INTERVIEW | DBL X‑POSURE DISCUSSES LATEST SINGLE ‘BOPPIN’ WITH MY HEADPHONES’

By Rishma • On What is New

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They are not just your ordin­ary duo, DBL X‑Posure is made up of identic­al twins AJ and TJ. Togeth­er the two rap and dance to cre­ate a music­al explo­sion of cre­ativ­ity. We catch up with them fol­low­ing the release of the video for their latest track ‘Bop­pin’ With My Headphones’.

Tell us about DBL X‑POSURE and how the dance/ rap duo came about?

Our unity developed from a young age, we com­mu­nic­ated in our own lan­guage as kids and began enjoy­ing music whenev­er it was played. We often danced around the house with our mum whenev­er she used to sing and have a good time. She would often invite us to join her and fol­low her dance-steps, so we did and we loved it. From dan­cing in the liv­ing room, and dance halls to the night clubs and large ven­ues, we began our life­time love for music. As we grew into young men and developed our inim­it­able writ­ing skills and the abil­ity to per­form pro­fes­sion­ally, our stage name DBL X‑POSURE was born.

We LOVE that you are twins! (Double Wins!) Does this mean you are always cre­at­ively on the same page? How has the twin con­nec­tion impacted your music?

It’s an incred­ible gift hav­ing what we call ‘ebony tele­pathy’ and being able to util­ise this abil­ity with our music, in song writ­ing and in dance cho­reo­graphy. It’s had a huge impact on our suc­cess as close broth­ers and the cre­ativ­ity as per­formers. We are truly blessed, we wish more fam­il­ies could have our abil­it­ies, can you ima­gine if that love was shared amongst just 50% of the pop­u­la­tion? It would be magic­al and harmonious…

Tell us about the track ‘Bop­pin’ With My Headphones?

Our song Bop­pin with my head­phones is an urb­an track with a driv­ing bass and melod­ic rap flows. The song is about a guy detached from real­ity, caught up in his own realm, enjoy­ing the music being played through his head­phones. In this bliss­ful moment, a girl observes his enjoy­ment with amused curi­os­ity being totally engrossed.
We wanted to cre­ate a love song incor­por­at­ing head­phones as the main fea­ture. If you look at a per­son wear­ing head­phones or Air­Pods, they are engaged in a con­ver­sa­tion, a pod­cast, a song, a sound that’s per­son­al to them in that moment. We wanted to cap­ture that essence of engage­ment with girl where she is locked in and engrossed to her desire. We worked with Merty Shango to bring organ­ic sounds and won­der­ment to the ears, for the video Kit at Valo Stu­di­os did a remark­able job of cap­tur­ing the visu­als we envi­sioned for this pro­ject. We col­lab­or­ated with Naz Pourz­al who did an out­stand­ing job with the cho­reo­graphy for Rous­hon­ara Camp­bell, the stun­ning female per­former in the music video.

The pro­duc­tion sounds really ori­gin­al, and exper­i­ment­al. Tell us a bit about the sound you are going for?

We exper­i­ment with sounds for all our indi­vidu­al tracks. They all tell a story and so we build the music to the story we envi­sion which makes us unique and dif­fer­ent from most artists today as we do not focus on one genre. Have a listen to our music on Spo­ti­fy and you will be pleas­antly surprised.

We love the video! How did you come up with the concept for it?

Thank you, it’s an inter­est­ing story. We often jog around Peck­ham Rye Park in the early hours of the morn­ing, one day we ran past a girl who was sit­ting at the bus stop (prob­ably on her way home from a night out). She admired us from across the road and when we stopped she thought we were out of breath when in fact one of us stopped to tie up a shoe lace and I believe I was bop­ping to the music on my Air­Pods. So we later spoke about this moment, being observed by this attract­ive female and what she might be think­ing hav­ing watched us both racing through the park.

What was it like work­ing with Rous­hon­ara Campbell?

Rous­hon­ara is an incred­ible tal­ent, so gif­ted, so pro­fes­sion­al and stun­ning in every depart­ment. We ini­tially wanted to work with Rous­hon­ara earli­er and include her in our Zoom music video, but she had travel com­mit­ments in Jamaica so we couldn’t work with her on the Zoom pro­ject. We were both adam­ant that we wanted to work with her and thank­fully the beau­ti­ful Naz Pourz­al was able to get her to col­lo­ab­rate with us on the Bop­pin pro­ject and so we were so grate­ful and imme­di­ately wrote her into the script. Naz pieced an amaz­ing piece of choreo for Rush (Rous­hon­ara Camp­bell) which she executed per­fectly. We loved work­ing with Rush, she is a super­star in the mak­ing, incred­ibly gif­ted with raw nat­ur­al tal­ent abil­it­ies and beauty.

How import­ant is it for you to make tracks that allow people to dance?

It’s import­ant to us to cre­ate tracks that allow people to dance. Singing and dan­cing is the most beau­ti­ful form of expres­sion a per­son can do. Every­one does it, there’s not a per­son alive that doesn’t sing or dance wheth­er it’s good or bad… it’s a visu­al and audio expres­sion. We always endeav­our to cre­ate music that allows people to express themselves.

What have you got com­ing up?

We have two songs (both with music videos) that we are look­ing to release next year. We are also aim­ing to per­form more and cre­ate a new song in the labor­at­ory for 2024. Watch this space!
Thank you I am Hip Hop, DBL X‑POSURE appre­ci­ates you.

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

About Rishma

Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless.