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From Chinese restaurants to New York street corners, WHATMORE has set any and every setting ablaze with their captivating stage presence and hunger to explode. With their origin story dating back to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, Cisco Swank, Yoshi T., Jackson August, Sebastiano, and Elijah Judah make up the five-piece WHATMORE. With friendship, brash authenticity, and rebellion at their core, they blend notes of hip-hop with jazz and alternative to concoct a sound both incomparable and fresh. They are tastemakers who are just as equal parts fans, friends, and artists.

As more and more buzz surrounds their promise, OnesToWatch got a chance to sit down with the group ahead of their fall-slated debut album to capture the calm before the storm. 

OnesToWatch: It's so clear that you have a true familial connection with one another and that this is all bred from a place of childlike wonder. How do you guys protect that sacred sense of fun?

Yoshi: We make sure we have fun bath bubble time. Tickle fights every Wednesday.

Cisco: Most of the time when we link, we're not even making music. We might just play basketball or get into some shenanigans. Keeping at least half of the focus around seeing each other just on some chill, young, happy, joyous times helps keep things not so intense. I mean, things still do get intense, musicians are the most intense people ever. But we do stuff that's more than just making TikToks and music.

Jackson: I feel like a huge part of our story is that we're all best friends. We all met in high school. This was the group chat before we made real music. We just have fun all the time. Obviously there are hard times, but like Cisco said, we're just best friends. We've been best friends for mad long. There are always jokes. The tickle fights are real. 

That really translates into the music and makes it so fun and magnetic. Having so many chefs in the kitchen, how do you maintain one cohesive sound while honoring all your individualities?

Elijah: Well, everybody's super talented. We all went to school for music and have all been making music for a very long time. Jackson's more indie alternative leaning and Yoshi and I are more in our like hip-hop bag. Cisco's more in the jazz world. When we come together, it's a big mesh of things. I tend to make a lot of beats and we'll take turns starting an idea. Jackson will sit down on the guitar and we'll all add things and have ideas, just throwing stuff off the wall. What helps is that in the very beginning of the recording process, we try to put everything down. Then at the end, we're moving stuff around together to make it into an actual song.

Jackson: I feel like the WHATMORE process is super interesting. To Elijah's point, I don't make music this way other than when I'm with them because there are four people. Let's just say someone starts making a beat. Normally, I’m writing the pre-chorus, the chorus, the verse. But you don't know who's writing what in the moment. What tends to happen is everyone basically writes something, and then we have them all just stacked on top of each other and take a step back. There’s been times when someone thought they were writing the hook, but it really was the bridge, because then this thing is the hook, and then it's this puzzle piece thing.

Has having to adapt to this new format of song building informed how you each go about your own solo work?

Elijah: Definitely for me. I think I'm like overthinking less, which is something I learned from the homies. With everybody in the room, there's a little bit of pressure. You work a little faster. Nobody wants to wait around for this and that.

Cisco: The pace in which we write music is so fast, faster than most people probably ever make music with. So I feel like when I'm just at the crib making music, I've made a higher volume within the past year than I ever have before. Just letting go of things that are in your head when you're creating. I’m trying to talk about new things lyrically. Working with other people, you're just exposed to different things. You can take from that and put it into the solo stuff.

Jackson: I’ve written the most this year by like a mile. I feel like everyone across the board has just gotten so much quicker, better, cooler.

You can taste so many flavors of inspiration in your work. I’d love to know, for each of you, what's your favorite musical group that shaped your artistry? 

Yoshi: The Beatles is the only right answer. 

Cisco: Oh, easy. Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet. Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams. That's really the most important, most influential group of modern jazz. If you ask any musician who their favorite musician is, their top five is going to include a person within that. They're the foundation. Also, I would say Odd Future is so important in modern music. 

Jackson: This is kind of lame, but it's probably Arctic Monkeys, because I was listening to them when I was like 13 and they're kind of the reason I wanted to play guitar. I wanted to be Alex Turner. I know they just wanted to be The Strokes, so I guess The Strokes are the OG answer. I don't know if you've seen interviews of Alex Turner, but there's like something wrong with him, he can't speak. But then when he writes a song, it's the clearest, most beautiful thing in the world. I wish that was me. I feel like I'm actually pretty articulate in real life.

Elijah: Jackson 5 and The Beatles.

Sebastiano: I would say Tribe Called Quest, Pro Era, Jackson 5. Very influential.

I love all of these answers, and they all make sense, given how unconfined you are by genre. Have you ever felt the pressure to stick to a lane sonically?

Sebastiano: We never put ourselves in a box. It was crazy how you said we have a cohesive sound, because when we started, we didn't know what our sound was. We're still learning how to find that sound, but for now, we like to say we’re just WHATMORE.

