BUDS DIGEST 004 / FEATURE
JOEY LABEIJA & COBRAH PREFER THE DEMO TAKE
Interviewed by COBRAH
Photographed by JASON RODGERS
Styled by JORDAN FIGUEROA
Makeup by LARAMIE GLEN
Joey Labeija photographed by Jason Rodgers at Rein Studios in New York, NY. December 2021.
Tenured and gilded Brooklyn-based body mover, JOEY LABEIJA joins Sweden’s rising electro-pop sensation COBRAH for a relaxed and melodic conversation for Buds Digest.
The two innovative and ultramodern music-makers find common ground and mutual adoration, trading transatlantic notes on everything from old demos to new family to retiring from the nightclub. Labeija’s addictive post-pop release “Finish Him” with Namasenda stacks next to COBRAH’s absolute club dominator “Good Puss” as two of the Digest’s favorite tracks of 2021. Read on for more from these two gracious, intelligent, and masterful musicians.
JOEY LABEIJA: So good to see you!
COBRAH: It's good to see you too! I've been following you on Instagram for so long. I remember when you released “Adoption.” That's when I started to look you up because it was kind of close to when I released my first single. And you were a “related artist.”
JL: Ah, yeah, totally!
C: I had “Adoption” set on my Tinder as my fav.
JL: Oh, my god. I had no idea. I didn't even know you knew my music because I'm such a big fan of yours.
C: It's been rocking my Tinder page for a few years now.
JL: Thank you. I'm so proud of you. Your music is blow-ing-up!
C: Thank you! I didn't really realize because, in Sweden, it's not a thing here. I was in London and people kind of recognized me on the street.
JL: Sweden was one of the first places I went to play.
C: Where? Was it in Stockholm, under a big bridge?
JL: Yeah!
C: Oh, yeah. The best place.
JL: And then I played another party with Tammy T, in a big warehouse.
C: Wow. So, you've been here.
JL: Yeah. I've smoked Swedish weed.
C: How was it?
JL: Not bad. Yeah, I loved it there. It does get dark at like two o'clock.
C: You live in New York City, right?
JL: In Brooklyn.
C: What's it called, Bushwick?
JL: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I used to live over there. I live in south Brooklyn now. It's more families, less young kids. But, we're gonna move soon because it's too quiet.
C: Ah, you want the noise.
JL: Yeah. I wanna be closer. I'm only 30 minutes from the city now, but there's nothing around here.
C: I get that. Did you grow up there?
JL: I grew up in the Bronx and that's really far removed from everything. It's an hour outside the city. Kind of rough. I went to high school in the suburbs and then the city was my escape on the weekends.
Jewelry by Swarovski, dress by It’s Juliet.
C: What did you do during the weekends? What was happening then?
JL: We would all meet up in Union Square and go get piercings and drink canned energy drinks that had alcohol in them.
C: How old were you then?
JL: Oh, god, 16? I was just thinking last night about being that age and running to specific delis on 14th Street because you knew which ones wouldn't card you. I couldn't believe that I was 16 buying alcohol because I looked like a baby.
C: For me as a Swede, not growing up in a massive city, the idea of being 16 alone in New York is just wild.
JL: I was taking the subway by myself at 13. So, I've felt 30 my whole life. We would go drink at this Japanese restaurant. We would call it the “sake bar,” but it was not a bar – it just made us feel grown.
C: That's the best feeling, having a sense of self; a sense of independence. It's so valuable. So freeing.
JL: But because I was doing grown up shit at such a young age, I've been a grandma the latter half of my twenties into my thirties. So, now, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, I'm getting ready for bed.
C: You wake up early then, I guess.
JL: I tried to sleep in today because it's my day off but I was up at seven. No alarm. That's just how my body works. It's so annoying.
C: Yeah. I'm kinda the same, but then I started to play video games. I started playing one or two years ago and now I'm just up playing God of War and Witcher and stuff like that. RPGs. So fun.
JL: I haven't played video games in ages because I'm a really sore loser. During lockdown, I would wake up early and start working out, but now that I have a boyfriend, I don't really work out anymore.
C: You don't have to anymore. That's the whole thing. So you don't go out clubbing anymore?
“I love fucking with people’s feelings when I DJ.”
