Last Saturday, Seattle group Brothers from Another performed in front of a huge audience as openers for the University of Washington Spring Show. Since releasing Quality of Living EP, they have continued to rise in popularity and have performed with big name Seattle-area artists, notably appearing on the Blue Scholars tour in California.
Brothers from Another aim to release their newest EP, Taco Tuesdays, on June 12th. Their music is available on their Bandcamp.
Tiglo and Cole, who are joined by Beeba and a host of featured artists on their EP, took some time to talk about Taco Tuesdays, their music tastes and their backgrounds as artists, potentially risking their ‘street cred’ in the process.
So, how was Saturday?
Tiglo: It was a lot of fun; it was the first time we had done something like that, I guess. It was in a stadium. In my head it wasn’t like that, but there was a ton of people, a lot of people came out–I mean, it was Kendrick, The Dream, so a lot of people came out. It was pretty nerve wracking, I guess you could say. But, in the end we had a lot of fun and that was cool.
Did people know y’all?
Cole: Not really. Kind of made it interesting but it was cool. “I Love Your Girl” is a classic so it was cool to see The Dream live and Kendrick and stuff. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Tiglo: Threw a fist up to Kendrick, he threw it back. I was like, all right, cool. Swag, you know.
How’d you guys meet? How’d you start as a group?
Tiglo: Well, we met a long time ago… pretty long time ago. We used to play little league baseball together. I mean you don’t have to add that.
Cole: We’re working on our street cred right now, that’s not really helping.
Tiglo: We did play little league baseball together and then we ended up going to high school together too. And in high school, we had a friend who’s named Spike George, he’s still the man, he makes sure that whatever we do is like correct. George comes to us, he has this beat, he was like ‘Hey, guys, rap’ and we were like ‘Okay, fine we’ll do that.’ So we rapped, and it was fun, so we were like, ‘Let’s make a project.’
Cole: We just had too much free time.
Tiglo: Seriously, I don’t know why we weren’t doing school. It was reading day… we had reading day for our high school. Instead of studying for finals, we decided to take the entire day and record like five songs and pull a project together.
Cole: It’s safe to say our finals suffered from that a little bit.
Tiglo: Sophomore year finals weren’t the best.
Cole: It happens.
Tiglo: We put it out, kind of just for our school, chill. Everybody got kind of excited and was like ‘Yo this is pretty good’ and it was fun, so we’ll keep doing it. And then, we looked up and we were like, ‘Oh shit, we’re like, rappers.’ This wasn’t supposed to happen.
You guys don’t have anything on Datpiff or anything; where do you guys usually release your music?
Cole: We usually do Bandcamp. We have like a little Tumblr and all that stuff.
Tiglo: iTunes. Bandcamp.
Cole: Oh yeah, we are on iTunes.
And you guys are on Spotify, which makes me really happy.
Tiglo: Oh really? I didn’t even know that. Tight. The whole little league baseball players on Datpiff, I don’t know if it would fit… but we should probably venture into something like that.
Cole: Our next mixtape with YG will be on there, so it’s okay.
How’d you guys meet Beeba?
Tiglo: I met Beeba…
Cole: He used to hate me, that’s all I know. I don’t know how I met him, but before he met me, he hated me, I don’t know why.
Tiglo: I had a crush on this girl. It was her sophomore year, I was a freshman. We went to her boat dance, Argessy Cruises. It was me and my boy, because I brought my boy, he went with some other girl so it wouldn’t be awkward, right? So we’re kind of awkward freshmen. And off in the corner, I see this white boy, this heavyset white boy, doing the running man, doing his shit. I was like ‘I fuck with that kid, we’re going to be friends.’ I was like ‘Yo, Isaiah,” and he was like “Nick, people call me Beeba.” Boom. Homies ever since.
How’d you guys come up with the name for your group?
Cole: I think that was the same day that we made those five songs, it all just kind of happened that day. We were like ‘dang, we kind of need a name for these songs.’ And I think we just took the first thing that came to mind.
Tiglo: I think the name sucks, that’s just my opinion…
Cole: I’m in the same boat on that one.
Tiglo: I think it’s kind of corny, it’s kind of cliché.
Cole: It sucked the least out of all our ideas.
Are you going to change it?
