Warm Brew

Warm Brew might be Cali's finest group of rappers rolling out of LA since Dr. Dre's early squad with NWA. The trio consists of Ray Wright, Manu Li and Serk Spliff. The recent Red Bull Records sign were playing Frank Ocean's game for a hot second but they just came in real hot with the release of their latest project, Diagnosis.
Next up in the crew features one of my personal favorites on the R&B scene right now, SiR. He reminds us of a 'Party Next Door' type but with a more "Seducing Your Chick And Is Legit Bout To Fuck Her at The Party Next Door" vibe. You can just feel the female's pheromones leaking while listening to this track. This cut is a more 'after party pleaser', it's perfect to lay down as you're trying to, well, lay it down. "I Swear" is your classic turn up track featuring Compton's own Buddy & produced by Al B Smoov. As if this entire tracklist wasn't already perfectly fit for your next function; Warm Brew still comes through with the steady tracks for your next BBQ. But then, "Play This in Car" comes on and fucks you up. You were at the function and now you gotta be in the whip. The solution here is to plan it so you're slapping this on the way to the function or when you leave. Or, you can be an absolute pimp and pull your whip up to the function with your doors open and have your cake and eat it too. It knocks too hard to not be appreciated by some quality subs.
The last two tracks remind me heavily of some OG Outkast shit. "24 Pivot" feels like a west coast cut on some new age Mac Dre anthem shit. The laid back cadence and catchy hook can have this track playing day or night. My favorite of the project is the last but not least, "Hallelujah". I struggle to find the words that describe how I feel when this song hits. Once the beat drops, 25 seconds in – there is no physically possible way you can sit still. Each member of the trio weaves through this production seamless. They have an undeniable gift of gab, married with on point rhythm and there is no way to separate the two. The production is full of choir samples, a steady percussion and graceful piano keys but the pockets are filled perfectly by the squad. Then this angel comes in at the end pouring her soul all over the beat and "Hallelujah" has never made more sense in your life then it does right now. It's impossible not to replay this song over and over again. In total, this entire EP will stay in rotation for years on end – this Diagnosis acts as a timeless cure.
And guess what? This EP is available on iTunes!! Which means you can buy it, right now! With your moneys! Support artists, yo. - EARMILK

Cali trio Warm Brew is back with their latest offering the Diagnosis EP.
Following up their 2015 project Ghetto Beach Boyz, Ray Wright, Serk Spliff and Manu Li ride a new wave with the six-track project which features the previously released track “The Mission.” Guest appearances include Sir and Hugh Augustine, Buddy and Racella.
The chill rap trio has been maneuvering the underground Cali scene for the past six years dropping their debut project Natural Spirit in 2010, drawing comparisons to acts like The Pharcyde. They followed that up with The Warm Brew EP in 2011 and The Ride in 2013. In June, following the release of Ghetto Beach Boyz a few months prior, they got a boost in their stock, signing a record deal with Red Bull Records.
“We’re doing something totally different. We just put out a different sound. So we’re just trying to shake the landscape,” said Ray Wright when XXL chopped it up with the group for The Break.
“Warm Brew is going to be the next cultural comfort,” Ray added. “People will always be able to relate to us because there’s three of us. There’s a short dark one, a light skinned middle sized one and a tall one with braids. I feel like everyone feels a different way, but they can relate to us. They know that we’re not gonna switch up so they don’t gotta switch up.”
Stream Diagnosis below. - XXL

Main streets in Santa Monica and Venice are paved with yoga mats. There’s a turf war in the area—between Snapchat and Tinder. The Westside, which has long been a refuge for creative types in search of sea breezes and creamsicle sunsets, is changing. Santa Monica, with the exception of rent-controlled sliver Pico, is traditionally well-heeled and white; Venice, the “Slum by the Sea,” once attracted nodding donkeys to its oil-rich beaches and nodding bohemians to its cheap rents. An influx of bourgeois attractions has begun to lessen those distinctions.

Documenting that change is Warm Brew, a rare rap group from a side of the city whose musical output historically skews almost exclusively toward rock (e.g. The Doors, Suicidal Tendencies). As a result, Warm Brew’s Serk Spliff, Ray Wright, and Manu Li are essentially alone in their musical representation of people of color in Venice and “SaMo.” Their position as Westside storytellers wasn’t earned only by attrition but by more than a decade of minimum wage jobs, no wage labors of love, and cash-in-hand backyard shows.

