Nigerian-born, Houston-raised, and LA-based duo KAIRO consists of identical twin brothers, Ak and Ej. Just released their debut album, ARE WE THERE YET?, on November 13, 2024. The album consists of a 13-song track list, and 7 singles off the album were released before the album was released.
How does it feel to be releasing your debut album?
KAIRO: Feels good, I’d like to say it's like our lives work but it really came together at the beginning of this year. A Lot of influences over this lifespan period have accumulated into this project. It's pretty dope to put out our debut, full body of work. You don't get another debut.
How would you describe this album to those that haven't listened to it?
KAIRO: The goal with this album and how to describe it would be that KAIRO is the genreless artist that is very intentional with everything they do. The songs we have on here are specifically chosen to show we can do an array of things. We are very versatile, we hit a couple of different genres in this album and we were able to do it in an intentional way and not just do whatever. I think we are just really showing our talent and abilities.
What made you release the seven songs off the album instead of the typical single or two?
KAIRO: People have short attention spans. I feel like if you drop like one, two or three songs and then be like, "Oh I have an album." I think our game plan with our team was hey every three weeks we're gonna ask people to give us six minutes of their time and just listen to these two songs. Just be there for us for six minutes only. We were dropping on Wednesdays and not Fridays, we didn't want to compete with all the big artists dropping on New Music Fridays. In this day and age, you are fighting for people's attention. We tried to find different ways to do it unorthodox so that people during the week are talking about you.
What inspired the design aesthetic for the visuals, album art and single artwork for this project?
KAIRO: We both did Photoshop in high school so a lot of our first loves were music, video and photography. For this album we started the first single brand new, we went to Paris filmed the video and came back. We forgot the necessities for the album which is like the overall world that we wanted to build so it was a lot of like oh wait we need to build something. So I went to look for inspo everywhere I was taking pictures of everything. Then I started to hone down the sound of the album, it sounds like it has color, not a black and white album. Let's have color, let's have something eye-catching. We wanted to get to the point that if you see red or an asterisk people know that it's KAIRO.
Did you both discover your interest in making music at the same time or did one of you develop the passion for it first?
KAIRO: The passion was the same. We would sing in our dad's church when we were younger. So we kind of sang all our lives. I think it was high school, whenever I put out a song on Soundcloud and that was the first step of either of us putting anything out. From then on we started putting out stuff together. A couple of years later we were both majoring in computer science and we had a sit-down conversation. I said that music is Plan A for me and let's go all in on this and that's kind of how it all went.
What was it like creating the project? Were there any challenges?
KAIRO: The biggest thing was just making a ton of music. We were in this state of limbo in the sense of we know we needed to make an album, we don't know what an album sounds like and looks like. We started studying other people's debut albums, the cover art, and what does it mean. First project with Def Jam, we need something commercial and credible at the same time. It's one thing to put out music but if you want to go to those great heights and put out music that draws people in and keeps them there. For us, it was to like make a ton of music and see what stands out of that music and go in on those. A Lot of some of the hardships that happened during was related to us still being full-time in school. We were doing our classes and finishing the album at the same time. We didn't know which to focus on and school got the butt end of that. The first three months of this year was hibernation, so we can't leave this room. We would go to the studio and then go to school and come back at 2 am. We’d sleep during the day and go to the studio at night.
Do you have a favorite story or memory from making the album?
KAIRO: Our boy Rishi helped us produce “Anybody Home”, he produced the first song we put out in high school. It was really dope to sit with him and make all those 200 demos and see what sticks. A few months later we came back to LA and we were sitting in the car at 3 am listening to the beat over and over again till it clicked and we were like oh we can talk about this and this. Those were the big moments when things started to click.
Listen to ARE WE THERE YET? HERE