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Music

Stream Overdoz's New Mixtape "Boom," Plus an Interview

The group's first mixtape in two and a half years is a skitzy collection of bedroom beats.

Today, the LA collective Overdoz releases their new mixtape, Boom, a chaotic collection together with blunt raps and spacey beats, fitting right into their discography. At this point, the group has firmly established themselves over the past two and a half years, swiftly moving from opening for the likes of Dom Kennedy to playing Lollapalooza to getting endorsed by Pharrell Williams.

But at this point, these dudes' dreams are still just getting started. Ask them where they'll be in five years, and without skipping a beat, they'll tell you "bigger than the Beatles." It may seem absurd, but that desire is evident when they speak, candid about making themselves better and doing music for people outside of themselves. For Boom, they recorded 60 songs and selected 17 of the best. We're copremiering the mixtape below with LiveMixtapes, and hopped on the phone with the group and spoke with Kent Jamz and P, letting them give the lowdown on what's happening with the tape.

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Noisey: How'd this project come together?
Kent: We've been working on music for the last two and a half years. We didn't necessarily know if we were working on a mixtape or an album, we just wanted to create music while going through the things we were going throughs since releasing our previous project. We didn't want to sell ourselves short, so we just ended up recording probably 60 songs and we chose 17 songs out of that, to service our fans, who'd been waiting for so long. It's more a mixtape for the fans. There's a song on the mixtape that's probably three years old—from Halloween of 2010, which was before we recorded our last CD.

Is it weird putting out music that's two and a half years.
P: Yeah that shit is weird as fuck. But nobody knows how old the songs are, unless we tell you. To the fans, it's still new music and experience. Sometimes you feel different rapping about shit, and you're rapping the same shit you rapped two years ago, so you're like, damn. This is how I felt?

Kent: The weirdest part for me is that it's a bunch of things that we've written, literally going through it at that time two years ago, so it's not as relevant to me, but it's kind of like a time machine. You ever seen that movie Butterfly Effect? That's how I feel when I listen to our album. It puts me back into those times, back into that pain or that joy or just being around my friends and not having to worry about a deadline or a come up with a show in 20 minutes or whatever.

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You've grown in popularity quite a bit over the past two years—some of your YouTube videos have half a million views. What's that been like?
Kent: We always had the street love and the hometown love, but on a national level, we didn't realize until we performed at Lollapalooza, and people knew the words to our songs—like, white kids who are 19. That shit is amazing. It's mind-blowing.

Is there anything you feel misunderstood about?
Kent: I mean, we smoke a lot of weed and we have sex with a lot of girls. I think that's what people think, and that's the truth, so fuck it. But I think our background story, individually, with our friendships with each other, people get that. We've known each other since we were kids.

What are you most proud of on the mixtape?
P: I'm proud of the fact that we're still together. Lowkey shit, we're still young, but there's a lot of group's who don't get to the point that we've made it to. A lot of musicians period, people striving to music, they don't get there. I'm glad that we stayed together and we worked hard enough to get where we wanted to be, so it's really up to us to take the step to the next level. We got the opportunity now, so it's like, what are we gonna do with it?

What do you want to do with it?
P: Take over the world.

Kent: I want people to form relationships—have babies and become best friends to my music. I want my music to create life and new ideas.

What else did you want to address?
Kent: Kanye West is tripping with the whole Confederate flag shit.

Really?
Kent: That's a sign of rape and murder. If you choose to make money off of that, that's bull. He's trippin'. I don't roll with that. He's making money off of that sign. Granted, we make money off of the word "nigga," but I'm chill with a white person saying "nigga" as long as they don't say "black nigga" or "fuck nigga." But any time I see the Confederate flag, I think of rape and murder. And I don't think he can change that or make a profit on it.

The argument against that—
Kent: Well, that's not an issue. I'm not trying to argue it. That's just my point of view. He makes more money than me. He's so relevant right now. That's just my take on it. You can put that down.