“Juice started, put Meech on, and Erick was rapping and made beats when we were younger also. So Erick was like, ‘Hey, I’ll make you guys beats.’ That’s how Flatbush Zombies got established, then we got established a little bit afterwards.

“We're supposed to come out with a tape with Zombies. Even with that, I want to separate us from the Zombies. That’s why, if you notice, the first two videos don’t have Zombies in it. There’s no correlation to them, because I didn’t want us to just come out with the first song like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re with the Zombies.’”

Issa Dash: “‘So Devilish’ [was our first video]. That was May of last year, and it’s funny because we stopped—not actually stopped being in the group—but I was over with the Zombies for a little bit, and while the Zombies were blowing up, I was learning so much stuff. That’s how I know a lot about what’s going on in the game—just always being around, learning about what’s going on. That’s probably one of the instances where I was like, ‘I could do this shit.’ I was just watching, seeing how things went.

“We stopped for three months, and literally, we started rapping again together a month before [our first video] came out, and that’s really when The Underachievers got established, when we really were like, ‘We’ve got beats, we’ve got a producer, let’s really do this.’ April was probably when we first started, and then a month later we dropped our first video.

AK: “People loved it, so we were like, ‘Fuck it, we’re just going to go hard now.’

Issa Dash: “Yeah, [it was like], ‘Let’s just keep going,’ because I told him, I remember before it even came out, I wasn’t even confident that we could do it. I meticulously watched the game, and watched which specific details people liked about videos and things. Just watched what people liked about music, what was going on, and I was like, ‘Alright, this is the best thing we can come out with first. If they like this, then I will keep going as hard as I can after this.’ Because I couldn’t see after ‘So Devilish.’ It was just like, ‘I’m going to drop the video and see what happens.’ And it was so good it was like, ‘Yeah let’s fucking do this shit for real,’ and the next video came, and then Flying Lotus came after that.”

Issa Dash: “We were getting Twitter followers [after our first video dropped], and I got one Twitter follower, and I don’t even know why I looked into her thing, but the username was @1111Agency. I’m really big on the numbers 11-11 so I was like, ‘I’ll just follow this lady.’ And as soon as I followed her, she messaged me, and we just started talking about a whole bunch of spiritual, mystical shit, throwing ideas back and forth. Then she was like, ‘I’m going to show you to some of my friends.’ I was like, ‘Oh alright, sure, whatever, you can do that.’ She’s like, ‘My friend Steve.’ And I’m like, ‘Cool, whatever.’ [Laughs.]

“She showed it to Steve, and people at BBC Radio. We got played on BBC Radio mad early, like in August. I had the tweet. ‘BBC Radio, The Underachievers, ‘Gold Soul Theory.’’ And then a day later, [she told me Steve] was Flying Lotus, and I was like, ‘Oh shit.’

“[We were up on him], but not really ridiculously. I knew of him. I knew of him as this mystical, no-face character who made these beats and threw these secret beat parties in L.A. It was this weird character that was completely not [who] Flying Lotus [actually is]. I mean he’s definitely that guy, but like [not once you get to know him].

“I remember specifically the person who put me on to Flying Lotus. It’s so funny how all these coincidences happen. Some dude went out of his way to show me Flying Lotus like six months ago, and he was like, ‘Check out this dude.’ And he showed me his beats, and he was like, ‘This dude never works with rappers ever. He doesn’t like rappers.’ And I’m like, ‘Alright.’ Then six months later, he signs us. [Laughs] My friend was just like, ‘What the fuck? I showed you this dude and you weren’t even really into him.’

“He called us and was like, ‘Let me hear a couple more songs.’ He’s like, ‘I love everything but let me hear some more songs.’ We sent him some more stuff, a couple early songs. He liked it, and he just flew us out there to do a show. We did a good job at the show, and it was my second show ever. It was Low End Theory, that’s where he came up in. It’s a beat show but if you’ve ever seen a video of us performing, like destroying this place, it was Low End Theory. We went back six months later, not famous, but more known, and [we did really well].

“[But he still] didn’t sign us yet. We flew back over. I remember I texted him before I got on the plane like, ‘Yo, where’s the contract?’ And he was like ‘I’m going to send it to you, we've got to work out the details.' It was my birthday, and it was amazingly sick. [We recorded a song with him while we were out there, but] it was garbage. It’s not a bad song, just we want our first song to be way better than that. We had it for this project, but he was like, ‘Why not just do this project yourself. Give them this project yourself.’

“Our first single after this project is probably going to be FlyLo, but we can get FlyLo beats like, ‘Yo FlyLo send us 10 beats.’ He’ll send me 10 beats from his computer. So it’s not hard to get the beats. But you want to make it a good song and actually take advantage of the feature of having him on the beat so it can stand alone as a single. That’s why we didn’t have features on [our first project], too, because we didn’t want to get oversaturated with features that people expected, like Zombies, and Pro Era, and World’s Fair and all those type of dudes.”

Issa Dash: “We made ‘Gold Soul Theory’ specifically for the second song. We had like maybe five or six songs, but we made ‘Gold Soul Theory’ after ‘So Devilish.’

“Basically the ‘Gold Soul Theory’ is about finding out that all the treasures that man might want. The big test is basically, they, not God, but the universe or whoever’s controlling this entire thing, put all these superficial stimuli around all of us. From the clothes, to the girls, to the hoes, to the money, to all these different things. I feel like our capitalist society even capitalizes on that and makes us even chase that more.

“But the whole ‘Gold Soul Theory’ thing is basically detaching yourself from what society told you is the norm or what superficial things we normally might want to be into, and realizing that all you really need is inside of you. Not even just in your brain, but like from love to intelligence to all the natural shit that’s there outside for you that you don’t have to pay for. Not even just inside of you, but nature and all the other things. You don’t really need to be attached to superficial.

“The ‘Gold Soul Theory’ is basically saying we’ve searched all around for enlightenment and everything else and realized that you really don’t have to look far. Everything you need was already embedded inside of you. It’s just a matter of going inside yourself and finding that. That’s our message, to really detach our generation from all the bullshit, and say, ‘Yeah, you can accept that stuff. I like clothes and all that different type of stuff. But it’s a matter of putting your life in priority. That’s not the most important shit.’

“I can enjoy sneakers. I like sneakers, but it’s like, I know that’s a materialistic thing. I’m making a conscious decision, that this is what I want to like. It’s not an unconscious thing. Basically making people conscious. That’s what it means to be conscious, to be conscious of your decisions. Like know, I’m making this decision, the decision isn’t being made for me by someone else. It’s me making my decisions.”

Issa Dash: “‘Herb Shuttles’ was originally supposed to be our first Zombies song, [with] us and Zombies, and it was so good, I was like ‘I’m going to take this one.’ That was the best audio we ever got out. Then for the video, I was like ‘Yo, alright, they like ‘So Devilish.’ They like ‘Gold Soul Theory.’ Let’s fucking combine them.’ So that’s why ‘Herb Shuttles’ has everything inside of it: pot, people, women, mob scenes.

“Thisisbutta, I love that guy, he’s the best, his editing. The way he did the video is crazy. I can’t even take any credit for any of it. I write the entire treatment, set up all the scenes. ‘Alright, we want to do this, that, this, this.’ It’s not like ‘Alright, go down from this angle.’ That’s why, in the video, [its says it’s] co-directed.

“[We got sent] the fucking [Brainfeeder] contract the day after ‘Herb Shuttles’ came out. [Laughs.] He’s like ‘Alright, I’m ready.’ [Laughs.] We knew that was a banger. ‘Herb Shuttles’ was supposed to be the second song but I felt like we needed to give people more of who we are beause ‘Herb Shuttles’ is still us, but it’s like a little more fun for us. ‘Gold Soul Theory’ and ‘So Devilish’ really establish like, ‘Alright, these guys are trying to be conscious.’ ‘Herb Shuttles’ was like, ‘We can be fun too.’