Yoshi: I feel like we’re immune to that conversation because our whole sell is that we all make different music. That's why people fall in love with us. That's our strong suit. Even people that we've been working with, whether it's labels or agents, they want to emphasize the uniqueness of our different types of styles, so that's been pretty nice.

It's your superpower, honestly. You guys are literally the United Nations. Even when you were all just friends, were you aware of how culturally representative you were as a unit?

Elijah: Not at all. Growing up in New York City, we were always so used to being surrounded by different people. It was never a thing.

Sebastiano: It wasn't even just our friend group that was built like us. Especially at our school. 

Jackson: As soon as you get out of New York, you're like, “Oh. Some people literally did not have this experience. Some people have never seen a Black person.” I know people who live in LA who had, like, two Black people in their school, which is so crazy. We definitely peeped it from the comments and were like, “Why not lean into this?” That promo video we did in the diner, that character talking is based on the industry and people trying to put us in this box and trying to define us. We are just homies. It's not calculated or anything.

You guys have been very intentional about bringing your music live to fans. Talk to me about these WHATMORE pop-up performances.

Cisco: I think it's probably the most important thing about being a musician. If you think about the history of music, recorded audio has only been around for a fraction of how long people have been creating music. We make music with the thought of , “Yo, this is going to be fire when we play it live. This song is going to be hard.” It's always fun to play for homies and people in random spaces.

Sebastiano: These last few shows have been exciting too, because none of this music is really out. So people might expect one sound, and then we go and show them the music and get a raw reaction to it. That's what's been most exciting to me lately.

Jackson: It’s been a process of trying the music out. I remember the first show we did was at the bar that I literally bartend at. We just threw it together like a DIY thing, and that's what started all these other DIY things. At that time, there was no music out. No one knew what we were going to be. We would just try songs and be like, “Oh shit, that was pretty good.” As we played more shows, we saw what was working. The OG fans, or just people who have come to multiple shows, have been hearing the album as it’s been made. In my head, I'm romanticizing it, but if this all goes to plan, this will be this legendary thing of like, if you were in New York and saw WHATMORE while they were playing their record. I know a lot of bands that did that during The Strokes era. Arctic Monkeys actually did that. They would give out their CD at the show before it was out. People were listening to it as they were making it. To Cisco's point, that's a real front row process thing that doesn't really happen anymore because everything is just streaming.

Everything has become so digitized, we forget what it feels like to experience music communally and in real time. Having gotten a chance to listen to your entire debut, this project is electrifying. How does it feel to know that this precious baby is soon going to be in the world's arms? Are you guys protective of it or just excited to get it out?

Sebastiano: We're definitely excited to get it out. I feel like we've been sitting on this music for so long. So, definitely more excited to just have the people hear it and react to it.

Jackson: Yoshi said this in some interview, but I feel like everything we've been doing has been for this. We made this album last summer. We had the first six songs of this album by May, June of last year. Everything we've done, all the flips and videos, it's literally been leading to this album. I'm a little nervous, but not for any particular reason. 

I’m always curious every time I hear an artist sitting on their music for a while, what denotes the difference between songs that age better with time versus music that’s timely?

Jackson: Sometimes it's out of your control. It would have been great to drop this in January, but it wouldn’t have had as much of a chance to be heard as doing it this way. I feel like so much of music is timing and the backdrop of what's going on in the world at the time. Honestly, you see this revitalization of 2000s music with Coldplay’s Parachutes and Radiohead going viral. I see all these other bands dropping 2000s music, and it's like, this wouldn't have worked before. A lot of it is the timing, but I don't think you can really control that. I think you just have to make what you want. I know a song is good if three months later I'm like, “Yeah, this is still good.” It's a really hard litmus test, cause you're naturally going to be like, “Ah, I could do better.” 

Being that there's going to be a before and after once this album comes out, what are you most looking forward to in that after?

Cisco: I want me and the homies to be synonymous with our city. All my favorite artists are synonymous with a place, city, idea. When you think of Kanye, you think of Chicago. When you think of Tyler, you think of LA. I just want me and the homies to be New York. When you think of us, you think of all the fire things associated with New York.

That’s a big ambition, and you’re exactly on track to achieve it. Fun question to close out: if an alien tribe landed on Earth, and you had to introduce them to the human race by playing them one album, what album would it be?

Elijah: To Pimp a Butterfly.

Jackson: I would say Rumors by Fleetwood Mac.

Yoshi: These are all wrong answers. It's obviously some sort of album displaying the overtone series, so they could understand what sound is in the first place.

Cisco: I'm realizing there are so many albums, like just ever. There's a lot to choose from. I'm gonna say Stevie, Songs in the Key of Life.