JL: No. I think becoming a DJ kind of ruined going out for me because I used to love going out. Not to sound like a dick, but once you start getting paid to go to the club, you feel like you're at the office on your day off when you're there not working. You just start analyzing everything. I think that's kind of why I fell in love with DJing. Because I’m kind of socially awkward, especially in the club, I just like to hide in the corner. So, DJing and performing was the best way to be involved in a club for me.
C: How did you end up DJing? What made you do that?
JL: I was an assistant at the first hair salon I worked at and was just bored of being an assistant. It's one of the worst jobs because you're just a babysitter for a bunch of people. To keep my motivation going and not quit my job, I got myself some gear and would practice on my days off. Then I quit that shop and I started being club promoter Suzanne Bartsch’s assistant. One of her DJs got sick for her weekly party and couldn't make it, so I filled in. So my first DJ gig was at one of New York's swankiest clubs at the Standard Hotel.
Three months after that, I played my first international show. It all snowballed really fast. I had never left America before. I had barely seen America and then I went to Tokyo.
C: What was that like going to all of these new, different places?
JL: At first I would cry a lot when it was time to leave. Growing up in New York, you have access to everything, so your world is so small in that sense because everything is right there. All you know is New York. I'd been to Florida and California, but to go from New York to Tokyo and then Barcelona after that… I cried because I would meet people and make really good friends and they felt like family right off the bat. It was so sad to not know when I would see them again. Now it's just like, okay, can't wait to be home.
C: That makes sense. Europe is far away.
JL: Before COVID, I was spending maybe six months a year in London. That's like my second home. This is the longest I've not been there and I really miss it. I miss all my friends there.
C: I bet. Did you make music there?
JL: I made my last record on my good friend Mischa Notcutt’s coffee table. And CouCou Chloe used to live across the street from her and Shygirl used to live down the road. So I had all my friends right in the neighborhood. It was fun. Sometimes we'd work, sometimes we'd do nothing. It just felt like home.
C: Oh, that sounds amazing. I was in London for the month of October. I've never really been in another country for that long. It felt like the city just grabbed me in a different way. You get to know so many people. Everybody's really ambitious but I think, to a certain extent, they put more work into their ambition, more than some Americans.
JL: Absolutely.
C: I didn't wanna offend you. London has the “big city vibe” where you meet a lot of ambitious people, but what’s really nice is most of them actually do a lot of hard work and not just, you know, talk about it.
JL: I kind of fell in love with, not just my friends, but the energy of that city. Coming from New York especially, I have people I'm friendly with that make music, I'll say that, but nobody I could open up to and talk to about how I'm feeling about the hard side things. It's just so cutthroat and here people prey on that type of energy and they use it against you. I've experienced it my whole life and I've become a very private person, whereas there, it’s such a sense of community and uplifting of your peers.
Shoes by East Village Shoe Repair
C: I think America, from a Scandi perspective, is a very competitive space in general. Everything's a competition. You can win lots of stuff. There's always an opportunity. You have to go for it. It's just extreme, right? There's no stability in the culture in itself.
It's very, “You're on your own and you gotta go get it.” Of course you will see other people as rivals because there's no sense of “let's do it together” or “we’re better if we help each other.” I think it's a socialistic thing too. Sweden is a very socialistic country.
JL: It's so refreshing to hear that. It's frustrating to feel those sentiments and feel like a crazy person because you don't talk about those things to people here. But, yes, that's exactly how it is. It's so competitive – and there's a healthy level of competition – but this is far beyond healthy. It's narcissistic.
C: From my perspective, it's an idealization of success too.
JL: Yes. C: But it's the most important thing and “success” can only be valued by certain accomplishments and this is what validates people and it's what validates the music and the performance and all of those things. And there's only one person that there's room for to do all of that.
JL: It's very gatekeeper-ish. I don't like to think like that because I'm somebody who likes whoever's around me to grow together. That's just the type of person I am. I've never wanted to go on a creative endeavor on my own, you know? That's why I appreciate all my little families that I've been able to build everywhere else.
C: What are you working on at the moment?
JL: Full disclosure, I've had a few interviews since my single came out but I've not really spoken about it. I'm kind of taking a break from music.
C: Yeah.
JL: When people know that you make music they think it's this great experience of being an artist. And while being a creator is great, there's a really frustrating and exhausting and dark side of it, especially when you're doing it all yourself. I've got no manager, I've never had a manager. I've never had an agent. Everything has just been by the stroke of luck and I'm super thankful for it. But, after my last year release, I was like, “You know what, this is making me more sad and exhausted and frustrated than it's supposed to.”
