They Hate Change are shaking up hip-hop from Tampa Bay to Peckham

“We like to exper­i­ment a lot and ask our­selves: why not?’” says Dre, one half of the Florid­i­an avant-garde hip-hop duo They Hate Change. ​“Some of our lyrics con­sist of these ​‘codes’ that might be for anoth­er enthu­si­ast who’s into the same stuff that we are – we just want to take time to speak to them and bring them into our world.”

​“I think some peo­ple read about our influ­ences and how we’re bend­ing every­thing and expect to hear the cra­zi­est, most dif­fi­cult shit ever,” adds Vonne. ​“But when you lis­ten, it’s prob­a­bly the fur­thest thing from somebody’s idea of ​‘exper­i­men­tal rap’ – it just sounds like a real­ly good song. The mixed ele­ments won’t stick out unless you’re hip to the ref­er­ence points.”

As They Hate Change, the duo beam hard rap through a kalei­do­scope of sounds, from their home state’s elec­tron­ic sub­gen­res to the far-flung cor­ners of drum ​’n’ bass, Chica­go foot­work, post-punk, prog, grime, krautrock and emo. In their ever-expand­ing son­ic uni­verse, any­thing is fair game. Their crit­i­cal­ly hyped 2018 album Now, And Nev­er Again pulls influ­ence from Clipse, the B‑52s, the Bea­t­les and a spec­trum of UK club sounds. On 2022’s Final­ly, New, Vonne and Dre flex their skillset at max­i­mal lev­els, deliv­er­ing pro­found­ly per­son­al and brag­gado­cious bars with pulse-rac­ing flow over Tam­pa jook, Mia­mi bass and the more sur­pris­ing sounds of break­beat and jun­gle.

​“Weird­ly, we first heard jun­gle in 2012 via Ethe­re­al,” Vonne laughs, ref­er­enc­ing the elu­sive Atlanta pro­duc­er’s project Car Ther­a­py. ​“We saw that his genre tag on Band­camp said ​‘jun­gle’, but we thought he’d made it up.” Their inter­est ramped up when Dre’s broth­er-in-law blessed them with a crate of records packed with every­thing from ShyFX to DJ Zinc and Ram Raiders com­pi­la­tions. ​“There was a bunch of break records in there etched from scratch­ing,” says Dre. ​“Hel­la white labels, dubs and shit. As we dug deep­er it was like, ​‘oh okay, this is jungle.’” 

From there they began div­ing into Dillinger, Goldie and under­ground sounds that pow­ered the UK’s pirate radio sta­tions in the 90s. As they got to grips with jungle’s ori­gins, Vonne sug­gest­ed rap­ping over it. ​“At first I thought ​‘We can’t do this?! It’s too fast!’” Dre remem­bers. ​“But we sat and wrote vers­es, and some­how it worked.”

Vonne and Dre met at the age of 14 at their apart­ment com­plex in Tam­pa. Vonne was sell­ing Dre bad weed and keep­ing the last exist­ing neigh­bour­hood youth togeth­er via bas­ket­ball. Dre had recent­ly moved from upstate New York, where he was raised on a diet of main­stream rap­pers like Jay‑Z and Jadakiss, and the city’s chief mix­tape-mak­ers like DJ Clue, Green Lantern and DJ Envy. Both self-pro­fessed ​“musi­cal omni­vores,” they imme­di­ate­ly bond­ed over a shared inex­haustible curios­i­ty and pen­chant for obscu­ri­ty. Even now, their friend­ship is so close it verges on tele­path­ic. They simul­ta­ne­ous­ly burst into laugh­ter telling me how they school each oth­er on the road with Triv­ia War­fare pod­casts and still live for unearthing music the oth­er does­n’t know.

​“We used to play ball and just talk hel­la music, sneak­ers and cul­ture in gen­er­al,” says Vonne, who intro­duced Dre to under­ground Flori­da rap­pers like Tam­pa Tony and Tom G.

