They say birds of a feather flock together, but sometimes, one or two might leave the nest. That's exactly what happened to Swim and Jadagrace, the members of PARTYOF2.
Growing up in the entertainment industry, the two long-time friends set up their music project, grouptherapy., in 2019 alongside fellow child stars and LA natives Rhea and TJOnline. What started as a quartet soon transformed into a trio after the former exited the group in 2020, but, as they say, the show must go on.
With TJOnline, Swim and Jadagrace kept pushing forward as a trio, independently releasing a slew of singles, EPs, and finally, their debut album, i was mature for my age, but i was still a child, in June 2023. However, the trio was down to a duo not even a year later. "TJ will be stepping away from the group moving forward," grouptheraphy.'s account announced in March 2024.
Though announced amicably, the departure shook Swim and Jadagrace's foundation to the chore, but out of chaos comes metamorphosis. The duo ultimately explored the split in the single "all 4 the best," which Swim says set the whole project in motion for their aptly titled debut EP, we owe you an explanation, their official reintroduction and first drop under Def Jam Recordings.
Following the release of we owe you an explanation, Teen Vogue caught up with PARTYOF2 over Zoom to learn more about their reintroduction and dynamics, being each other's buffers during creative funks, and plans for the future as they set off on this new journey.
Swim: That was the goal, that was the goal.
Jadagrace: We started the EP last year in February. We didn't really know what the plan was release-wise, we just were getting in the studio, and we just said, "Let's just make a bunch of music and see what happens." We ended up making “we owe you an explanation." It felt less like a song to us and more like a soundtrack, so that's why we wanted to make it the trailer and use it to announce the new name.
As far as the EP, “all 4 the best” took a long time to finish and to write. And the other two, honestly, we sort of made recently. But, yeah, it's been just a whole year of experimenting and figuring out our chemistry just as a duo sonically.
Swim: We wanted to pick our three favorite songs and the ones that really stood out the most, just to give people a little appetizer, so that was kind of the thought process behind it.
J: Oh, we had a lot of scraps.
S: Honestly, it almost feels like the EP is the scraps from the album that we're working on. Not scraps in [the sense that they] weren't good enough to make it, but it felt like they needed their own world and their own push.
Over that last year, we've really been working hard on the album, and these were three songs that were really important that we didn't want to wait on. We had those three songs, and we were like, “What do we do with these?” It doesn't fit on the album, but it needs to come out. And so we decided to do the EP.
J: I'll start with “mad love.” We didn't plan on doing a new jack swing record into ballet, we didn't plan that. But once we executed it and fell in love with it, we were like, “This is something that we've never done before, this has to be on the EP."
We did some production on it and we were really proud of it. And same thing with “poser.” I feel like you just haven't heard us like this before. This is our first time dropping as a duo. We just sort of came different on all these records, and we just felt like the fans deserve to see and get a taste of what they're going to be getting on the album.
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S: Music is a way for both of us to heal. And so a lot of times, it's just a way for me to explore my emotions, explore my grief, and things like that. I started writing it pretty early on and as the year went on and as Jada and I were grieving together, we would have conversations that really brought out a lot of hard and honest truth about how we were feeling. The more we would talk, the more I would write, and I would kind of just chip away at it every now and then.
I think we hit a point where I started to record a lot of it, and it felt a little bit bigger than just catharsis, so we set up a specific session to sit down and just nail it and let it all out. We spent the whole day just talking and writing and recording and deleting and recording and deleting, and just figuring out what was the most respectful, honest, and heartfelt way that we could say goodbye to the last chapter.
It was a really interesting experience because it's a situation that only you and I are extremely familiar with and can grieve together. It was hard, but it felt great to take how we felt and just throw it on there and breathe.
S: Absolutely.
J: Oh, yeah.
S: Oh my gosh. We cried so much. I mean…
J: We made our friends cry.
S: We played it for a lot of people that we knew, who knew us, know us, and grew up with us. It was a difficult song for all of us. And I think that was the reason we knew it had to come out. I definitely never cried making a song before, so…
J: I mean, I think there was definitely a moment where we were like, “Let's talk about this.” It's interesting because even when we started grouptherapy., we didn't all sit down and talk about it. We were so young, we were like, "Let's do this, let's go." And we just went. We didn't really sit down and consider what we were getting ourselves into for real. So I think [this time around] we just wanted to sit down and make sure.
But ultimately, I mean, honestly, we got in the studio right away, and we just couldn't help but make songs together. So the answer was just sort of there for us, and it felt right, and that was all that mattered to us; even though we might've been a little scared and didn't know precisely what the outcome would be, it felt right to keep going.
S: I think the real consideration was whether or not we even want to do music anymore. I think it was such a difficult change for us, and I think we both considered just taking a step back from everything. It's difficult to go through things like that, especially publicly. We had to reframe our relationship with music, but to Jada's point, I think we realized we needed this.
