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Photo: Myles Cutchember 

Supernatural and psychedelic, no one knows what planet Cruza came from, but we’re somehow in an insatiable need for more.

Made up of Adam Kain on vocals, Charity Joy Brown on guitar, AJ Roth on bass, and Sago on production, together, Cruza defines the undefined. Their warped sound is formless, though it only feeds into their elusive nature; their identities are mostly eclipsed, letting their art speak for itself.

It’s hard to describe Cruza, living somewhere within the alternative R&B realm, complete with a funky bass and lyrics drenched in longing. With an audience seemingly hooked, people love Cruza because Cruza loves music and it’s palpable. Their work is bred from soul, with most of their bangers being born from jam sessions. Their sound couldn’t (and hasn’t) been duplicated; next up, the industry is in for a very groovy awakening.

Competing only against themselves, we got a sneak preview of their Def Jam debut CRUZAFIED due out in June, and it’s clear they’ve got the upper hand.

OnesToWatch: There are so many songs on this album! It’s truly a cohesive debut; how was it navigating the decision on which songs made the final cut?

AJ: Our last two projects were a little shorter so I think with this one we wanted to leave everyone feeling satisfied. The last two projects felt like samples so we wanted to give them a little more. 

Adam: What makes the project feel complete is that a lot of these songs are from different eras. Some go back as far as two to three years and some are as recent as the beginning of this year. It’s a range of a lot of the different phases we’ve gone through and that’s why it was easy for us to make such a complete body of work. Not that it was easy, we went through so many different versions and this is like the third version of the album that we came up with. A lot of time and effort went into it. I just hope that the listeners appreciate how it turned out.

Speaking to some of these tracks being years old, what differentiates a song from going stale versus getting better over time?

AJ: I think when we still have a desire to drop a song or think like “Yeah, the world needs to hear this,” it’s a testament to the ones that need to be out. For us, we get over things quick. There are hundreds of songs we made that we kind of just forgot or never think twice about, so the ones that prove themselves against the test of time are the ones that make it.

Charity: I think also when you sit and wait, sometimes songs that you didn’t necessarily see anything in at the moment that you created it, as time passes, you find something in it that wasn’t originally there. It can develop that way too. Being a band, each of us probably appreciates different elements of things or sees something that someone else doesn’t. Time passing helps you see things clearer.

Adam: Another thing is we have something called the demo graveyard where we have a bunch of songs that didn’t make it. We jam a lot when we make our music, so we have a bunch of rough ideas that sometimes maybe we see through. AJ will just start playing stuff and we’ll be like “Damn, we forgot about that one! That one is still hittin’.” And if that keeps happening, even if we’re making new stuff, if that old demo keeps hitting, we’ll revisit it and finish it. It’s a test of time, and if it’s meant to be, it’ll make it on a project.

Jamming-wise, do you ever riff during a live performance?

Adam: Nah, we haven’t really done that many live performances yet so we try to be pretty prepared. As of now, we stick to the script, but in the near future, we plan on getting experimental during gigs. A little loose. 

Charity: More of that happens during rehearsals if anything. Just jamming ideas and accidentally making songs while rehearsing for a show. 

Adam: Yeah, there have been times where while we’re rehearsing, we make new tracks for the setlist. Literally adding on as we prepare for it. It’s not the best habit but sometimes cool shit comes out of it.

That speaks to how organic your music feels. Being that this is your debut via Def Jam, is there any apprehension about this formal introduction to the world?

AJ: We ready to get it up out of here man. We move at a different pace than most artists so I think we’re ready to get in the game. 

Adam: We just have so much music that we’ve been sitting on. We should have had a complete body of work out a minute ago. We move fast with how we make it but we don’t move fast with how we put it out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re already thinking about the next project. We want to get this out, we want to tour it, we want to see the reception of it. There’s no apprehension, I think we’re just ready for it to happen. 

Charity: We’re ready to move on to the next thing. With our sound, even the stuff we’ve been working on more recently sounds completely different than this project. It’s always really exciting just to see as we grow as people where the music heads. 

Have you already noticed your sound change since the inception of Cruza, especially bringing on Charity and Sago?

AJ: This originally started off with me and Adam. We became a band when we added Charity. When we added Sago, it became official. We had the confidence to present as a band. It’s been a step-by-step maturation process. When it comes to the sound developing, that’s why we have to get stuff out because we’ll start a new sound and be like “Forget the old stuff. We’re already elsewhere.”

Adam: With each member that’s been added, it’s just brought a new perspective. We all have our certain genres that we primarily gravitate to. It brings out different elements and allows someone else to tap into something maybe they didn’t know was in them. It’s been cool to see the development and evolution of our sound and it’s going to be even more interesting to continue to see how it develops and what’s the next direction it takes.

