Selections: They Hate Change

For Vonne Parks and Andre Gainey, music discovery and exchange are fundamental to music making. The magnetic rap duo first bonded as teenagers in Tampa, Florida through a shared love for crate digging, and sharing their discoveries with one another. When they started making music and DJing together, their omnivorous tastes converged into what they’ve come to describe as the Gulf Coast sound: an electrifying fusion of anything from hip-hop, post-punk and jungle with more localised sounds like krank, jook, Florida breaks and Miami Bass.  

“The Gulf Coast sound is foundationally these sounds that come from here,” Parks told DJ Mag last year. “But then it reaches and finds the parallels in these other genres from around the globe, from across the diaspora, and lets us flip it on its head.”

It’s a style they demonstrated on their breakthrough 2022 album, ‘Finally, New’, and which they’ve spent the past 12 months showcasing all over the world with their genuinely life-changing live sets (don’t question it, buy the ticket). The fruits of their travels, and all the musical discoveries and friendships they made along the way, have now manifested in ‘Wish You Were Here…’, an EP for Jagjaguwar that finds the pair working with guest producers for the first time. 

With the help of UK artists like 96Back and Wu-Lu, as well fellow Floridians DJ Orange Julius, Vritra and Charlie, the pair’s genre hybrids stretch further than ever across these five tracks, touching on sugar-rush footwork, filter house, grime, punk, drum & bass and abstract electronica. Home is never far though, and their playfully braggadocious bars reference Florida locales as much as they do tour stops and international highlights. As Parks raps on ‘So Excited’: “Gulf Coast… I bring it with me anywhere I go.”

This energy is mirrored in They Hate Change’s Selections, in which they spotlight tracks from friends and peers, spanning deep Florida breaks and bass, Gulf Coast gold, jam bands, indie, dub, and more.