I knew that in order to heal, I was going to go straight to the studio, and I knew she was too. And so it's like, well if we're going to make music and we're going to be together all the time, let's just do it together. Let's support each other, do it together, and make something new and special.
S: Yeah, literally 0.2 seconds. It wasn't even a full hour that we considered doing it.
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S: So, I came from the acting world. I was a child actor, and I always loved music, but it wasn't something I had ever considered pursuing. I had only ever made music with Jadagrace, and with our previous member, I had never made music alone. I had never done it without them. And so it being just the two of us, even though I had Jadagrace, I still felt a lot of insecurity about doing it.
As a trio, and even as a duo, we're able to hide a bit of our insecurities within each other because we have a small community with us that's supporting us and hyping us up. But when it's just you, it can be scary. And so I had never produced before, really. And yeah, I mean, I was just scared. That's part of the reason why we [featured] “mad love,” that's the first record I really did most of the production on. I think I really just had to prove to myself that I was capable.
J: It's hard to tell now. We toured as grouptherapy., and around that time we knew we were changing our name, so it was bizarre to be doing shows and our fans not knowing it was going to be the last grouptherapy. show. It was a nice goodbye.
In our hearts, it was a little strange to continue grouptherapy. given the way it started. Like you said, there were four of us at first. It was a totally different thing when we named ourselves grouptherapy., and we sort of just looked at each other and we were like, "Maybe we need just a refresh, a rebrand, a new start." So we just opened up a note and wrote down hundreds of names and just tried to see what felt right.
S: Oh my gosh. Man, there were so many other options. I almost can't even remember. I think we had 300 names.
S: PARTYOF2 really spoke to us because you can see it when you hear it; you can see it when you read it. It's very visual. It felt like it matched the energy of our music. We're always going to be open, raw, vulnerable, and honest, but we make music to have a good time, and we make music to really, really, really enjoy and make amazing memories.
We had a conversation with [our publicist] about this that was really interesting, just saying how when you're in a relationship with someone and you guys buy a house together and you make all these amazing memories, and then at one point or another you decide for the relationship to be over, and that person leaves the house, but you're still there, and you've got all these memories and pictures and history in that house, and sometimes it's just hard to heal and move forward.
And so, with PARTYOF2, we felt like we needed a new home. We needed a new home to get us excited about what we're doing now. And so on that list of 300 names, we kind of almost threw them all in a hat and just pulled because it got to a point where we were like, we had decision paralysis. We were just like, “We don't know. We don't know.”
S: In this era, we've really decided to lean into our individuality. There's only two of us. There's more room to be ourselves and show who we are. We are leaning into the things that make us different, the things that we don't necessarily align on creatively, and then making something new from that.
J: That's how “mad love” was [made].
S: It's one of those weird things where it doesn't sound good on paper, but we make it great. It's like dipping your French fries into a milkshake. It sounds disgusting but people like it. One of those weird things where it doesn't really go together, but that's what makes us special.
S: I think it's a combination, right, J?
J: There's compromise, but we're always on the same page.
S: Eventually… When it comes to creating, if there are two people in the room and they both have the same opinion, one of them is unnecessary. It's not what being creative is about; it's about challenging ideas. And so we push each other to challenge ideas. We push each other to say, "No, I like this." "Okay, well, why do you like it? What about it do you like? What stands out?" And a lot of times, we'll change each other's entire vision on something just by clear communication, and yeah. No egos, but definitely creative visions that we're both pushing for.
J: Dang, we used to have that guidebook.
S: Our studio rules? Oh, yeah. We have a set of studio rules.
J: No bad ideas.
S: No cell phones.
J: No social media. I've been caught on social media a few times, and you got to do push-ups if you do that.
S: Yeah. Jada's been caught slipping a couple times. We're strict. We're strict on ourselves.
J: I think since we didn't have a lot of experience producing, it worked to our advantage because we just try things that maybe somebody that actually produces a lot wouldn't do. That's what we accomplished on “mad love” and “we owe you an explanation,” just grabbing the things that are earworms to us that we feel and just going with it. Sometimes we try stuff that sounds terrible, but it's like, let's just try, it doesn't have to come out. It works to our advantage because we're just willing to play with anything.
S: Our rule is there are no bad ideas. We remove that ego and not worry about whether or not something we do or a choice we made is good. That's why we do no social media, and we have these kind of weird rules in the studio where it's like we really try to ignite that flow state where we remove the barrier between our brain and the choices we make, and we just kind of flow.
That's where the best stuff comes from. I think it's just trusting our ears. We'll be out sometimes, and we'll be at, I don't know, at Zara, and I'll hear a song, and I'm like, "Yo, we should sample this and turn it into a house record or something." And we'll be in the middle of the store doing a voice memo, just making stuff happen. The thing we love the most is taking ideas from our brains and making them a reality.