“It was never blatant [with Flying Lotus] like, ‘Alright, [I’m signing you guys because of ‘Herb Shuttles.’]’ But that’s when it happened, coincidentally. It was like, ‘Bam,’ two days later, a day later. [He was probably] like ‘Alright, let me not procrastinate on this, because [people are going to come knocking on their door now.’]’”

Issa Dash: “The number one thing that I felt about being a rapper, because I was a fan at first, was I don’t want to listen to a full project, ever, if you don’t convince me to listen to it. Especially a rap project. A lot of rappers say, ‘Alright, I’m going to be a rapper? First thing I’m going to do is I’m going to drop a mixtape. I’m going to do 17 songs.’ But you have to realize, even though making music is for yourself, you’re making music for your fans.

“I even told [AK] that before. ‘Yo, I’m not putting out a mixtape until they fucking ask me for that shit.’ We try to put out songs like, ‘Alright, ‘So Devilish’ is this type of song, ‘Gold Soul’ is this type of song, ‘Herb Shuttles’ is this type of song.’ It was like a pattern to see how [fans would] respond to [each] type of song.

“[Doing that creates a] variety of music. And people start saying, ‘Alright, let me get a tape, let me get a tape.’ That’s why there’s a lot of ‘Herb Shuttle’ like performance type songs on Indigoism. If you see, the whole game is tailored to performing right now. It’s kind of hard to sell albums. So that’s why the first project has a lot of up bass type stuff. It’s because we were kind of tailoring it towards performing.

“From the first show we did, I was like ‘Alright, we have to start catering our music to like, this is for performance, this is for lyrical, this is for this.’ We knew that performance is very important. Not saying we’re in it for the money, but that’s how we would be able to start making even a little bit of money.”

Issa Dash: “Indigoism like a combination of two titles. It’s not that important to us, but it’s a title that makes it easy to categorize everyone [in our generation]. That’s why we ran with it. We took Indigo, [which basically represents everything that we are about in terms of spirituality and consciousness], and AK’s original mixtape title was Inner Soul Music, ISM. So we mixed them together and made it into it’s own-ism. It’s not a science or anything.

“People who came on because someone told them to listen to it are like, ‘What the fuck?’ But where I sit, I’d rather talk about the things I’m really into, then lie about tracks. Because if you're real, you’ll be surprised to find how many people are mad similar to you.

“[I just started rapping] a year ago. I like to study. And I like taking things serious. I don’t like taking shit serious, I don’t want to sound like that, but if I’m going to do something, I’m going to take it serious. I will study the shit out of rap. Even now that I’m saying I’m going to be a real rapper, I don’t even want to take pen to paper until I really take in the reception. I was telling [AK], I don’t even want to write [new] music until after the tour, until I’ve fully taken in the reception of the tour, the music, how people feel, and then let’s move on so I can evolve and learn more and get more practice writing.

“I want to start—not stealing from people—but studying the greats. People that people think we actually are listening to, start actually listening to them and seeing what qualities people like. And not capitalizing on it, but making certain things prevalent in our music. I take it mad serious.

“Pitchfork gave us an 8.0. That guy from The Needle Drop gave us a 7. I didn’t know who he was. He had been following us since ‘So Devilish,’ and I just always see his face on Twitter. And then once I saw the video [review], I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what the motherfucker does? He’s the video guy?’ But yeah, he loved it. [He gave us criticism that] we’d already seen, saying that we get repetitive with the third eye shit, and the LSD shit. It does get repetitive, I agree with that.

“That was basically what the people say, that’s the general bottom line for most people. ‘It’s a little repetitive. You gave us 17 songs about the third eye and LSD.’ If you’re not into that, then you’re not going to like it. But if you’re into that, then oh my God. The kids that love that shit. They’re going psychotic. Every day they’re like, ‘I can’t stop listening to it.’ So we’re catering to our demographic. The next project we’re going to really try and impress a larger scale.