“We’re giving people a perspective that they’ve never seen before. People think it’s a paradise, where niggas like us don’t live,” says Serk. “We’ve the voice of the people, like, ‘We still exist’–” - Noisey

Los Angeles collective Warm Brew come through on Thursday with their visual for "No Time," a cut off their new Diagnosis EP, and the visual proves to be nothing short of a hypotic undertaking.

Directed by PANAMÆRA, the visual opens up on members Ray Wright, Serk Spliff, and Manu Li chilling in the car with some cigarettes as they kick back and discuss Jessica Rabbit a.k.a. every man's fantasy "in an animated way" before they had access to all of the internet's treasures. From there, they ride out and cover themselves in Donald Trump masks before casually hitting up a jewelry store.

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The camera pans away before we can see any of the alleged robbery go down and instead zooms on the Venice beach trio as they lay into the track's first bars outside a laundromat. You get the idea that these guys aren't where they are supposed to be, but the whole thing trips darker into an underworld of seedy deals and hazy scenes, before they reunite in the early light of morning after a successful night.

Each member has their own take on the visual. "It's for all the riders out there, that know what they signed up for. We don't all lead regular lives," Wright told Complex over email while Li explained "No time is a classic record about sacrifice and compromise between men and women." However, Serk put it all in perspective and let us know that "This video and song are about prioritizing properly and monetizing your time. Too many put the wrong thing on a pedestal. Leave the bullshit at the front door and get this money. As the wise man Mac Dre said, 'It's too much pay up in these streets n you just wanna lay up n freak no not me I'll have no part just like a blind man throwing darts.'"

Watch the exclusive premiere of Warm Brew's video for "No Time" above and be sure to grab the EP, Diagnosis. - Complex

It’s a guilty pleasure that most of us indulge in. You turn on the most thugged out street anthems on your iPhone, put your headphones on and pretend your’re trappin’. You know, those redundant tracks about moving work and buying rounds of Dom and Ciroc. But if everyone is copping bricks and champagne, then who’s buying the drugs and cheap bottles of beer?

This is where we introduce the young hip-hop collective Warm Brew. The Venice, Cali-bred hip-hop group are more reminiscent of groups like The Pharcyde, and Jurassic 5 (but rawer) over Death Row. Brew isn’t moving tons of cocaine in their music, nor are they buying out the bar. Instead, they prefer to chill out with a 40 oz. of Billy D. Williams and Swishers. In fact, one of the ways the group came up with their namesake is c/o group member Serk Spliff, who used to have a habit of swiping 30-packs of beer.

But don’t be fooled. The Brew crew doesn’t just rely on their Mary Jane and alcohol habits to make music. They offer a wide range of styles and subject matter. Listening to Warm Brew’s latest album Ghetto Beach Boyz, which was released on Jan. 13, gives you that comfortable feeling of finally being home after a shitty day at work. Also, WB’s effortless flow and style comes as second nature.

“We’ve seen a lot of people not wanting to be themselves,” Ray Wright, one-third of Warm Brew, said from his California home. “Everybody trying to be somebody else in some type of way. We been around Hollywood so we see that all the time. We’re just trying to be recognized for who we are.”

Group members Ray Wright and Manu Li began recording music together while in middle school, and Spliff joined the squad later in high school. After graduating from Santa Monica High, Li and Spliff continued banging out tracks in their parent’s garage while Ray found himself on a football scholarship at the University of San Diego. But after a year of busting heads on the gridiron, Ray purchased a microphone and reconnected with his squad in L.A.

Fast forward to 2013 and their album The Ride, which contained their potent 4/20 anthem “Wanna Get High.” It was this song that got the attention of Dom Kennedy, who eventually signed the trio to his OPM label.


“We did ‘Wanna Get High’ about a year and a half ago. But we didn’t know that Dom knew our manager, or a couple of other people that we knew,” Manu said. “Dom contacted our manager, and told him that he just really wanted to come and vibe with us at a studio session.”

However, there are levels to inking record deals. Dom didn’t just offer a deal off one song and a studio session. The L.A. natives still had to prove themselves as consistent artists capable of banging out heat on the reg.

“It didn’t just happen over night. We were out here grinding,” Manu said of their first encounter with Dom Kennedy. “We started hanging out more, doing shows, making more music, and the music started becoming undeniable. Once that happened, he knew it was something that he wanted to be a part of, and it just went from there.”