​“We’d find all these lit­tle nich­es and test each oth­er. Like, ​‘Have you heard the siz­zle on this record? Ahh, you heard that, too, huh? Okay, wow, you get it’,” Dre adds. ​“It was cool to meet some­one in the south who knew a lot, and Vonne damn near knew more than I did about East Coast music.”

Vonne was already rap­ping and record­ing in the stu­dio by the time they met. At the age of 13 he was in with a local col­lec­tive dri­ven by futur­is­tic swag that even­tu­al­ly bal­looned to about 20 rap­pers across the city. By 15, though, he was ready to sink his teeth into his own sound – and he knew Dre was a next-lev­el tastemak­er. ​“Vonne would come to me ask­ing, ​‘This guy online is ran­dom­ly send­ing me beats. Check ​‘em out,” Dre remem­bers. ​“So I’m lis­ten­ing like, ​‘Okay, skip. Okay, this is good. Okay, this is good’. It wasn’t until months lat­er that Vonne told me he was the one mak­ing those beats!”

​“I told Dre they were some­body else’s because I knew some were trash,” Vonne laughs. ​“But after a bunch of input from him, it became clear that we should be mak­ing tracks togeth­er.”

They played their first show as They Hate Change in 2015 at the Sun­ny Fluff Skate Shop in Tam­pa. From the jump, they gained a rep­u­ta­tion and under­ground clout as the scene’s ​“hard­est live act” – their immac­u­late flow and syn­chro­nised dance steps echo­ing ear­ly Big Dad­dy Kane, with their style pay­ing homage to Out­kast or Tribe Called Quest. ​“If you look good you play good,” says Vonne, who frames their atten­tion to styl­is­tic detail as a pro­gres­sion of their first con­ver­sa­tions geek­ing about sneak­ers and fash­ion his­to­ry, from the French BCBG era to the Mods to Drake’s on Sav­ile Row. ​“We’ve always want­ed to have some sort of coor­di­na­tion. We think about show­man­ship, light­ing and which colours might pop best on stage. We watch clips from our live shows the same way an ath­lete reviews film. We look at our place­ments, how we sound and crowd reac­tions. We always want to put on our best and give a great show. You can’t expect for peo­ple to groove with you if you aren’t mov­ing.”

​“If you ask us about the evo­lu­tion of that live show from the begin­ning until now, it’s more like a rev­o­lu­tion. We’ve come full cir­cle,” says Dre. ​“From that first gig, we were com­ing out like ​‘we got­ta show them.’ We had three syn­the­sis­ers, foot ped­als and a Roland SP 404. We were wear­ing suits and knock­ing it out!”

Over time they added more synth and drum machines to their arse­nal, from the Korg MS-20 syn­the­sis­er to Akai racks – sam­plers 90’s jun­gle, drum ​’n’ bass and hip-hop pro­duc­ers used. ​“Every­thing sound­ed loud. We just want­ed to wash every­one away in synths, and we per­formed that way too,” Vonne reflects. They played lit­er­al­ly any­where they could to cut their teeth – ​“at every venue, every fake venue, house par­ty, skate shop, and art gallery.”

Every­thing changed with a DJ gig on a friend’s patio in 2016. They packed the wildest and deep­est cuts from their sprawl­ing col­lec­tions into one set and blew peo­ple’s minds, set­ting They Hate Change on the path towards the sin­gu­lar sound they own today. ​“Up until that point, we had joints, but those were just sit­ting on our com­put­er,” Vonne explains. ​“We’ve nev­er been the stu­dio rats. We were just so geek’d off per­form­ing live and mak­ing songs with­out putting them out, but see­ing the peo­ples reac­tion at that DJ set hit like, maybe we do have to actu­al­ly record them.”