Speaking to that, how do each of your individual musical interests help build your unified sound? Are some of you more R&B-leaning vs rock-leaning?

Adam: I’m definitely the R&B-heavy person for sure, I know Charity is more into neo-soul. We’re all pretty well-rounded, but I know that a lot of the alternative music that I got into, AJ put me onto because I’ve known him since I was 11 or 12. He’s helped shape my musical taste. We all have different primary genres that we rock with.

AJ: For me, I’m super abstract and alternative. Adam definitely gives us that R&B sound, which is why a lot of times people classify us as R&B because Adam’s vocals are so R&B. But then there’s Charity’s soulful guitar. We base a lot of our melodies around the guitar Charity comes up with and that will shape the song. Sago will build a structure around it and clean it up, it ends up taking its shape through the journey.

Sago: I just like noise.

Noise is exactly it, because it seems like no music blog or streaming platform knows how to categorize you. What’s your perspective on genre? Confining or something to play with?

Adam: The only thing I don’t like is when people are like “This is vibey, 420 music.” I feel like what we’re doing is so much more than that. Other than that, we’re genre-bending so it’s hard for people to really box us. A lot of artists feel like that I’m sure. I let people categorize us however they want, it doesn’t bother me too much.

Charity: I think it’s interesting to see what people decide to label us as. They’re listening for the elements that they want to listen for and there’s a little bit of everything so it can reach a lot of people. People can find a million things that they resonate with which I think is really cool.

What’s your argument against those that say R&B is dead?

AJ: When it comes to music and honestly just life, everything is always evolving. Just because it isn’t what it was when it was first created doesn’t mean it isn’t R&B; it’s just evolved. Nowadays there are a lot more influences and different sounds and people get to be more flexible with how they make R&B. 

Adam: A lot of genre purists are like “This isn’t that because it’s not what I remember,” but music is constantly evolving. This analogy might not be the best but say you have a pitbull and it’s mixed with something. At the end of the day, you still have a pitbull, just a different variation. The music is R&B, even if it’s alternative or there’s rap, it’s a variation. People are just closed-minded and that’s why some stuff hasn’t evolved as fast as it should have. 

Things have been a slow burn yet happened very quickly; what’s been the most surreal moment thus far?

Adam: That was a very accurate statement. 

AJ: Smino was one of the times for me when I was like “Damn, this is moving.” That was a big jump from where we were at to making a song with somebody who was super known. He was the first person to really reach out to us and he was huge.

Adam: We did a show around this time last year in LA and people knew the words to our older songs. That hit different. It’s crazy to see people connecting with your music like that to the point where they know it by heart and are singing it back. That blew my mind. 

Charity: The first show we had in general, we played in New York, in Williamsburg. Playing the show period together was crazy, we all met randomly and coincidentally so to have gotten that far where we were there in person and had formed something together and now other people are appreciating it. Life can really take you places you didn’t orchestrate or plan. We’re completely different people with all these different life experiences and backgrounds but we’re coming together and making something that resonates with people. That’s a crazy feeling. 

For Charity and Sago, was there any apprehension around joining something already formed?

Charity: We started making music together remotely so we already had something chemistry-wise. It was weird meeting someone for the first time and already having so much chemistry in this very intimate area of your life, music is very personal. Connecting the dots personally as well was so interesting, I’d never met people off the internet and made music with them and it made so much sense. I never had apprehension, it was just so strange that something like that could even happen. 

Sago: I agree. This all kind of just happened. Seeing it unfold is the beauty of it. I don’t know if this is written or what but it blows my mind every day.

Your fan base is so devoted because people can feel how true your love for it is. Lastly, being that we’re nearing it’s release date, what’s your favorite song on Cruzafied?

AJ: I’ve really been liking “On Fye,” we made that one at Syd’s house, we were doing a session with her. 

Adam: “One Day I’ll Float Away” and “Such Is Love.”

Charity: “Dragonfly” because I remember the way that we made it so vividly, we were sitting and jamming and it was the first time I realized we were going in a different direction with this project. We’re writing in a new way and I felt so inspired, like okay, we don’t have to do what we’ve always been doing. We can just express and whatever comes out isn’t right or wrong, it’s just a puzzle we’re putting together. It changed the way I looked at us making music, it doesn’t have to be this assembly line all the time. That guided my playing for the rest of the recording process.

Adam: That song was made while rehearsing for something else, it was so unintentional and that’s what helped us break into this new territory.

Sago: “Such Is love.”