After inking with OPM, the Brew crew recorded their nearly flawless 11-track project Ghetto Beach Boyz. In the midst of recording their OPM debut, the Brew picked up some valuable jewels from their new homie. “Some rappers say whatever, and you don’t take nothing out of it,” Ray said. “Now I’m thinking and looking at every single word in every single verse.” Spliff added, “I learned more about the performance of rapping, and I’m learning to balance the difference between being the typical rapper and staying connected to the times.”

Warm Brew, who grew up on an array of music like Snoop Dogg, Guns N Roses, and A Tribe Called Quest, to name a few, approach studio sessions with a dose of healthy competitiveness, which they say is necessary and one of the best things that can happen to a team.

“Just knowing that everything you’re making is better than the last one,” Ray said. “Based off that, it think it happens naturally even if we aren’t being competitive.”

“A dream album would definitely be a version of G-Funk. Soulful and gangsta but it would still be progressive,” Manu said. “If you had Snoop Dogg in his prime, George Clinton in his prime, mixed with Nate Dogg is his prime, the highest form of G-funk. That would be the perfect Warm Brew album.”

As they continue to prepare their perfect album, the boys are happy with being themselves and the positive feedback from the Ghetto Beach Boyz LP. “I like the attention that our album has been getting,” Manu said. “I feel like it’s in its own world. I can appreciate it more fully. We’ve got to release something to the world by being in our environment and being ourselves.”—Darryl (@darryl_robertson) - VIBE

