Jaboukie Young-White Returns With ‘Rockwhyler’
The single follows jaboukie’s debut cut, ‘BBC.’
Multi-hyphenate jaboukie Young-White has released his second single, “ROCKWHYLER,” via Interscope Records. A riff on a common mispronunciation of the dog breed he grew up with, “ROCKWHYLER” was released alongside a glitched-out music video directed by jaboukie himself, featuring a kaleidoscope of footage recorded on Super 8, infrared, and digital cameras modded by DP Eric Schleicher. Note, caution is advised for photosensitive viewers.
Of the song’s title jaboukie said, “Growing up I had two rottweilers, Juno and Athena. When my family walked them, we’d always get stopped by awestruck strangers asking, ‘Is that a ‘rockwhyler’?’ The pronunciation ‘rock-why-ler’ feels like home to me.” Evoking additional shades of home both near and far, jaboukie used a collage of soundbites for the instrumental including a sample of the Myrtle-Broadway J/M/Z train brakes and recorded conversations with his family in Jamaica.
“My songwriting and song production processes usually occur in tandem,” he said, adding, “the distortion effect I used on the bass created a delay that sounded like a snarling dog, so I built everything else around that.”
The grating nature of the song is intended to subvert the hypermasculinity entrenched in much of the classic hip-hop, dancehall, and punk rock that jaboukie has been influenced by musically, especially during the years when he was still concealing his queer identity out of necessity.
“Pushing those sounds, those structures, and those attitudes to their breaking points makes me giddy,” he said. “Usually my lyrics are more narrative-driven and punchline-heavy, but the repetition and crassness in this track tap into a more visceral, archetypal kind of character that I both can and can’t relate to.”
The new track features vocal and musical contributions from jaboukie’s dog Callaloo Young-White, who played the theremin on the track and shares co-writing credits. The song was mixed by Grammy-winning mix engineer Alex Tumay (Young Thug, 21 Savage, Metro Boomin, Childish Gambino, Travis Scott), and mastered by Grammy-winning master engineer Joe LaPorta of Sterling Sound (fka twigs, Santigold, Shawn Mendes, Future, Kid Cudi).
