Partying is universal. Everyone likes to do it, even if we don’t all define “party” in the same way. The Miami duo FYAH recognized this, and when they released their single “Party,” the video for it became an instant hit, racking up over 200,000 views on YouTube.

FYAH consists of lifelong friends B-Wick and Krispy Keem (pictured Left to Right), and over the Memorial Day weekend they were all over Miami helping people have fun, performing at numerous clubs, a car show, and as a part of a large radio station event at Sun Life Stadium. Currently, FYAH are prepping their next mixtape, as well as an official album, and they’re booking shows for a trip to Canada. Somehow, in the midst of this busy schedule of performing and recording, B-Wick and Krispy Keem found the time to sit down with us at RapReviews to discuss their decision to embrace a more pop oriented version of hip-hop rather than one of hip-hop’s other subgenres, how a contest radically altered their career, and what the nightlife in Miami is like in even the most unassuming of bars.

Adam Bernard: B-Wick, I know your government last name is Adderley, so I have to ask right off the bat, are you any relation to Cannonball Adderley?

B-Wick: Everybody keeps asking me that. I’m about to look that shit up and see. I don’t think so, but I know one of my teachers used to call me Cannonball every time I walked into the room.

AB: Most new artists want to be labeled “up and coming,” but you refer to yourself as “incoming.” What are you saying to people when you describe yourself in this way?

BW: A lot of people say you’re up and coming. We feel like, not to be cocky, but we feel like we’re the hottest artists in the game. We’re bringing something a lot of artists are lacking. We touch all areas of music, so we try to touch all subjects when we make our music, and put ourselves in the fans’ shoes and try to make music that we feel the fans want to hear. A lot of these up and coming artists, they’re just following other artists, and trying to follow footsteps. We’re trying to make our own footsteps.

AB: You are very open about being a dance rap, or a pop rap, duo. What led to your decision to go this route instead of any one of the plethora of other subgenres in hip-hop?

BW: Coming from Miami we’re always listening to gangster music, and when we were younger they had the booty shakin music, like Uncle Luke. Basically, we listened to all this different music and found a way to put em all together. A lot of people are making gangster music (right now), trying to be hard all the time, but me and my homeboy, we always like to try to have fun, so we said you know what, we should try to have a good time. Instead of trying to fight people all the time we’re trying to live life and have fun, so we’re trying to make music like that.

AB: Did your local community embrace you quickly?

BW: They respect us because not only do we make music people can dance to, and we make music that people can relate to, we try to put lyrics in and try to make it more complex, but at the same time not too complex to where people gotta strain their ears like “what is he saying, what is he rapping about?” We put lyrics in our music, but we also give it that, you could say pop, like a pop sound. We spice it up a little bit. Krispy Keem started off making beats, and a lot of people would come to him to get production, so they already know he’s a good producer. We also mess with other artists around here, as well. We don’t feel we’re too good to do songs with any other artists. We’re trying to make it in this rap game.

AB: In addition to being a very musical city, Miami is also a city of parties. Tell me, what’s the wildest thing you’ve seen, or experienced, in your city’s nightlife?

BW: Woo, there’s so much. Involving me? It’s kind of explicit. The night before we flew out to New York to promote some music we went to a random bar we’d never been to right by the airport. We walked in there, we’re at the bar drinking, and these two girls were acting so loose and wild. One started pouring shots on her titties and she’s licking it off her titties and the girls are grinding on each other. It got real wild, and that’s just one of the recent ones that happened. The parties here get really wild.

AB: And that didn’t even happen at a crazy $50 cover charge nightclub.

BW: Exactly! We were just at a bar. Most of the time we go to house parties. Sometimes we host house parties and they get really wild. The last house party we had, I don’t know if I can really say what really happened, but it involved some females and it got real sexual.

AB: Did you have to leave the party at some point while the party was still going on?

BW: Yes, and the bathroom was on standby for about 20 minutes.

AB: Wow! Moving back to the music, sometimes dance rappers, or pop rappers, aren’t necessarily held in the same esteem as their more hardcore peers. When you made the decision to focus on the fun aspect of music, what kind of concerns did you have in regards to how the hip-hop community would react to you, and perhaps whether or not you’d be accepted?

BW: We thought about that and we talked about it. We used to be in the streets in Miami and people know what we’re about, but at the end of the day we’re trying to leave that life alone, and we’re trying to do what we feel like should be done.

AB: When your video for “Party” hit 200K views, did you consider that an indication that you made the right decision?

BW: Yes! Exactly! Honestly, nobody has been talking down, or saying that we switched over. People have just been supporting. I’m surprised. You never know, there might be some haters out there, but we try not to focus on the negative, and always focus on the positive.

AB: Other than the videos for “Party” and “Drinks on Me,” what can people hear from you now, and what are you currently working on?

BW: We just recently released a mixtape called Industry Takeover. It’s a mixtape we did on industry instrumentals. We killed all the beats. We’re working on Industry Takeover Part 2, but that won’t be out for another month. Other than that we have other videos on our YouTube page. Our most recent video release is called “I’m Not Perfect.” It talks about what you go through in a relationship. We’re working on some new songs right now. We’re gonna do a track with Ace Hood. We just did a feature in one of his new videos, it hasn’t been release yet, called “We On.” He shot that in South Beach at Club Dream.

AB: Being that you two are lifelong friends, what kind of things can you say to each other while writing, or recording, that you wouldn’t be able to with someone you haven’t known for as long?

BW: We’ve known each other since were like in diapers, so we go through our ups and downs, but at the end of the day we’re artists, and we’re friends, and we always keep it real with each other. He’s the engineer, and if he hears something he doesn’t like he lets me know. He always gives me advice. It might be three or four days later, and he’ll be like “come back to the studio.” I’ll be like “I’m with my girl.” And he’ll be like “bring her, too!” I’ll come, we’ll listen to it, and then he’ll be like “you see what I’m saying?” And I’ll be like “ooh, OK.”

Krispy Keem: And vice versa.

BW: We’ll do a song and four weeks later we’ll listen to it again because we always try to be our hardest critics on ourselves. There’s always ways to better yourselves in everything in life, so we always try to better our music.

AB: In 2011 you won something called the Coast To Coast Rap Competition and that netted you $10k for promotional use. What was the first thing you did with that money?

KK: We bought a lot of mixtapes, printed em up. We flooded the sites with videos. Coast to Coast has a website, so they were blasting the “Party” video, the “Party” mp3, the mixtape. It was straight promotion.

AB: How much is of the money left, and what are your plans for it?

KK: That was like a year and a half ago. All that’s gone.

AB: So you ran through the 10k. How much further along do you think you are because of what you did with it?

KK: We up there. We got a lot of views on YouTube, we got a lot of songs, we had to buy the beats, we have a lot of fans now. From where we started to now is a big upgrade.

AB: Finally, since you are both in Miami, could one of you tell LeBron the whole two headband thing looks stupid and that we all know he’s balding?

Both: {*laughs*}

BW: LeBron, that’s my boy. He gets a lot of criticism, but we’re going all the way this year. I’m a Miami Heat fan for life.