S: I mean a lot and not a lot. We had this conversation the other day about how it's funny that we are the exact same as we were when we were 12. We still have a lot of fun, but instead of two kids just messing around…
J: …it's two adults working.
S: I think we've gotten really, really good at knowing each other, knowing how to push each other in a healthy way.
J: And knowing when not to push each other.
S: Exactly. I think we figured out our buttons.
S: When we're in [the studio] creating, we both have a vision, so there will be times where maybe I'm working on a verse, and Jada will say, “Coy, you can go harder.” And so, because of the relationship we have, my ego is not involved in that. I can hear her and know that she is pushing me to reach the bar that I set for myself, and so it's able to help me get there. The studio's my favorite place because we've curated the safest place in the world for her and me to be ourselves and know that we are not being judged at all.
J: It's just us, our engineer, Marshal, who we've been working with for 10-plus years, and we bring some of our closest friends who are also creatives in sometimes, but it really is just our space.
J: For me, I would say just making decisions for myself and making myself happy. Back when I was a kid working, I was just trying to please other people. Please people at the label, please my management team. As a kid, you just want to be loved and respected, and I was just doing anything I could to get that feedback from my team.
As an adult, I am focused on myself, I'm not focused on pleasing anybody else. And I feel really comfortable in my decisions and just doing what's going to ultimately make me happy. That was not something I was focused on as a kid.
S: I feel you, J. I think I'm the same. Being an actor is a really weird thing, and especially being a kid, you spend so much time trying to people-please. That's kind of your whole job, it's just to make other people happy.
Even with making this group and making music together, we strayed from the path and made our own. That's really been the goal: to not look at a certain path or a certain life choice or a certain lifestyle and say, "Oh, I want to emulate that," but create my own, which is scarier. It's definitely safer to go down a path that's more paved, but it's been very liberating to do the opposite. And so that's kind of my whole goal now, just to continue to do me.
J: It's funny because social media is our job. We don't have the privilege of not needing to touch our phones and just be away from everything right now. So, I do see pretty much everything. I'm constantly posting for us, and we're big on content. I'm always looking at comments and responding to the good and the bad ones, and sometimes we play with the bad comments and, honestly, fight back a little bit.
It doesn't bother me because, at the end of the day, I know that not everybody is going to love me. It doesn't matter what you do, how good you are at what you do, somebody is going to hate it, and that's cool with me.
S: I was very aware of rejection very young. You're most likely going to be rejected as an actor. Being 10 years old and being told, “No, you're just not cute enough for this role, but thanks for coming in.” That does a lot to you. It used to feel like an insecurity, but once I started making music, it became a superpower.
I learned very quickly that it's not personal. And I learned to detach myself from the music. Everyone has opinions about everything. I have opinions about everything, and that's okay. But at the end of the day, I can't allow what anybody says to affect the way that I create because it is all cathartic for me. It's all just a way to heal and process. And so that's just something that can't be intruded upon by opinions. That's just contradictory.
J: I feel like we fight that every day a little bit, just naturally as creatives. There's no right or wrong answers to anything. So if I'm writing a verse and I'm like, "Is this trash? Honestly?" But that's why I think it's nice to have each other because sometimes he will be like, "Yeah, Jada, that's not really it." But sometimes it's like, "No, this is fire. You're tripping. You're thinking about it way too much." There's a balance. You're always fighting imposter syndrome, but I once heard that imposters don't have imposter syndrome.
J: I really don't, because each one is a favorite for a different reason. “mad love” is my favorite because we've never touched anything like that, we produced our asses off on that. “poser” felt so different for us and we had so much fun making that record. And “all 4 the best” is just the most important to my heart, so it's really hard to pick.
S: “all 4 the best” is definitely my favorite.
J: [Laughs.]
S: See? It's exactly what I was talking about in terms of having different opinions. Sometimes, we're not on the same page about what our favorites are. But also, I've asked you this, and you've said something different each time... If you ask her tomorrow, she'll say something different. It definitely changes.
J: It does.
S: Anyway, “all 4 the best” is my favorite only because it's one of those that I would want to play for my kids. It really changed my life in the way that I view making music, and I think the way that we were able to heal losing a friendship was just so special to me. I've never made a record like that that wasn't just, "Yo, this is fire. Listen. This is hard." I haven't made a record that just felt like, “Here's my heart in three minutes.” It's my most favorite thing I've ever done with Jada.
J: I can do R&B, melodic sh*t, pop sh*t for days. Really. That's just what I grew up on, and that's what just comes most naturally to me. And he can just rap his ass off forever, give him any type of hip hop beat, he knows exactly what to do with it.
S: Or non-hip hop beat. I'll find a non-hip hop beat and rap over it.