Tiglo: As much as it does suck, I feel like it kind of embodies BFA, what we’re doing here, I guess.
So you guys obviously aren’t super hood or anything…
Cole: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Just kidding, you guys are the most hood people I’ve ever seen… and you guys rap about college life and rap about problems young adults deal with; do you guys ever feel a pressure to be harder or do you think you’ll continue with the same style of music?
Cole: At some point, I tried. It was on somebody else’s song, he had face tattoos, I was nervous coming into the studio. I went in there and tried to sound like really hood and it just didn’t work. I was like, ‘Alright this is not going to go over well.’ For some reason people tell me I sound like I’m smiling when I rap, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me…
Tiglo: I feel like people would be really surprised by the music that we listen to. I listen to a lot of YG, Chief Keef, 2 Chainz, like real hood music. That’s all I bump. But when you record and make your own music, it’s gotta be you. And like you said, I’m not really 2 Chainz.
Cole: You’re not? Learn something new every day.
Tiglo: I mean… I guess when we make music, it’s just like chill shit, what we do. Hopefully it shines through and people can tell that we’re just being us. Although I do like hood music and I wish I was a hood rapper but I’m not, so what can I do.
Cole: I’m kind of in the same boat, except for like, this is being recorded so I don’t know if I should say this, but I throw a little John Mayer in there every once in a while, Jack Johnson on a Sunday morning, but I pretty much listen to the same type… a lot of Dom Kennedy, a lot of Kendrick.
Tiglo: This guy has been bumping A$AP a lot.
Cole: Oh yeah, a lot of A$AP.
Tiglo: I’ve been in Cali just bumping YG, LA music, Dom, Casey.
So you guys go to two different schools, so how does the production process work out?
Cole: We’re not really productive when we’re here; when we’re here we usually just like, kick it. We’re actually more productive now. Especially last year when we went to the same school— I just transferred out of that school– last year we weren’t productive at all. This year, for some reason it worked out better actually.
Tiglo: I don’t know, when we went to the same school, we didn’t do shit. We were just like… there’s that story right? We were just drunk the whole time. We’re coming out with a new project, the Taco Tuesday EP and we realized that we recorded the whole thing just like, on weekend trips home or in two different cities. We were like ‘How did we do that?’ It took us the whole summer to record the one before that when we were here, in Seattle. We haven’t been in Seattle and we put a whole project together. It was like ‘Wow did we do that that quickly?’
Cole: I think it went a lot smoother than last time.
Tiglo: It was like ‘Wow, did we do that many songs?’ I just noticed it, and it was tight. I was proud of it.
How often do you guys see each other then?
Tiglo: During like the school year? I’d say this year we had the opportunity to do a lot of shows in Washington and around Seattle.
Cole: I missed so much school.
Tiglo: One of my friends who goes to school with me lives in LA. I say, “I’m going to Seattle this weekend.” He’s like, “You go home more than me and I live forty minutes away.”
Cole: Yeah, we’ve been up here a lot. And I was down in LA a lot and like vice versa in San Francisco. We worked it out.
So you guys did some shows in California this year too, right?
Cole: Yeah, we did a couple. We were able to kind of hop on the Blue Scholars tour for a while. So we opened up for them for what was it, three dates? Three dates in California.
Tiglo: We did Frisco– and we didn’t do Santa Ana because we had to get back–but we did Frisco and LA with them. That was tight, that was like… I don’t know what…
Cole: Yeah, I didn’t know they were so big. You know, they’re like, Seattle legends. We got there at like 7 o clock and there was a line around the block in LA. They sold out. I think they sold out every show on that tour.
Tiglo: It was tight. And the crowd– a lot of people say that LA crowds, we’ve heard that they suck or whatever, but I’m convinced Blue Scholars fans are the best. They were some of the dopest crowds we’ve rocked. They were just hella hyped. They don’t know who we are and they were hella jacked with their hands up and stuff. It was just tight.
What’s an average studio session or day where you guys work on music look like?
Cole: We struggle in certain departments, productivity is one of them. We record in three different places and they’re all with complete homies. One is in that kid Spike’s basement and his mom will like, bring us cookies and we’ll play Ken Griffey Jr. Slugfest on Nintendo and stuff and smoke like, in his fireplace.