Hailing from Santa Monica, California, Warm Brew is one of the West Coast’s up and coming rap crews. The trio consists of Ray Wright, Serk Spliff and Manu Li—all 24 years old. The group recently signed to Dom Kennedy’s OPM label and released their latest project, Ghetto Beach Boyz last week. The album, which features Dom Kennedy, Tunji Ige and Arima Aderra, among others, showcases the West Coast flavor that have so many hooked on their sound. XXL sat down with them to learn a bit more about the crew. Don’t sleep on these guys.—Marvin Jules
Name: Ray Wright, Serk Spliff, Manu Li
Age: 24
Hometown: Los Angeles, Santa Monica/Venice, Santa Monica
I grew up listening to:
Ray Wright: Coming up, a lot of my family was from the South Bay, around the corner from Compton and San Bernardino. Basically I grew up on a lot of Eazy E, N.W.A and funky West Coast stuff. A lot of my family is from Long Beach, so I get a lot of that influence. You can probably tell from my music. My mother liked anything from Billie Holiday to Ace of Base. I listened to everything growing up as a kid.
Serk Spliff: A lot of old school. I grew up a big Coolio fan. That was my mom’s favorite. My grandma was a huge fan of 2Pac. I listened to Carlos Santana a lot and whatever my grandpa listened to. Definitely influenced by a lot the ’90s hip-hop groups, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul…
Manu Li: Tribe Called Quest, a lot of Michael Jackson, R&B and ’90s single mom stuff.
Most people don’t know:
RW: My first real job was at Cold Stone Creamery. When I was there, my favorite flavor was cake batter. When we made it, it was straight out of the ice cream machine. It was still warm. It was like real cake batter. Serk and I actually worked there together.
SS: I’m a national champion soccer player. I played soccer for like 16 years, that was my sport. I gotta do it different from other niggas, I gotta play soccer. No football, no hoops, I gotta play soccer. So I did that. My senior year of high school at Santa Monica high school, I was the captain of my squad. I won defensive player of the year. Niggas went undefeated and won the national championship. I played left fullback.
ML: Before I went into rap, I wanted to be a politician, a congressman. My favorite politician is probably Henry Wallace. He was like John F. Kennedy before JFK got elected. He was like the ideal leader of the free world.
My style has been compared to:
RW: Personally, I always get Nate Dogg. I guess it’s because I sing and I try to get my voice a little deeper. Some people say Ice Cube. I like to think that I’m just my own type of nigga though. As a group, people compare us to De La Soul or Tribe. We like to compare ourselves to a lot of rock stars. These niggas out here think their rock stars, but their not really rock stars. We’re from Dogtown, growing up in the ’90s we got to see a lot of that rock star quality in skaters and a lot of different people like that. It’s not so much groups that we’re influenced by, it’s more the city legends that help us to be our own type of city legends.
SS: One nigga said that I sound like Hi-C, which is pretty cool and interesting. A lot of people said that I sound like Bone Thugz; well people say that all of us sound like Bone Thugz. Another one I get is Coolio-Da’unda’dogg. As a group, I’ve heard that we’re like the hip-hop Red Hot Chili Peppers.
ML: I’ve gotten 50 Cent, I’ve gotten Young Thug, seriously.
My standout records/moments to date:
RW: Definitely “Doin It Right,” it’s the number one record that everybody be asking for, that’s a super old track we did. That’s one track that everybody brings up when they bring us up. At first we used to get kinda upset about it because we thought that we were deeper than that song, but it really did encompass what we were trying to say at the time. And “Wanna Get High” for sure. We thought the video was aesthetically pleasing. Those two songs had a certain impact, made me feel a certain way.
SS: Off this most recent album, Ghetto Beach Boyz, the “Bringin Me Home” track. I think that was a good representation of where we were during that moment. Just the way that the energy was flowing in the room at the time, it was really cool. I enjoyed that.
ML: Recently we did a couple songs with Dom Kennedy. That was a big moment. I feel like a lot of people haven’t heard our music, so just to see that reaction, it was like a mix of respect and shock factor. So that was big.
My goal in hip-hop is:
RW: Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this since A$AP Yams death. Not because I was homies with him or anything like that, but for the longest time with hip-hop, we were just having fun. Like man whatever, we just gonna party, do this show, fuck these hoes, we makin’ real money, we gonna get some food and be back in the city tomorrow. But I think it really changed for us recently with how serious the shows have gotten. We want to give people what they get out of seeing U2 live at the Staples Center. Not because I’m thinking like, man it would be tight to perform at the Staples Center. But because everybody who sits at the Staples Center, they’re there to hear what we have to say. I truly believe that. I was sitting with my cousin’s baby mama the other day and she was listening to the Ghetto Beach Boyz album and she was like [talks in female voice] “It’s crazy because every song has a personal meaning to it.” I’m like, yes, you’re finally fuckin realizing that, not hearing all this trap shit. I saw a Sade quote the other day. She said that she felt like her and her group were never in style. She always felt like they were outdated, even when they were making stuff in the ’90s or in the early 2000s. I feel like every time we make music, we’re outdated. We’re doing something totally different. We just put out a different sound. So we’re just trying to shake the landscape. Just to tie it into the Yams stuff, I saw him come out to the West Coast and picked up Joey Fatts. That shit is tight as fuck. We wanna get out to London and New York and Dom Kennedy wants the same things for us. We feel like we’re the spiritual type of group that can lead people and show them that there’s a better hip-hop.
SS: Individually, I’m just trying to get better. It’s all about progression and trying to get better at what you do. As a group, just to stake a claim. I’m thinking about sports. I went to a game at the LA Coliseum last season and I remember just seeing the greats of the Coliseum, like all the former USC players. I want people to feel that when they go to places we used to go, or places we do go. I want them to feel us. I want them to be like, man this is where Warm Brew goes. This is where Warm Brew did this, where Warm Brew did that. So just trying to stake a claim and be great. I think that the three of us together are great individually. I feel like the three of us as a group are unstoppable.
ML: We want to be the best group in hip-hop. From there I want it to be like Warm Brew-mania. I want to be worldwide. Then we want to be the best group in the world. Then we could become a thing of culture; it’s like air, you can’t disagree or agree, it’s just there. I want there to be like toys of us and shoes, Warm Brew lighters, Warm Brew scissors. And me myself, I just want to be like Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, 2Pac, legends. It would be cool to be like that. You can only be the best you can be, but I think I could be like that. I wanna be like the King of Pop or King of Rock. I think I could be something cool like that.
I’m gonna be the next:
RW: Warm Brew is going to be the next cultural comfort. People will always be able to relate to us because there’s three of us. There’s a short dark one, a light skinned middle sized one and a tall one with braids. I feel like everyone feels a different way, but they can relate to us. They know that we’re not gonna switch up so they don’t gotta switch up.
SS: Warm Brew is gonna be the next nothing man. Warm Brew is now.
ML: Warm Brew is the next Facebook, the next Instagram. Warm Brew is the next big start-up company. Warm Brew is like Elon Musk and Paypal. Everyone gotta have them, everyone knows what it is. It’s just there forever.


Read More: The Break Presents: Warm Brew - XXL | http://www.xxlmag.com/rap-music/the-break/2015/01/the-break-presents-warm-brew/?trackback=tsmclip - XXL