“[My personal favorites on the tape are] ‘Philanthropist,’ ‘Land Of Lords,’ and ‘Play Your Part.’”

AK: “I like ‘Prism.’”

Issa Dash:“People stop me all the time, 'Philanthropist!’ I like all [the songs on the tape] really, because it’s versatile. I feel like we hit a lot of rap genres, from new age hip-hop to old school hip-hop, like ‘Land Of Lords’ to ‘Play Your Part.’ I feel like it’s a 7.5 out of 10.

“[We worked with] all random [producers on Indigoism]. A lot of people sent beats. The thing about it is, a lot of rappers don’t go through their beats, but we were actually going through every single beat. And we found gems, and built relationships with people. Like the “Gold Soul Theory’ guy, Rich Flyer. He produced like three songs on there. And then we had Mr. Bristol.

“The Entreproducers, [who did ‘Vinyls’ also on the Pro Era mixtape], through us is how they got on to everyone else. It’s because we gave them the chance. And when we did a song with them, people were like ‘Hold on, what the hell?’ STEEZ and all them were like, ‘Yeah let me get some beats from them also.’ That [‘Vinyls’] shit’s fire. They’re good. I heard they even got a beat to Ab-Soul now.

“That was me just literally giving people a chance. Even the ‘Gold Soul Theory’ video, someone begged me to do it, like, ‘Please let me shoot this video.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, you don’t understand, if it’s garbage I’ll make you waste your time and throw the whole thing away.’

“‘Herb Shuttles’ and ‘Devilish’ are directed by Thisisbutta, ‘Gold Soul Theory’ is by Yasha Gruben, and the most recent video [‘The Mahdi’] is by our friend Luke Monaghan. [I think the Souls of Mischief comparisons came from it being shot outdoors in Cali, but also] the sample. I didn’t know it was the [same] sample [from ‘93 ‘til Infinity’ when we recorded it], or else I probably wouldn’t have used it. It’s still a good song, [though].”

Issa Dash: “We all grew up in Flatbush, all around the same vicinity. I knew the Pro Era kids since I was sixteen. I skateboarded across the street from [Edward R. Murrow High School], so I knew [Capital] STEEZ and Rockamouth and a bunch of them. Like I said, we knew Zombies forever. Basically, coincidentally everyone—I mean STEEZ and Joey [Bada$$] and Pro Era have been rapping for awhile—but everyone started to blow up around the same exact time. Different calibers, definitely, of course.

“I think Joey was the biggest at the time, and Zombies were second, and we were just starting. Basically we were all on the same Indigo type of movement, all on the same type of consciousness. So many series of coincidences, even though I don’t believe in those. Everything merged perfectly. Even before Beast Coast was established, we were already a group.

“I think [Joey] is the best rapper on the planet. Him and STEEZ were the best to me. The best rappers. Whenever I see Joey’s face on the TV screen, I’m happy.”

AK: “He’s nice. He deserves that shit.”

Issa Dash: “He’s a prodigy. He’s not just good at rapping, his lyrical content is just like, I’ve never experienced it but I guess it’s in comparison to when Nas and them were coming up because they were seventeen and eighteen, too, spitting all that sick shit. Mobb Deep [and those guys].”

AK: “[STEEZ] was our brother.”

Issa Dash: “He was a huge part of Beast Coast, and everything we stand for. Obviously, Beast Coast wouldn’t have been established if it wasn’t for STEEZ. I put him onto the whole Indigo thing, and then he put all his [Pro Era crew] onto the Indigo thing [and just ran with it].

“Most of our lingo and everything we say is actually from STEEZ. Everyone says ‘synchro life,’ and that’s STEEZ’s. He made that up. Whenever something happens, a coincidence happens, it’s like, ‘Oh that was synchro, it’s too perfect to be a coincidence.’ Then 47, and all types of other stuff [we say, that was all him]. He lives on forever.

