PREMIERE: GROOVY is Back With His Newest single “BADGURL” To Help You Tap Into Your Inner Baddie

 

☆ By Lilah Phillips

 
 

REACHING THE SUCCESS YOU’VE DREAMED OF CAN SEEM UNEXPECTED BUT FEEL SO GOOD — Everyone is bumping to your hit single, you're on the radio; you’re mentioned on music platforms, receiving good feedback from your own community. This dream scenario is the successful reality of GROOVY. With his past single “jersey luv,” featuring B Jack$, GROOVY has reached over 100K streams and has been featured on Spotify’s Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds Hip-Hop, and Apple Music’s The New New York. GROOVY has also received praise from media platforms such as BET and Mixtape Madness and has been heard on Power 105.1.

Back again with his new single “BADGURL,” GROOVY is bending his signature smooth and soulful vocals along a classic 140 BPM Jersey club tempo and infectious melodies. With the track, he is here to pull us out of our shells and help us tap into our inner “BADGURL” this spring. The song is an “ode dedicated to all the ladies who are looking to set themselves free by embracing their wild side.”

“BADGURL” is also accompanied by a cult-inspired music video directed by Chris Andrae. This eerie visual “follows a beautiful girl who yearns for sexual empowerment and freedom.” The music video shows the beautiful girl's journey of being inducted into GROOVY’S cult and becoming the newest badgurl


Read below to see what GROOVY has been up to recently and his new single “BADGURL.”


LUNA: Hey, GROOVY! It’s nice to have you back! How have you been?

GROOVY: I've been working a lot, doing a lot of music, and doing all this artist stuff. So I've been pretty busy … busy is good but can be stressful too. I've definitely been napping more and drinking coffee more. So that should tell you how I’m doing (laughs).

LUNA: (Laughs) I definitely feel that! I've also been taking more naps and drinking more coffee. Probably more than I should. So for sure, I totally feel you on that.

GROOVY: I will say though, I am feeling grateful. I don't want to just seem like I'm being all sad (laughs). I'm feeling grateful for everything that's going on.

LUNA: That’s good to hear! Congrats on the success of “jersey luv” — it's gotten so much positive feedback. You have over 100K streams and it was even on Power 105.1! How do you feel about it?

GROOVY: It feels amazing! I don't want to say it feels unexpected because this is what I've been working towards for quite some time now. But when something like this happens, you're never prepared. It's not like every day you just blow up on the internet. It's kind of strange. But I'm very happy. I'm happy for not only myself but also for my team because they're all getting the recognition that they deserve as well. I feel like we're building a community from where we're from. And now we have a platform that people can hear, and people are watching us. And that means the world. That's all we wanted. It was eyes and ears for the stuff that we're doing. So I'm just feeling blessed, seriously.

LUNA: That truly is awesome! I'm so happy to hear about your success.

GROOVY: I just also wanna say, thank you for being one of the first people to believe in me, too. You're the first person who covered me, so thank you!

LUNA: Oh my gosh, no, thank you! It's such a pleasure to interview you again. To be covering someone from my home state and to circle back with you makes me so happy. Thank you for sharing your journey with me. Talk to us about “BADGURL.”  What was the creative process behind it?

GROOVY: “BADGURL” is one of those songs where I'm telling the story. In my personal life, I’ve dated women who have parents who are of different ethnicities, ones who come from other countries and have different backgrounds or cultures. And a big struggle that comes with dealing with people who come from different places is that they don't always understand this Americanized lifestyle that I live. [They probably see that] I’m just this artist who's working towards a goal that you can't even really see. My hair is crazy, I dress differently, etc. So a lot of times when I meet people's parents, they're like, “Whoa, who is this? What's going on?” (Laughs) But in the song, I'm talking about a girl who's interested in that lifestyle. She's curious. She wants to know, she wants to maybe express herself similarly. But she feels like she can't really do so under the guise of her parents. And so I'm saying, “Yo, I can show you. I could be your introduction to that path.” 

In the creative process, from a sonic point of view, my producer, Alejandro, was just doing a lot of melody building and trying to see where I'm going to take the beat. We were sitting in the studio — me, Alejandro, and our engineer, Danny — and it just started flowing. Lyrics-wise, I kept saying, “She was from Lagos”  because I talked to a lot of girls from Nigeria (laughs). So I laid down that lyric, and it just really went from there. It was actually a really quick recording process. We built the melodies. I did the long little run in the middle. So you can say it was really simple.

LUNA: Super cool! Sometimes simple is better. Chris Andrae filmed the music video for “BADGURL,” which came out awesome. How was that experience?

GROOVY: This one was definitely a more intimate and smaller cast. There’s more focus on the story. In the music video, obviously, there's a girl who's the main girl in the video. She stumbles upon this ad, and the advertisement is for my call in the video. It's a juxtaposition of the lyrics that I'm singing. It's like, “I'm this crazy cult leader,” and pretty much in the video we were in this warehouse with art that was all around and it really set the tone for what we were trying to do. Which was this mysterious, creative, bad girl cult.

Chris Anandre was the director for “jersey luv”. He and his team have a lot of experience with shooting horror-type short films. So you can really see it comes across well in the music video. You see it in the camera angles and in the setting that he did. It was really built like you were watching a horror movie, but it was my music video.

LUNA: Where do you see yourself in five years?

GROOVY: In five years, I hope that the name GROOVY is a name that people know. I hope that I have the resources and the influence to create more. And I think I told you last time that collaboration is a big thing for me. So I hope I get to collaborate with all my dream artists. I want to meet all a bunch of different producers and a bunch of different artists, and I want to give back. I want to be able to help people from my hometown. So in five years, I hope that with everything that I'm doing now I can help give to other people. And I can do it all through creativity and art.

LUNA: That’s awesome. Who would you like to collaborate with?

GROOVY: In the short-term, I want to work with Ice Spice! It would be cool to do a remix with her or something. In the long-term, I would look to work with Drake. You know, he's obviously the top dog of almost every genre. I would love for him to know who I am and to be someone who I collaborate with.

LUNA: Any upcoming projects, shows, etc?

GROOVY: Obviously, “BADGURL” is dropping on April 26. I have shows all the time. I have a show this Saturday, April 20, coming up, and then I have a show on May 4 in Brooklyn. I’m currently in the studio as we speak (laughs). So new songs are coming right after “BADGURL.” And just throwing events. Definitely people should look out for me throwing more events, doing postings, and being outside. Summer is coming so it’s the perfect timing.

LUNA: Question for fun: If money or time were of no object, what would you be doing right now?

GROOVY: If I was one of those guys, (laughs) I would probably get into the fashion industry. I would start dressing really crazy and I would start selling clothes. I would like to be at fashion shows, and I want to meet Rick Owens. He would need to meet me (laughs), and I love Rick Owens — that’s why he's the guy. But yeah, I would start a fashion powerhouse. I would also have a bunch of dogs (laughs). I'd still do the fashion thing, but I would get like 10–15 dogs and just have them live at my big house.

LUNA: (Laughs) That would be so cute! Would you create a dog park or something?

GROOVY: Totally — if I’m super famous by that time, I’d let people come and bring their dogs and have them take pictures together with mine (laughs).

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