Big Boi and Phantogram Announce Big Grams EP, Featuring Run the Jewels and Skrillex
Big Boi and Phantogram have teamed up for their debut release as Big Grams. The seven-track EP, out September 25 via Epic, features guest appearances from Run the Jewels and Skrillex. Find the tracklist and cover art below. “Fell in the Sun” will premiere on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show today tomorrow.
Big Grams has been teased for months, leading up to the trio unveiling the project with a performance at Epic Records’ Epic Fest at the end of August. Previously, Phantogram’s Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel contributed to several tracks on Big Boi’s 2012 album Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors.
Last week, Pitchfork hopped on the phone with Big Boi, Carter, and Barthel to discuss the project. Check out the interview below.
Big Grams:
01 Run for Your Life
02 Lights On
03 Fell In The Sun
04 Put It On Her
05 Goldmine Junkie
06 Born To Shine [ft. Run the Jewels]
07 Drum Machine [ft. Skrillex]
Pitchfork: How did you guys first link up?
Big Boi: I stumbled upon Phantogram through a pop-up ad on my computer. I was closing out screens and then a pop-up ad came up and it had their song “Mouthful of Diamonds” on it. I Shazamed it and bought it on iTunes, and ended up putting it on my BigBoi.com website as the jam of the week. I guess they caught wind of it and reached out to me. We began a conversation, and they sent me vinyl of their first record. We began to talk then, and was supposed to catch up with them then when I was doing Governors Ball [in New York City] but we kind of just talked on the phone. Then, we crossed paths at Outside Lands Festival out of San Francisco and we hit it off real cool. I invited them back to Stankonia [Studios] and we just started making magical music.
Pitchfork: When did you start talking about doing a full record?
Josh Carter: We were just vibing out in the studio, doing some tracks for Big’s album Vicious Lies & Dangerous Rumors, and the three of us just got along really well. We had this similar connection, musically and we vibed so we just wanted to make more music together.
Sarah Barthel: We had a really great connection the first few times we hung out with [Big]. He’s one of those artists like us that listen to all kinds of music. His taste is very eclectic and his mind is very open to any kind of ideas or kind of collaborations in general. For Josh and I, it was exciting because you can hear the OutKast music as well, but it was also a good opportunity for us to get involved more in the hip-hop scene and expand our sounds that way. We just connected really well. We’re an Aquemini, too, because Josh is a Gemini and I’m an Aquarius and we felt like that was a connection on another level. [OutKast's Aquemini LP is named for the duo's Zodiac signs; Big Boi is an Aquarius, while André 3000 is a Gemini.]
Pitchfork: Did you have a different starting point in mind, as opposed to doing a Big Boi or a Phantogram record?
JC: Well, really the whole idea behind it is something completely new that pushed ourselves to do other things that we may not necessarily do on our own records. What I think makes us a good team is—Big Boi and OutKast and Phantogram, we make pretty limitless music. It was just a fun project between friends, creating something extraordinary.
SB: The idea of the project was to do something fun and to not be stressed out about releasing an album that’s going to be, that’s gotta sound like this, or it has to be like that, because sometimes that happens with Phantogram, or other artists can have the same problem. We took it lighter. We told ourselves this is going to be a fun project and we can just throw out there and see what happens, see if people are vibing on it and if it gets some attention, or if it doesn’t and it’s all good, we wanted to do it anyway.
It’s kind of a taste of ideas. It’s not Big Boi and Phantogram music. It’s Big Grams, which is different. It’s a whole different project. It’s stuff that we wouldn’t put on our own records, but just kind of something completely different so you get a taste of. There’s songs that I rap on, there’s songs that Big sings on. There’s songs that Josh raps on. It doesn’t sound pretentious in any way, because we just wanted to do whatever the fuck we wanted to do.
Pitchfork: Are you planning on a follow-up project?
JC: We’re definitely working on more stuff.
BB: We got a gang of ideas and a whole vault full of music that is kind of unfinished and kind of scraps of ideas right now that we’ll embellish on in the future.
Pitchfork: Are there plans to tour behind it?
BB: Hell yes. [laughs] Hell yes. We’re gonna have some fun. We gotta spread this love, baby.
Watch Big Boi on Pitchfork.tv’s “Selector”:
Watch Phantogram’s “Don’t Move” video:
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