Tiglo: Juvenile shit. We’ve been recording a lot at Elan Wright’s studio and Parker Reddington’s, two friends. Same kind of thing. We just have a lot of fun. There was a period where it was like ‘Let’s work, let’s do this, let’s get in, get out.’ It just wasn’t as fun. We had to take a step back and be like ‘Okay wait, hold on.’
Cole: We fucked around on this project a lot.
Tiglo: That’s why I like it. It’s not like, I don’t want to say, cookie cutter rap. We didn’t follow a formula. We just made music and made the kind of music that we wanted to make. And I think that’s why it’s, like, good. Hopefully, I don’t know. Did we answer that question at all?
Cole: Not really.
Tiglo: So we go to the studio, fuck around a little bit, usually get some food. Beeba, of course, gets food, he’s always down for a snack break, we get in there. Like I said, I mean, we don’t even know how to count bars. It’s just like ‘Lets get in there, lay this down, what can we do?’ At the end of it, we just smoke a lot, chill, have fun with it.
Cole: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
So that’s a good transition to talking about Taco Tuesdays. What’s the story behind the name?
Cole: We like tacos a lot.
Tiglo: Freshman year when we both went to the same school, we had this idea. I mean, we’re in southern California, there’s a lot of taco places. We’re like ‘uh… lets try and find the best tacos in our neighborhood. So every Tuesday, let’s just go to a new taco spot.’ So we got a couple friends and we’d go to every different taco spot. We’d Taco Tuesday up real hard and we were like ‘this is cool, let’s call our next project Taco Tuesdays!’ So yeah, we’ve just been running with that. We enjoy tacos. Can’t go wrong with tacos.
Cole: I might get tacos today. That might have to happen.
What’s your favorite taco place out here?
Cole: Tacos Chukis.
Tiglo: Everything’s fresh, ingredients. They put a little pineapple on the fucking tacos. Let me tell you, it is like ‘what?’
Cole: Little baby burritos. Oh my god.
Tiglo: I don’t know why they’re so good…
Cole: I think it’s cause they’re little.
Tiglo: It’s just so fresh.
Everything’s better when it’s little.
Tiglo: I agree!
Quick one sentence summary of Taco Tuesdays.
Cole: I don’t know; it’s all over the place.
Tiglo: We got together with a lot of friends, a lot of good people, a lot of talented musicians, and we all tried to get as creative and free with the process as we could. And that’s what I think Taco Tuesdays is.
Cole: That’s two sentences. Unless you semi-colon it.
Tiglo: Excuse me? I’m ignoring this. Like I said, work on your sentence!
Okay, ready, Cole?
Cole: We got together, with a lot of talented people… let’s just run with yours. I like that. Let’s just keep those two sentences.
So A$AP is a big departure from Quality of Living, how do you think your music has changed?
Cole: It’s not too A$AP… we’re not quite that hood. I’d say it’s different. With Quality of Living, we planned it out a little more. This one is like, we’re getting beats from all over the place. We have a feature on every song I think.
Tiglo: Except for like two.
Cole: Oh, really? Oh yeah, Rocky’s on there now. So like, usually you try to kind of have something that forms and goes together. We pretty much just found whatever songs we liked and made ‘em. We collab’ed with Nude, they’re like an indie band and stuff, and then we have a beat from Sab on there that’s weird as shit. It’s all over the place. But we just kind of made the music that we wanted to make on this one, whatever we felt like was the right way to go at the time. It ended up being all over the place but it kinda goes together. Kinda. Maybe.
Do you think there’s a message for Taco Tuesdays?
Tiglo: We try to put the same message in a lot of our music, which is like, as cliché and corny as this is going to sound, is like ‘Do what you do and have fun with it.’ You know what I mean? If you got some shit that you do and you love, just do it, have fun with it. Eat tacos.
Here’s some random questions. Current favorite artists?
Cole: Imma go A$AP, James Blake, and… Kendrick. That’s pretty much all I’ve been listening to. A little 2 Chainz here and there too.
Tiglo: I’ve been listening to a lot of Dom Kennedy and YG. Straight up, Dom and YG, that’s all I’ve been listening to. And that one Calvin Harris song, it’s been in my head for the past three weeks.
Feel So Close?