J: I grew up listening to Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé all day, every day. I am a huge R&B fan, like I said. That's really all my mom would play. A lot of Motown. So, I'm really big on melodies. In my teens I started listening to a lot of hip hop, but just naturally, those are my top influences, really vocally, is where I get a lot of my inspiration from.
S: Leaning back into hip hop, I grew up on a lot of early '90s hip hop. My dad's from New York, and so he'd wake me up every day playing hip hop music in the house and take me to school blasting hip hop music, windows rolled down. It was a very prominent part of my childhood. So a lot of Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang, Jay-Z… A lot of East Coast stuff.
S: Yes, I was going to say it wasn't until 10 years ago when I moved out [to LA] that I started listening to Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle, Vince Staples, and Tyler, The Creator. That's when I really started to really fall in love with it. I was always an extremely creative kid, but it wasn't until I saw someone like Tyler, where my eyes really opened to how creative I can be around the music. He's a big inspiration for me.
And then, yeah, we also love watching TV and movies. I think we're big visual artists as well, and so if I'm not making music, I'm usually watching a movie or a TV show and texting Jada a screenshot and being like, “We have to do a video like this.”
J: It's always the music. But we refuse to let it just be the music and then figure everything else out. I think there has to be an aesthetic for everything that we do. Even when making this album, we finish the songs first, even though sometimes we're in the studio and we're like, "You know what the video is for this." We already know what it is, but we have to slow down sometimes because we want everything to be cohesive and everything to feel like it's in the same world.
S: It's really easy for us to get inspired. We have a folder of ideas, just things that maybe aren't connected to any of the music yet, but it would be really cool to do one day.
Then a lot of times we'll be making music, and we're like, “Oh, remember that idea that we had where we are doing a duel and we're running towards each other in an old Western style, maybe that's perfect for the trailer, for the EP.” We like to use the visuals as a medium to further tell the story and not just be content, but how can this give you even more insight into what the song is about?
J: Honestly, it's been so great. I think we found the best partner out there for us right now. This was our first drop with them, but we've been working closely with [Def Jam CEO] Tunji [Balogun] and he's just been really great in helping us push the vision that we have and not trying to change us or mold us into anything that we're not, which I struggled with every single time I signed as a kid.
I'm really happy with where we're at and it feels like we are 100% ourselves. They trust the vision that we have and our creative choices. Going into this album, I'm very confident in our partnership with them, so I'm excited.
S: I was always a really big fan of Def Jam as a kid. I think they were very, very, very out of the box for a mainstream label. They had Rick Rubin and Run DMC and Beastie Boys, and it was weird, and I loved it.
When we met with them, I was skeptical; it's a major label [but] they were really big on the fact that they are hoping to get back to those roots of being the record label that pushes sound and is outside of the box, and so it just felt like home. I do feel like we are that new thing that is weird and different.
J: I would just take it to what I was touching on before, which is where I'm at mentally and just how far I've come with this crazy life that I have lived with everything that I've been through. I'm really proud of the person that I've become and the career that I've built by myself.
I'm really happy, and that is something that I was really struggling with when I was younger. I'm grateful every day to be able to do what I love with the person that I love and the people that surround us on our team, who support us fully. I'm just really happy with the community that we've built.
S: I was going to say the same thing. Creating our own path is something that just didn't seem possible, so being able to do that and do it, and then on top of that, be able to make a living off of it, just feels too good to be true. For sure my proudest moment is making this with you, Jada, and creating something for us. It just wasn't anything I ever thought we could do.
J: A lot of people said it was not going to happen.
S: Including me, at one point.
J: We don't even know. But I do know that every time we drop, it's going to be even crazier and more creative than the last time. I'm really excited for people to hear this album. I think they're going to be surprised by the choices that we make and just how we're coming on it. No box, no boundaries, just us being completely ourselves and experimenting. This is the most locked-in we've ever been, so I'm kind of scared to see what we produce with this.
S: You're going to get to know us more. We're going to be vulnerable just like we were on “all 4 the best,” but we're also really going to push sound. Our goal is to always make something that you never heard before and you didn't know that you love, so we're going to continue to do that and take the visuals to a whole another level and really continue to build out this world of PARTYOF2. It's just the beginning. We're not really putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to make it anything other than us.
S: As soon as we finish the album…
J: …we're outside.
S: We did a lot of touring last year, and it was great but also exhausting, so we've decided to take the first half of this year and really just focus on the project, but as soon as that's out, we'll probably be on stage for another year. We make music with the thought of it being live, so we're excited to have a full body of work with just the two of us that we can really perform and share with the fans.
J: It's a different comfort, for sure. We just feel really comfortable being ourselves. When we're on stage, we show our weird side and things that we can't do in our everyday life, like dress up, so we love performing. Being able to perform all that music that you made in the studio, just comfy in your sweats, is a beautiful process.
