The Break Presents: LNDN DRGS

Coming out the west side of North America right now is a fresh sound that stands out in a vast field of trap music madness. LNDN DRGS, a duo consisting of rapper Jay Worthy and producer Sean House, are the breath of fresh air needed in an all too congested rap scene. While others build a sound that has become common, these two artists make music about growing up in Compton over slick funk music and soul samples spun in a loop. It's exhilarating to hear and completely fun to groove to.

"It’s cool to see the reaction to shit. Its crazy how far it reached already," Sean tells XXL. "We see the potential of how far it can go. Just getting the feedback has been pretty amazing. A lot of people fucking with this." Jay adds, "It’s more rappers that I look up to coming to me and see me and say our shit is crazy. To us it’s crazy and very humbling."

After breaking out in 2014 with the song "Uza Trikk,” featuring the late A$AP Yams, then "Burnout" in 2015, LNDN DRGS released their fantastic mixtape, Aktive, earlier this year. Now, the duo aims to drop their debut album and a boatload of other tunes.

"2017 I’m working with a number of producers and I have Sean overseeing everything," Jay says. "We got an EP coming out with Cardo and G Perico, I got another EP coming out with A$AP P. I got one with DJ Fresh and I just been in the studio a lot with other producers -- Alchemist, Jake One -- just cooking up shit, creating sounds and vibes. Me and Chuck Inglish are working on a project as we speak right now. It’s a lot of shit, 2017 is going to be a big year for LNDN DRGS."

Originality matters. Find out more about LNDN DRGS and their come up below.

Name: LNDN DRGS (Jay Worthy & Sean House)

Age: "Age?"

Hometown: Compton, L.A. and Vancouver, Canada

I grew up listening to: Jay Worthy: “I grew up listening to a gang of shit. I’ma tell you like this, my dad raised me on a lot of soul, a lot of jazz, a lot of funk, a lot of old school R&B and of course early rap stuff. I had the [Snoop Dogg] Doggstyle album, I remember I was so young my pops had to bring me there and buy it. MC Eiht, Spice 1, [Nas'] Illmatic, [Wu-Tang Clan's] 36 Chambers, the classics, the good shit, the golden era."

"I always was fucking around [with rap], just bussin’ raps with the homies. We be on the block playing oldies and shit and I always be spittin’ to the oldies. I didn’t really take things seriously until a little while ago. I dibble and dabble a bit and I knew people who did videos. It wasn’t until I linked with Sean and we formed this LNDN DRGS shit to where I really got serious about it. First we just started making records together and I say like we came up with the name like 2014."

"Sean comes from a super sample-based background too and he’s a [music] head. A lot of those samples you hear, a lot is from me and a lot is from him. I told him this, when we came to make LNDN DRGS, I sat him down and said, 'Yo I just want to rap over looped samples, rap over this funky shit or some soul shit' because that to me is the best shit you hear. That’s what we wanted to do; we wanted to do something that was true to ourselves."

"The name is crazy, I come back from L.A. to come work with Sean in Vancouver and pretty much I would…that’s how I know Sean, I’m half Canadian too, I still got family there. We’ve known each other for sometime. So I come back from L.A. to work on an album... At first just the name of the project was going to be called LNDN DRGS before you know it, it just became the group name."

Sean House: "I always been around rap basically. But for a long time I just been listening to shit so I could find samples. I got into more listening to the oldies. A lot of the reason our sound is like this is we would make like this mixtape of just old funk joints and we would be riding around the car and Jay would be, 'I think I could rap over this.' Then we go and flip it out the house after that. That’s how we first started. That’s how we figured out what we’re going to do."

Most people don’t know: Jay: "My sister is Grimes. You know the artist Grimes? That’s my sister. A lot of people don’t know that. She’s poppin’."

Sean: "This isn’t my first run. I’ve been producing for a long time but this is the most personal stuff I ever done. It’s a truer representation that I think it’s me."

My style’s been compared to: Jay: "I don’t really think we’ve been compared to too many people because we’ve been doing our own shit. We’re really coming with that funk. A lot of big homies and people I look up to in the rap game say we really brought that funk back. I don’t call it g-funk because it’s not g-funk. It’s some really gangsta shit over some funk."

Sean: "We’re not really trying to go for something necessarily when we get in the studio. We just see what hits us and go from there. We don’t go in [the studio] with an objective of trying to make a certain sound. That doesn’t work for us."

"[Our sound] is probably more on the shit that we like. Then we go in the studio and figure out what’s actually going to work because there’s a lot of shit that would be a good sample but you can’t rap over it. So we go in and we go through a bunch of shit that’s going to work perfectly with rap. The sound is pretty natural. We’re not trying to get a sound."

My standout records or moments to date have been: Jay: "I would personally say doing music with A$AP Yams for 'Uza Trikk.'”

Sean: "For sure."

Jay: "Yams was the first person in the rap game to reach out to us and fuck with the sound and endorse us."

Sean: "Yeah, we were doing music before that but that was the first one to pop up. That set the tone for the kind of shit we were doing."

My goal in hip-hop is: Jay: "I want to keep making music that I love and that I’m happy with and travel the world with my friends and the people that I love. That’s it for me. All I want to do is travel around the world and do music."

Sean: "Having something that represent us, making unique music, something that’s personal to us that reflects what we’re on. As far as objective as where we want to go…"

Jay: "We want to go to the top just like everybody else who wants to go to the top. We ain’t in this shit to fuck around."

Sean: "The priority is putting out music that we like rather than music that’s going to embrace by a pop audience."

I’m gonna be the next: Jay: "The next big shit [laughs]. But I don’t know if we’re comparable to anything. LNDN DRGS is going to be the next wave of new music."

Follow LNDN DRGS on Twitter and SoundCloud.

Standout: Aktive

"Susan"

“Burnout”

"Burnout 2"

"Uza Trikk"

See 20 of Your Favorite Rappers Naming Their Favorite Rappers