I started making music because it felt good. So, if it's not feeling good, I should take a break. I've been a hairdresser, a colorist, for 15 years. I took a break for five years because of music. I was traveling so much it just didn't work with my schedule. Now, I still don't feel comfortable in big groups and stuff with the way everything's panned out the last two years. So, I wouldn't say the path of least resistance, but the path that seems to be working right now. My best friend of 10 years opened up a salon and has grown her business crazy big and I'm just leaning into it. It's great. It's the first time as a colorist that I'm actually enjoying my job.
I think I'll get back to making music in a couple months, but I'm not there yet. I've got so much music to release, but I'm at that point where I've had it for so long that nothing feels right anymore, you know?
C: You’ve outgrown it. There’s a very short period of time where you love it and you wanna release it. If that period of time becomes longer, then you just hate it. I usually hate all my tracks because it’s just over, you know? You have new ideas, new demos. You're another person.
JL: Exactly. The playlist of Joey LaBeija demos is extensive and they'll never see the light of day because I think they're all shit. I know that they're not shit but you keep growing and every time you make something, you're like, “Oh, this is the best thing I've ever made,” until you make the next best thing that you've ever made and it just keeps going like that.
C: For me, I feel like whenever I think, “Oh, this is the best I've ever made,” I feel like it's never gonna come again.
JL: Absolutely. Absolutely.
C: Then you have the whole anxiety period of weeks or even months where I can't continue on because I don't trust my skills enough to know that this will happen again. It’s nerve wracking but I don't think it's true because I think, if you can do it once you can do it twice. It's within you. It's not a skill. It's not like going to the gym. You can't really lose it like that. It's just who you are.
Shoes by Barragan, jeans by Maison Margiela, earrings by BAR jewellery, silver chains by Taryn Zoli Aronson, latex Gloves by Vex Latex.
JL: It's like riding a bike. It's a part of you. I've been doing it for so long. I've always been the type of artist that will take months away from making stuff because I've never been formally taught how to make music. Everything I've done, I've learned on my own, so going back in after a few months, it's not that I've forgotten to make music, but I wind up coming up with a whole new process of how I make music. Then, I just get a really one track mind on that process and I make everything that type of way. I miss making music. More than that, I miss playing music.
For me – I'm sure for you too – making it is one thing but experiencing the live aspect of it is such an important part of it. When I put out “Adoption,” I did not expect anybody to like it. It was my first time going from DJ to putting out music. The first time I played it live and everybody knew the words, I almost shit myself. I've been a DJ for so long and I know what it's like for people to sing back their music, but something I made? I miss that more than anything.
I've gone to a few shows recently and I stand in the balcony far away from everybody. I watch things on a tiny screen and I don't even care about seeing the performance. I just want to hear how it sounds live. And I want to hear everybody sing the song back to the artist because that's such a special thing.
C: That's so true. It’s a very interactive way of art. It's not like books or paintings or poems. It gains another dimension when it's live. Working in the studio is okay. I like making new tracks. It's still a very quiet process. You have to think really hard; Is this good? Is this not good? Can I write this? Can I not write this? Does this make sense? It's a very complicated process, writing music.
It feels like most, say, pop songs, they all sound the same. But when you try to do it, you can't! I've been thinking about this a lot. How come you can hear when it’s a good song or when it's a bad, but you can never duplicate that.
JL: I've been there a million and one times. It's so frustrating. My birthday's next weekend and I was just going through my camera roll to see what I did on my birthday last year. I remembered that I rented a studio and got an engineer to record me. It was an interesting experience because I've never had that done. I'm so used to recording my music myself in my room and perfecting it. It's such a private and cathartic process for me because I'm writing and recording at the same time to see if things work. And just having somebody punch you in and hearing you fuck up. I don't enjoy it. I’ve done it twice and I prefer doing it myself. And honestly, nine times outta ten, the demo always winds up sounding way better than the perfected version.
C: It's a curse.
JL: A lot of the stuff I put out is the vocal demos because I end up liking those so much better. Even if you hear the smoke alarm in the background beeping every five minutes, you know, It just sounds better, that first time because you can't recreate that moment.
