Oktane and Price of Audio Push got their first taste of the music biz and misnomers back in the MySpace era when their dance-inspired song “Teach Me How To Jerk” blew up on the social networking site. Teenagers at the time, the two kids from Southern California’s Inland Empire region were swept up in a major label feeding frenzy and signed to Interscope in 2009. Articles popped up describing jerkin’—a descendant of clowning and krumping before it—as a “movement” and Audio Push (then known as “The P.U.S.H.”) also became reluctant representatives of the SoCal’s dance scene.
Dancing was a part of their lifestyle but not central to it. Like many other kids from their neighborhood, they jerked but they also skated and gangbanged and prayed and—most importantly—rapped. This multi-faceted, seemingly contradictory existence is the crux of their content. In the years since their debut single they’ve been dropped and re-signed (via Hit-Boy’s HS87 imprint), and released 11 free mixtapes and EPs that have showcased their versatility. They’ve shown they can do everything from romantic rap to grimy boom bap to turn-up anthems and have collaborated with a who’s-who of artists including Lil Wayne, Travis Scott, Wale, Joey Bada$$, and G-Eazy. What they’ve yet to do, however, is have breakout success. The Stone Junction EP, their very first for-sale project, is a declaration of their intention to change that without compromising their positive “good vibe” message.
Realizing that versatility can be a liability—especially in an industry that prefers its musicians to have easily identifiable sounds—Audio Push has enlisted some of Atlanta’s premier producers to complement their distinctively Californian approach to rhyming. The beats are high energy, juxtaposing the duo’s lyricism with 808s and synths. “They wanna put me in a box/ The industry, the enemies and the cops,” raps Price on the Slade Da Monsta-produced, “BBQ Spot.” The formula works throughout the EP—the music lending intensity and urgency to their assertions of MC supremacy and descriptions of the everyday struggle.
Beyond beats, they get assists from ATL on the mic too: Kap G joins in for some trap-inflected wordplay on the one the album’s standouts, “Vámonos,” and Two-9’s Jace helps to slam the door shut at the end of the seven-song EP on “Same.” Still in the midst of adrenaline-pumping songs like these it’s that second half of “Hard” that teases Audio Push’s potential to make even greater, emotive music. At the 2:34 mark, the ominous, unmistakably ATL thump of producer Ducko McFli’s beat gives way to glistening piano chords and swirling strings and things get emotional. What was an aggressive backdrop for bravado becomes a vulnerable, heartfelt verse from Price: “It’s hard to see you not be yourself/ It’s hard to see you with someone else/ Hard to know your heart was broken/ And you find it hard to grow/ Wth me, and it’s hard to cope,” he confesses to some unnamed ex-lover. A brief glimpse of what’s in store, tucked away in a brief project. A moment that shows just how tough being tender can be.