Tiglo: Yeah. Catchy as shit.
Biggest influences on your music? You guys said you listen to a lot of music that isn’t a lot like yours…so if you had to pick some people who influenced you guys?
Tiglo: I think… although we do listen to a lot of hood shit, I’m pretty familiar with all of the, what I would classify as ‘real hip hop,’ you know? I think the diversity in our iTunes libraries is kind of what influences us the most. As this guy was talking about, he gets real soft and listens to a lot of John Mayer.
Cole: It’s not a problem.
Tiglo: …and that shows up and that comes out on the track.
Cole: I don’t know what I did to anybody this morning…
Tiglo: I threw you under the bus, my bad. It’s cool. I listen to John Mayer; I’m not going to lie. I love it. Continuum is one of my top played albums, fucking I love it. It’s good stuff…
Cole: I caught you on that Adele shit today…
Tiglo: “First Love” by Adele is an incredible song. So I think the diversity in what we listen to shows up in our music. I think we’ve been influenced the most by a lot of Tribe, we both listen to a lot of John Mayer…
Cole: The Physics.
Tiglo: The Physics is my favorite local group. That’s my favorite local group; I fucking love the Physics. I would say I was in my freshman year in high school and I saw the Physics for free at the Vera Project, and I was like ‘okay, let’s rap.’ Anybody else to throw in there? And then a lot of old stuff like… there’s a lot of music in our families. This guy’s sister plays the violin. Couple of my extended family are in music too. We’ve kind of grown up around this kind of like, musical atmosphere.
Do you guys have any weird talents? Can you play different instruments or something?
Cole: I realized this the other day. There’s a lot of basic skills I’m really lacking. Can’t swim; that’s on my summer goal list.
Tiglo: I thought I couldn’t swim. I went swimming recently, I was drunk, and apparently I can! Check that off my list. This guy used to play the piano. He could play Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road Jack.”
Cole: That was the one song I could play.
Tiglo: Incredibly, like, he got it down.
Cole: Only like the first forty seconds though and then I didn’t know what to do.
Tiglo: What can I do that’s weird? I can cook my ass off.
Cole: Really?
Tiglo: I can cook my ass off.
Cole: You’re all right. I don’t really have any skills. Like life skills… Can’t swim, Can’t cook a thing. I was home for winter break and I tried to make a steak. Put a bunch of oil in the pan, turned it on, went upstairs for a little bit, came back. I was about to put my steak in and like a drop of grease fell and then like flames shot through the ceiling. The fire alarm went off; almost burned my eyebrows off. I was like ‘okay, not going to try that one again!’ I was on Youtube, figuring out directions and stuff. Just wanted a steak! My social skills aren’t really on par. What else do I need? I want to be able to play a sport. I played baseball when I was a kid, but I can’t make like left-handed layups. I don’t have the dexterity. There’s a lot of things I need to work on. Self-improvement, that’s what I’m going for this summer.
Tiglo: I think I’m pleasantly mediocre at a lot but not good at too much either. I don’t know, cooking.
If you had to pick your number one probably most played iTunes song?
Cole: This going to get real embarrassing. I try not to look at it…
Tiglo: …because you know it’s going to be something bad. I’d promise you it’s probably John Legend and Dale or John Mayer. Now, wild card, it could be… have you seen the movie Drive? Watch Drive, it’s a really good movie. It’s the song on Drive by College featuring Electric Youth, it’s called a Real Hero. I’ve listened to that song a lot since I watched the film. And the film just came out.
Cole: That’s pretty impressive, shot up to number one pretty quick. I have this sleep playlist that I listen to every night that, you know, just keep accumulating the plays., So there’s about 15 songs that are played like a thousand times and then everything else is like a hundred.
Tiglo: Some Bon Iver might be on there.
That’s good sleeping music.
Tiglo: That is good sleeping music.
Do you guys have any crazy performance stories? Anything crazy that happened at a concert or something?
Tiglo: One time we were doing a backyard performance…
Cole: It was almost over after that; I was so mad. I was ready to quit.
Tiglo: I’d never drank before a show, but I thought, “I’ll have a beer or two, I’ll be fine, I’ll be chill.” And I get on stage, and I’ve had like three beers…
Cole: He didn’t get a single word right.