“It’s sad that it happened, but everyone’s holding up good because everyone was able to get closure because we all talked to him [before he passed]. It’s so hard, I think about it every day. I always wondered, ‘What do people mean when they say that? ‘I think about that person every day.’’ But literally, every day I think about STEEZ.”

AK: “Everytime I see a 47 I think about this guy.”

Issa Dash: “Basically, Pro Era threw a concert, and they called the concert Beast Coast. Me and STEEZ, we linked up afterwards and were just like, ‘Yo, we should link all this shit up together.’ Then it was like, ‘Yeah, alright let’s do this. I’ve got Zombies over there, you’ve got Pro Era over there, and UA we’re already down, so let’s do this.’ So I went to Zombies, and Zombies obviously were down. Pro Era was down of course, but I don’t want to make it sound like it was like, ‘Let’s do this [to all blow up].’ It was some really family type, really family-oriented, OD.

“We met up the next day, fully hugging. It eventually got established, and we were all doing our own thing, but it was a conglomerate. And it wasn’t even like a, ‘Yo let’s all help each other so we all can get famous.’ We all have the same bottom line plan. We all want to do the same thing. Even though it’s more blatant in our music, they’re all on the same exact shit, doing freestyles [and songs] and shit. Zombies with D.R.U.G.S. and ‘Better Off Dead,’ all that stuff is symbolic, spiritual shit. We’re all on the same thing.

“We’ll probably do a Beast Coast album soon. [We don’t have] mad tracks, but we’ve got some stuff. That stuff will probably even get trashed for more serious stuff, but that’s inevitable. That’s the thing about us, everyone keeps working in their own lanes. We just keep going. That’s what I tell my friends, ‘You don’t need to worry about features from us, keep doing your thing.

“A Flatbush Zombies and Underachievers song is way more valuable now than if we dropped it at the ‘So Devilish’ time. So why not wait and hold out and just keep working, and then we can collaborate and get shit done.

“[Phony Ppl] is Beast Coast, too. They came on later on. All those kids went to Murrow, same exact type of thing. We all knew each other since we were younger. [Dyme-A-Duzin] is basically like family to all of us. He just had the ‘New Brooklyn’ song—Dante Ross produced it—and they were like, ‘Yeah we want you guys on it.’ And it just happened. It was us and Zombies. It was kind of rushed because we were working on [the mixtape] at the same time and they gave us a deadline, ‘Alright we need it in 24 hours,’ and I was like, ‘What?! Alright.’”

Issa Dash: “That’s the A$AP Mob, us, World’s Fair, Tan Boys, Flatbush Zombies, and Pro Era. That’s another new New York type of conglomerate. That’s like the supergroup, that’s the real New York representatives type thing. They might not be so much on the third eye type thing, but we’re all family, too. All those dudes are family.

“I don’t know Rocky personally, but I’ve met him many times. We’ve been to the same places, we’re in the videos. We’re all a huge family, everyone knows each other. Rocky’s told us before, ‘Keep doing your thing, keep doing your shit.’ A$AP Mob always comes up to us like, ‘Yo dudes this shit is fucking sick, we bump ‘Herb Shuttles’ every day.’

“But it goes beyond just the music. A$AP Yams has been my brother since I was sixteen. I knew that dude even before A$AP was even a part of anything. He used to come to Flatbush and hang out with me and Juice in our basement smoking blunts and shit. A$AP Illz did a collaboration with the Zombie manager Phil for A$AP. Seven years ago, before A$AP was wearing all black, Award Tour and A$AP did a shirt together, [back in] 2007. All the links were already there before the music, so when everyone started doing music, it just clicked together perfectly. Everything organically happened because relationships were already there.

