Ride Waves

About

In early 2018, Grant Kwiecinski—the electro-funk DJ-saxophonist known as GRiZ—took a much-needed hiatus from touring, his first in nearly a decade. “I needed to slow my lifestyle and reconnect with my intentions,” he tells Apple Music. “I needed to catch my breath." His break, which included a nine-month social media detox, led him to make a resolution: Write braver, bolder, more from-the-heart songs that connect with fans on a deeper level. “I wanted to challenge myself to write the sort of songs that I’d put on when I’m down,” he says. “Songs that would lift me up.” His feel-good sixth album, <i>Ride Waves</i>, reflects Kwiecinski’s belief in the power of positive thinking. There are high highs (the groovy “Bustin’ Out” featuring Parliament Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins, or “I’m Good,” a soulful piano jam about not sweating the small stuff) and low lows (the shape-shifting dubstep ballad “Barrel of a Gun”), but the message is always to persevere. On the reflective reggae cut “A New Day” featuring Matisyahu, he offers messages of strength in the wake of the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: “Voices of a new generation/For the youth, we fight for salvation.” A longtime hip-hop head, Kwiecinski tapped Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa, and DRAM to guest on the project. Snoop was one of his childhood heroes. "Growing up as a kid getting into skateboarding and mixtape culture, and as a stoner, these guys were it,” he says. “But what’s even more surreal is that Wiz Khalifa rapped on a GRiZ tune and hardly talks about weed at all! And that’s because he’s dropping real knowledge and talking about deep, spiritual shit. It’s powerful.” The album’s brightest moment arrives on "It Gets Better,” a gospel-inflected love-yourself anthem that Kwiecinski wrote after coming out as gay on a HuffPost blog post in 2017. “For queer kids, that hope is all you have sometimes,” he says. “So I wanted to amplify it. I wanted positive, dope-as-fuck vibes, super banging horn lines, things that made me want to put my headphones on and feel invincible—like I’m in my own pride parade.”

via Apple Music