Rap duo Joey Valence and Brae caught the attention of older rap heads and new fans to the scene with their unique references and witty lyricism. Some may know them from their first hit “Punk Tactics”. Stepping in a new direction, the two friends released their club classic album No Hands early this summer. Performing it live for the first time at Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle, WA, the crowd went crazy for the high-energy artists. Yelling along to “THE BADDEST” at the beginning of their set, and again during the encore, that crowd solidified that Joey Valence and Brae are here to stay.
Before their set, I sat with the duo to learn more about their creation process, which song from their new album would be a club banger, and their four-year journey. Read the interview and check out the full gallery from their set below.
I’m really into the club vibe of your most recent album No Hands. If there was one song, besides “The Baddest”, that you would hear at the club, which would it be?
Brae: It’d be “Okay”. we’re open the crowd yells back.
Joey Valence: I want to say “Bussit”. People would just be punching each other.
Brae: That’d be aggressive but it would be fun.
Joey Valence: Yeah.
What was it like collaborating with Ayesha Erotica on “The Baddest (Remix)”?
Joey Valence: It was actually crazy. She’s crazy with that kind of music. I literally just reached out and was like, “Hey, do you want to hop on?” She sent me the vocals in an hour. It was done and we put it out. I made the mistake of putting it on TikTok way too early.
I saw the comments on that video.
Joey Valence: That was like, oops. They wanted it immediately. It was supposed to be released on August 2, and we pushed it up two weeks. Like, holy shit. We gotta get this out.
How has the reception been since it came out?
Joey Valence: It’s already on a ton of charts, it’s gonna pass “Punk Tactics”. It got 200,000 or something streams on the first day. Something like that. Also just to work with her and have more female representation on our on our songs is really cool for us.
Brae: We’ve been wanting to work with more women.
Joey Valence: It’s exciting.
Which other female rappers or artists would you like to work with in the future?
Brae: So many. Everyone is so talented. Charli XCX, SZA. I like Coi Leray.
Joey Valence: Rico Nasty.
Brae: Rico Nasty would be fire.
Joey Valence: I literally have a ton I wrote down.
You mentioned that you’re most proud of “No Hands” and “Omnitrix”. How did you feel being so open on both of those songs?
Joey Valence: I don’t even know if we were as open as we could have been. Either way, I think for both of us, we’ve been wanting to put more of an introspective but also club vibe into our stuff. And those were two opportunities for us to talk about our journey so far, and how much we’ve done this on our own. Both of those songs are ones that push home the purpose of the album.
Brae: The first album, too, was just a giant punk freestyle. There was no rhyme or reason or theme in any of the songs. On this album, “No Hands and “Omnitrix”, it was cool to talk about the journey that we’ve been going on for four years. The progression of what we’ve been up to. We’ve been doing something a little bit braggadocious but confident in ourselves, we’re proud of ourselves.
How has it been as independent artists and gaining as much success as you had in the last four years?
Joey Valence: I don’t even know if we’re really realizing it now. We talk about it all the time. We still feel and act like completely normal people around everybody. But just beyond that, it’s crazy because of the fact that it gives other people confidence that they can do the same thing. That’s the whole reason, especially behind the album, we’re just two best fucking friends and we make music and that’s what it’s all about. And that’s what it will be like. There’s no outside influence there.
Brae: It’s cool not being on a label because just saying you’re independent is like a flex. I’ve gotten pretty far. We have an amazing team helping us out. The only other huge artists who are independent and are new is $uicideboys$.
Joey Valence: It’s not that it’s out of the question for us. I think we just have so many resources to do everything we need to do by ourselves. We’re just like, “Let’s build this up until we have so much momentum to where it makes sense.” We can write our own rules and go into a deal controlling most of it.
How quickly did you start working on No Hands after the release of Punk Tactics?
Brae: I forgot the timeline because we were touring Punk Tactics and doing a handful of live show stuff. We got No Hands finished up in two months.
Joey Valence: I think we were done with all of the Punk Tactic stuff pretty early in the year 2023. We didn’t make a lot of stuff the entirety of that year. We put out the album, and then we were pretty much set. We released one single in December, but the entire album was made from the end of January to the beginning of March.
How long did it take to make Punk Tactics?
Brae: That one was different because like all those songs were just singles. Over the span of a handful of months. All the songs get made relatively quickly.
Joey Valence: In most of them, the ideas get done in a day or two. And that’s when we know what feels the most right and the most authentic for us. So for sure.
You mentioned that you like to work on songs quickly because it makes them feel more authentic. If you keep working on it, it feels less genuine.
Joey Valence: You question yourself. You get burned. It’s true though, when it feels the most right is your first reaction to something, you have to capture that as fast as you possibly can. That reaction you’re having is the reaction you want other people to have. So if you keep thinking about it and thinking about it, even as an artist or as a listener, you listen to a song a ton of times, and then you move on to your next favorite song. Or the opposite where a song grows on you. But with ours, it’s about capturing your attention immediately.
Were there any songs on your most recent album that you were surprised by the reaction?
Joey Valence: We knew people were gonna love “The Baddest”. For sure. We knew that we made that with the intent that this is gonna be a banger. We wanted to make sure we had something like that and we made the exact song we wanted doing exactly what we were hoping it to do.
Brae: All the songs on the album are doing relatively well.
Joey Valence: We were surprised about the reaction to “Bussit”. It’s an out-there song. People really enjoyed it and the switch-up and everything that happens in it. For me “Omnitrix” also surprised me because it’s so different than anything we’ve done before. Hearing a really positive reaction to that made me confident especially as a producer to try more things.