Har­ness­ing the ener­gy of that DJ set, they set about per­fect­ing it on stage and in the stu­dio. After years of hit­ting up music pub­li­ca­tions and indie labels and hear­ing noth­ing back, they even­tu­al­ly kicked the walls down. In 2021 they inked a deal with laud­ed indie label Jag­jaguwar, popped up on ​‘ones to watch’ lists, and their eclec­ti­cism has since seen them sup­port acts as var­ied as Doom col­lab­o­ra­tors The Avalanch­es, exper­i­men­tal Ari­zona hip-hop group Injury Reserve and South Lon­don post-punks Shame. Woven togeth­er by ban­ter and vocal screech­ing from years of play­ing shows along­side deeply per­son­al ref­er­ences, Final­ly, New is a mag­num opus of Vonne and Dre’s tal­ents as word­smiths, pro­duc­ers and shapeshifters – full of synth-laden sound storms, rib-rat­tling drum ​‘n’ bass and lush 80s keys.

​“Whether it’s the first time peo­ple are hear­ing us or the last, we had to stamp it on Final­ly, New in the purest form so peo­ple under­stand what we’ve been doing,” Dre lights up. ​“We did­n’t want to be rap­ping your head off for the whole album. If you can do that in reg­gae or prog-rock, why can’t we do that in hip-hop? We want­ed lis­ten­ers to take a minute and lis­ten for a sec­ond; they might hear something.”

On ​“Some­days I Hate My Voice”, a speak­er-knock­ing ode to androg­y­nous gen­der eupho­ria, Vonne (who is gen­der­flu­id) name­drops punk icon Poly Styrene and pays homage to Jack­ie Shane and 100 gecs whilst artic­u­lat­ing their queer­ness in 3D, seek­ing nei­ther pity nor praise. Mean­while, Dre pens a hum­ble ode to his come up on ​“Lit­tle Broth­er” – a track he also cred­its to being his proud­est and most per­son­al, for help­ing open up his con­nec­tion to his fam­i­ly. So far, both songs have only been per­formed live once.

​“Writ­ing those songs def­i­nite­ly has an ele­ment of cathar­tic release. Some­times stuff is so deep that you can’t say it, so as an artist you find anoth­er medi­um to express it,” Dre explains. ​“It also helped even the two of us con­nect more. When I heard Vonne’s tracks it was like, ​‘Yo man, my friend was feel­ing that way, or going through that?’ – and hope­ful­ly peo­ple going through sim­i­lar things in their life that are dif­fi­cult to express can see them­selves in the music.”

Else­where, there are strings of trib­utes in their music for fel­low heads to unrav­el. MC SARGE (respon­si­ble for teach­ing Vonne to rap) fea­tures on ​“1000 Hors­es”, ​“Cod­ed Lan­guage (Inter­lude)” and ​“From the Floor” nod to tech­no giants Carl Craig and Theo Par­rish, and Pitch­fork laud­ed their five-minute instru­men­tal ​“Perm” as ​“their ver­sion of a Schemat­ic record.” ​“We start­ed mak­ing tracks back in 2010. Not to make things sound less impres­sive or what­ev­er, but the rea­son you hear Final­ly, New and are like, ​‘Wow, this is good,’ is because it’s not the first time we’ve done this,” says Vonne, adding, with a wink: ​“With the next one, we can real­ly go crazy.”

Half a year on from their first UK head­line at Peck­ham Audio in March, Dre and Vonne are back in the UK gear­ing up for an inti­mate base­ment gig at Third Man Records in Lon­don and a DJ set at Spir­it­land packed with spe­cial guests before round­ing off with a set at End of the Road. In typ­i­cal They Hate Change fash­ion, they’re com­ing in hot at the end of a busy sum­mer. They’ve torn fes­ti­val stages apart, become ​“New Class Mem­bers” of the Record­ing Academy/Grammy’s vot­ers com­mit­tee, and released ​“stunt (when I see u)” – a glitch­ing, woozy beat equipped with spit­fire vers­es and shoutouts to Lucy Dacus and Boy Bet­ter Know, and their first release since Final­ly, New.

​“This track is our mantra in a way. A reminder to our­selves to show what we are capa­ble of when oth­ers seem to doubt or dis­cred­it things we’ve done,” Dre and Vonne say defi­ant­ly. ​“We had this hair-brain scheme to mix all the sounds we love togeth­er, and it worked. We’re going to con­tin­ue to do what we do and that’s CHANGE!”

Fol­low Tra­cy on Twit­ter.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.