Musician Juan Wauters talks about how he created a hip-hop song for his new album, Real Life Situations.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
COLA BOYY: What’s up, boys and girls? Yeah, yeah.
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: Hi. My name is Juan Wauters.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
COLA BOYY: You want to hear a story?
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: I see music-making as an adventure, as a game, as having fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: (Singing) The people sing. What they singing, man? What they singing? What they singing? Some ask for Juan…
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Juan Wauters is a musician from Uruguay and Queens, N.Y. He has a new album out, “Real Life Situations.” The songs find him taking on some new genres.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: (Singing) Said, wayo (ph), wayo, wayo…
JUAN WAUTERS: Definitely the one that differs the most from my previous work, I think, is the one called “Unity” that with Cola Boyy because that was pretty much like straight up our own sick version of like a hip-hop song or something. But it’s nothing like that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
WAUTERS: (Singing) Yes, it’s that JPW MJU 718.
COLA BOYY: Give me 805, bro.
WAUTERS: Long time coming. Hear them together now.
COLA BOYY: (Rapping) Juan and Cola, we’re going real hard…
WAUTERS: I gravitated towards the guitar when I started playing music, so I never really recorded that type of music seriously. I had produced rappers in my neighborhood that sing, but I had never, like, sang myself anything like that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
COLA BOYY: (Rapping) I got the rhythm. I got the rhyme. I do it good every single time. Shoutout my boy Juan.
WAUTERS: (Singing) It’s that JPW coming out of your stereo. Shoutout Matt V and Rey Misterio. I don’t know what’s up with the hysteria.
We wanted to make a track like Mase – you know, Mase, a singer from the early 2000s. We wanted to make a track like Mase, “Welcome Back,” that song “Welcome Back.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WELCOME BACK”)
MASE: (Singing) See the names have all changed since I been around. But the game ain’t the same since I left out…
WAUTERS: But then it mutated into, like, some obscure other type of song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: (Singing) I don’t know what’s up with the hysteria. They talk coronavirus on the radio. You thought my music was like this. Now you think my music is like that. I’m going to let you think it while I let loose and let it roll…
WAUTERS: Different vibe towards the end, a little more bumping and more mad, I would think, like the chord progression. That’s the feeling.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: (Singing) So adventurous. What the world needs now – a world surrounding me – is love – a world surrounding me – sweet love. It’s another MJU JPW presentation…
WAUTERS: First, it starts kind of, like, joyful. Towards the end, it’s like more evil, mad type of thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “UNITY”)
JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY: (Singing) U-N-I-T-Y. U-N-I-T-Y.
WAUTERS: I could have done, you know, what I’ve done before, an acoustic guitar sort of music. But we tried to – no, we didn’t try. We made a song together in which we felt comfortable to do things that we wouldn’t do in our own songs. So we came out of our element, and we met halfway.
(SOUNDBITE OF JUAN WAUTERS AND COLA BOYY SONG, “UNITY”)
WAUTERS: It’s nothing that we planned, really, but I think it – looking back, I think that’s what happened.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MONSOON”)
WAUTERS: (Singing) Yeah, man.
SIMON: Juan Wauters on working with Cola Boyy on his new song “Unity” from the album “Real Life Situations.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MONSOON”)
WAUTERS: (Singing) Peter, put another quarter in the meter. Stick around ‘till the time you want to meet her. Let us work…
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