C: No, it's the most authentic. The first take or the demo takes are always the most authentic feeling. You are in the middle of writing and the creative process and then we try to rerecord it on a good microphone or something, it's always lacking something. I believe that, but I also believe that you get so used to hearing [the demo version], when you hear something new, you automatically think it's shit. Sometimes you have to get used to it. I have the same process.
“It feels like ‘normal’ or ‘mainstream’ is such a bigger thing in the U.S. Coming from a relatively small country with a lot of music culture, I feel like ‘counterculture’ isn’t a big thing here.”
JL: What sign are you?
C: Libra.
JL: That's my moon. I'm a Sagitarius.
C: I'm so bad at it.
JL: No, I’m sorry. I’m like a typical New York gay: “What's your sign?”
C: No, no. That whole astrology thing has been booming so much over the last two years, maybe. In lockdown, yeah.
JL: Yeah. Somebody was looking for a reason.
C: There was one thing I was really interested to talk about with you. [The editor noted] that we're both very involved with “counterculture.”
JL: Yeah…
C: I've been thinking about “counterculture” and I don't really, a hundred percent. know what that means. If it means that you do something that is, you know, punk basically. For me, I don't do counterculture at all. I think the culture that I do especially, is just very, just culture.
JL: Right. It's a culture of its own. It's normal for us. It might be counterculture for somebody that only listens to radio music (I call it Uber music).
C: Who does that in our generation? Maybe GenX or Boomers do that, but I mean, in general, especially queer culture, it's so popular. I don't think it's counter at all. I think it's so mainstream. People love, for example, RuPaul’s Drag Race. It's not that we do that, but it's a part of it, right?
JL: I think it goes against the masses, right? Between our friend group and our peers, it's completely normal, but when my [salon] clients look at my Instagram, they're like “Wow.” So I see both sides of it in that sense. We have a very, uh, well-off clientele. Girls in Hermes and shit like that, will see my page then they'll hear “Unavailable” or “Adoption” and it's against the grain for them. But for us, it's completely normal because it's all we know.
C: It feels like “normal” or “mainstream” is such a bigger thing in the U.S. Coming from a relatively small country with a lot of music culture, I feel like “counterculture” isn't a big thing here. I'm trying to think of what is “counterculture” here, but there's just not enough people for it to actually be a culture. There's small social groups, you know hardcore punks and stuff like that, but there's no scene for them. There would never be a punk club here because there's just not enough money and not enough people to support it.
JL: That's why I've always loved touring overseas versus The States. I've never had a desire to tour the United States because people literally only want what's fed to them. There's not an openness to music. I DJ in a very specific way and I perform in a very specific way but for the most part, I feel the freest when I'm not in America because everybody's open to whatever. I think the concept of “counter-culture” is definitely more of an American thing than overseas because of the openness to creativity and appreciating music for what it’s worth and not just something that's made for an algorithm.
Joey Labeija photographed by Jason Rodgers, assisted by Adam Kim
C: The one thing I appreciated being in Brooklyn was going to pretty small clubs. Maybe 150 people, you know, just very, very small. I thought that it was really fun that that could exist. It felt like it was the club for the neighborhood and very specific music from 2008 could play at one club and everybody just loved that. That could never happen here. That's like a home party here.
JL: Exactly.
C: You said you had a very specific DJ style. How did you come up with that?
JL: When I first started DJing back in the day, I was only playing house-esque music. I love house music, but it's not the music I live by, you know? I wanted to figure out a way to play the music that I listen to, that everybody wants to hear, but doesn't know they want to hear in a club. I have shut the music off and started an Alanis Morissette song more than once, in the middle of a rave. I like to disrupt people. I want everybody's attention. I'll play Korn, you know?
C: I love when DJ's play something really unexpected. I was in London on my birthday and we went out for DJ Lou Hayter. In the middle of the set, she played Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on vinyl; the whole song.
JL: And everybody loved it…
C: Everybody danced and sang along. It was like a musical in the club, you know? It's such a dramatic song. It was the best.
JL: Yeah. I've played ballads in the club, or even a capellas. I got that from my friends in London. My friend Carrie and Misha loved to play an a capella in the club. I took that as a feather in the cap from them because it's just great. It gets the whole crowd going.
C: It's like you said, it's songs that you don't know that you wanna hear but when you hear it, you love it.
JL: I love fucking with people's feelings when I DJ.