Tiglo: The words won’t come out! I know what I’m trying to say but…
Cole: Those aren’t real words. I was so mad.
Tiglo: Needless to say, there’s been a strict no drinking or smoking rule put in place before performing because I just can’t do it.
Cole: I usually manage to fuck like one thing up pretty bad at every show. At the Kendrick show, there was a real high stage and there was like a little thing in the front that you could like stand on in front of the stage. So I was like okay at some point I’m going to jump down, I’m going to go stand on that thing and I’m going to come back. I jump down and I realize that I can’t jump very high. I can’t get back on stage. So I’m like looking around and one of the security guards gives me a boost up. You know, I fuck something up every time.
Tiglo: There’s been a bunch of times I’ve stepped on his mike cord and his cord just goes out and he’s rapping but the cord’s not plugged in and I’m like ‘Oh, my bad.’ There’s been blunders.
Cole: Rookie mistakes. I think we did our first song at a block party without the mikes on.
Tiglo: Yeah, that was pretty bad.
What was the last concert each of you attended and next concert you intend to attend?
Tiglo: I saw Asher Roth in LA. I enjoy Asher Roth a lot, his last Pabst and Jazz, I don’t know if you guys fuck with Ash…
Cole: He’s got a bad rap from the “I Love College.”
Tiglo: After that, it was hard for him to come back. He’s actually a really good lyricist. He’s kind of like quirky or weird, but the boy spits.
Cole: Last thing I went to was the Kung Foo Grip show here.
Tiglo: Oh yeah, I guess that was the last thing I went to…
Cole: Giving the wrong answer…
Tiglo: Take Ash. Take Ash.
Cole: It was cool. They kill it every time so yeah, that was one to see. That was at the Vera. Jarv Dee was hosting and Nacho was telling stories which is always entertaining.
Tiglo: Nacho Picasso…
Cole: He’s a character. He’s really scary. He’s the man though, that show was tight.
Tiglo: I fuck with Nacho.
Next concert?
Tiglo: Hopefully Schoolboy, I want to see that for sure. Like I said, I’ve been listening to a bunch of LA music. Hands On the Wheel, fucking love that song. Figg Street.
Sonia: Have you guys heard Ab-Soul’s Control System yet?
Tiglo: I’ve seen it on Twitter and shit, but I haven’t downloaded it yet. I’m having computer issues.
Cole: He lost his computer. Check this out… his computer breaks, they send him a FedEx box to send his computer with. Takes the Fedex box, puts his computer in it and takes it to the Post Office. The Post Office has nothing to do with Fedex. He drops it off and leaves and they’re like ‘Dude, what do you want us to do?’
Tiglo: Fedex picks up from the post office; that’s their job, they pick up packages.
Cole: You fucked up.
Tiglo: I fucked up. I should have taken it to Fedex. So it’s lost. Just bought my computer, why’d it break in the first place? Just bought my computer. Nobody knows where it is. So I’ve been dealing with that for a little bit, but you know. Can’t cry over spilled milk. So I don’t have the new Ab-Soul because I don’t have a computer.
What program do you guys use to produce?
Tiglo: Our producers…what does Morg use?
Cole: Logic.
Tiglo: What does Xander use? We work with a kid we went to high school with, a kid… three or four guys mostly. Justo from the Physics too; I like his stuff a lot. I think they all use Logic? Reason and logic, I don’t know.
Where does this whole zoomed thing come from? Because I’ve never heard that before…
Cole: Beeba’s yoga instructor.
Tiglo: She’s crazy. She’s so like…
Cole: First off it’s funny that Beeba does yoga.
Tiglo: Yoga on the beach is what he does. Yoga on the beach. And she’s always wearing like leotards and real bright colors and shit. We’re selling t-shirts and she’s like ‘Yo, these are incredibly magical and zoomed.’ And we were like, ‘Yeah, that’s zoomed, yeah.’ It just sounds cool. How can you categorize something better than zoomed? It’s zoomed.
When’s the next time you guys are performing?
Cole: We’re trying to figure that out right now. We’re trying to do one final hurrah thing. Somewhere in July hopefully, just do one kind of big show before we go back to school.
Taco Tuesdays comes out the 5th?
Cole: The 12th. We had some issues, but it’s the 12th.