“That’s how Flatbush Zombies got linked with A$AP. It wasn’t just, ‘Alright we’re making music, let’s make music together.’ It was like, ‘Yams is our man.’ And Yams was like, ‘Both of my mans are making music, you all should make some shit together.’ That’s how [Zombies] got the first A$AP show. It wasn’t the promoter. Yams was like, ‘Put on my friends, let’s get this going.’ It goes beyond the music. It’s some brother type shit.

“I’ve heard comparisons to like Dipset and [G-Unit and D Block] and this and that. [But they were] definitely not [as joined as we are now]. We’re definitely more like [the early ‘90s were with Native Tongues and Nas and Large Professor and all those artists and how they were all connected and worked together and hung out, too]. That’s definitely something we’re trying to bring back.

“The reason I brought up [Dipset and all those groups] is because people say that’s the last time New York had powerhouses, like Roc-A-Fella, Dipset, [G-Unit], Murda Inc. [But they were] always separate. Friendly competition, though. It never seemed too brutal, but definitely competition. And we’re not separated by labels either. It’s a very ‘do it yourself’ type time. So I could just say I’m going to do a song with Remy Banks tomorrow and just do a song with Remy [with no hassles or interference].”

Issa Dash: “We’re not going to do an album yet. We’re going to do an EP, but it’s going to be more Brainfeeder-ish if that makes sense, more experimental music, more trippy beats, FlyLo type of stuff. But not just FlyLo, because there’s going to be more serious producers—not that the other producers weren’t serious—but we want to show people what we can do over a Harry Fraud or a [Hudson Mohawke] or a Clams Casino [production].

“We should be able to get Clams. Hud Mo we could probably get. I know [he just signed to Kanye], but he’s also on [Flying Lotus’ label] Warp. But we’ve got A-Trak, we’ve got Supreme Cuts, Lapalux, we’ve got a whole bunch of Brainfeeder artists.

“We just started collecting beats. I feel like we did a fairly good job of keeping Indigoism versatile, but still making sure it flowed well from the first song to the end. But now, from the beginning of the project, I actually want to make sure every song [fits together].

“I feel like our album has to have a feeling to it, like a theme to it. Even though every song is going to sound different, I still want it to really flow from the first song to the eleventh song completely like a movie.

“Before we start writing, I want to have eight beats already on deck. We’ve got three right now that we’re considering, but I want to have five beats and then start to go, ‘This [beat] is going to go into this song this way,’ and really try to write it like a book. We haven’t really figured out [the concept for the album] yet, but it definitely [is going to have one].”

AK: “Take over the world.”

Issa Dash: “Enlighten our generation. That’s all we really want to do. Try and get our generation to start thinking differently, and start the shift ourselves with our generation, who already seem like they know what’s going on. I meet people ages 10 to 40, and they’re not really attached to religion or attached to anything, and I realize that our generation is already in tune to what we have to tell them. Our job is already done. I don’t really have to convince people that there’s a third eye. The general consensus is that there’s some spiritual world now, there is spirituality, people just don’t know where to start.

“Spirituality right now is automatically correlated with religion. This is what happened when I was younger. I was like, ‘Well, if I don’t like Christianity then I must be either Atheist or demonic.’ I didn’t really think there was a path [number] three. So if we could show people where there’s a path [number] three, where you don’t have to live that religious life, but you can still be spiritual and you can still live your life in order, then that’s really the goal. So if [we] start at our generation, I feel like we could really do it.”

Issa Dash: “We wanted to do the Beast Coast tour forever, before we’d even gone to Agency Group. Coincidentally—I know they planned it—but Agency Group signed all three of us, and then a month later I heard they’re doing a tour. They had Joey already, then they had Zombies, then they got us and it was like, ‘Hmm, what’s going on here?’ I mean they’re great, I love them.

“Yeah. I haven’t done [the whole tour life] yet but it’s going to be fun. Agency Group looks out, they really do their jobs so you can’t knock them for wanting to put that together. We wouldn’t have gotten it together without them. I’m happy they did it. 23 cities.”