Joey Valence & Brae: The Best of What’s Next
Photo by Donny Evans
“Gimme a song, you can trust that I bust that” goes a line at the beginning of Joey Valence & Brae’s second album, NO HANDS. The MCs met years ago at the Best Buy-neighboring, 4.1-star-rated Red Lobster near Penn State University’s campus. Brae ordered an Admiral’s Feast while Joey was “knee-deep” in cheddar bay biscuits. “We just locked eyes and the rest is history,” Joey says. “We just knew, right there, that we were going to be the greatest hip-hop duo of all time.” After figuring out that they shared the same sense of humor and music taste, Joey would start pulling up a “random fucking beat” on his computer that he and Brae could rap over. An excuse to hang out turned into something major. “And now we’re here, and it’s kind of the same thing,” Joey says. “We mess around and we enjoy making each other laugh and having a good time. There’s a lot of that that’s lost in the modern day of music, a genuinely good time. I think we encapsulate that for people who are missing it without even trying.”
Around the time he decamped to State College, Brae’s interests had left him on a bit of an island. “I didn’t start trying to do anything music-related until I met Joey,” he says. “I had nobody in my family or, even, my friend group that was in the music world in any way, shape or form.” Joey concurs, as he got into production on his own, too, enduring fits of getting “hella made fun of” for pursuing hip-hop and beat-making before joining the Penn State EDM Club and making friends with other students who were into creating electronic music. But cut to now, and Joey Valence & Brae are anything but a laughing stock. As one Redditor pointed out, they’re like “if the Beastie Boys served cunt.” JVB’s mixes are boastful and colorfully manic, and they sound as indebted to Lil Jon as they do Daft Punk and Korn. The duo steamrolled into 2024 and announced “I’m the baddest bitch in this club” to everyone within ear-shot, and few out-of-a-cannon artists have stuck the landing so enjoyably.
But back in undergrad, Brae was studying Health Policy and Administration, wanting to graduate and “sell medical devices,” while Joey was in telecommunications with aspirations to work in the “wireless, 5G industry.” “We kind of had full plans,” Joey admits. “And, as much as we love music and it’s been my passion since I was a fucking kid, honestly, it was just that. It was a passion. I didn’t expect to do anything with it, and I spent all of my free time doing it. I didn’t care, as long as I was just able to do it.” Do Joey and Brae ever plan on returning to their white-collar aspirations of yesteryear? “I think I’m gonna give up! I think I’m done,” Joey laughs and then pauses. “No, we want to milk this shit as long as we possibly can. We’re constantly on the grind, there’s not a moment where we’re not thinking of the next thing.”
JVB’s first single, “Crank It Up,” came out in April 2021 and blew every door off its hinges as the two MCs rip through lines like “I always wipe twice for good measure / One for business and one for pleasure,” “Yeah, I look goofy / Straight up out a movie / I can’t eat lactose, it goes right through me” and “Beyblade, let it rip / I’m the chip and you’re the dip” behind a photo of themselves posing in tracksuits snatched from a Gen-Xer’s wardrobe. “We had messed around and made random tracks before that, just to be funny, but that was the first time where we made something and were so excited about it,” Joey says. “There was no intention of even being a duo or putting it out.” Even then, making “Crank It Up” was a way for JVB to kick it without going to a bar and getting trashed. When Joey uploaded the track to TikTok, it blew up and got more views than any of his solo music. “Immediately, I put the torch down,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is something I’ve always wanted to do—do something with my friend and have fun. It felt super right, it started gaining some traction. We just kept making songs.”
Many have quickly likened JVB to the Beastie Boys and Limp Bizkit (whom they opened for this year in Halifax and London last year), bands that, once upon a time, blurred the lines between punk, rock and rap by shrinking the margins and embracing their overlaps. But sounding even remotely like those other artists was not an intentional choice by the guys. “We just put [‘Crank It Up’] down and started rapping, and that’s what it sounded like,” Joey says. “There was no messing around with how we wanted to sound or finding your voice, which is something that vocalists take fucking forever to figure out. We just rapped, and that’s what it sounded like. And Brae never rapped before in his life! It was just so natural for us. Obviously, we have so many inspirations—and those have come together and evolved over time—but we made something and there was no purpose and no foreground for it. We just fucking did it.”
JVB are running in a league of their own, but have they found their “voice” yet? “I don’t think that moment has hit yet, to be honest,” Joey admits. “It all feels like a big joke,” Brae replies. “We’re getting pranked!” The next batch of their singles, “Like What” and “Double Jump,” were still products of Joey and Brae messing around and experimenting with ProTools. But the tracks pushed the Pennsylvanians forward and then, when they wrote “TANAKA,” a direction was coming into focus. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m like a rapper!’” Brae exclaims. “Double Jump” found a lot of love online, and it was instantaneous for JVB. “We posted it and an hour went by and it had a million views,” Brae says. “Five hours went by and it had 2, 3, 4 million views. It kept going up and up and up and up overnight.” The song got them on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where their high-octane randomness didn’t coalesce with the Burbank suburbanites in attendance all too well. “It was dead silent,” Brae notes. “It was a bunch of moms. It was going on TV, so you couldn’t clap during it. Everybody was just a stick figure.” “We were like, ‘This is so dumb but awesome at the same time,’” Joey adds.
Then in 2022 came “PUNK TACTICS,” one of the very best tracks of the 2020s so far—a tune that makes references to everything from Stars Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Megadeath, Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, Jack Kevorkian, Bruce from Jaws and a couplet weaving chicken noodle soup with a two-door Beamer. When they made it, Joey and Brae talked about what they wanted to sound like and where they wanted to go next. Purpose had entered their lexicon; they weren’t just two dudes making beats in a bedroom anymore. “We were like, ‘Let’s fully dive into hardcore music,’” Joey explains. “The previous tracks had been more fun and a little on the nose and corny, and then we were like, ‘Let’s make this something you can kill people to, because it’s fun—punch your friends [in a mosh pit].”
When the PUNK TACTICS album came out last September, it became an end-cap for JVB’s breakout year. They started making appearances on festival bills, like Capitol Hill Block Party, Riot Fest and a last-minute addition to Lollapalooza, and racking up millions of streams. Songs like “HOOLIGANG,” “WATCH YO STEP” and “DANCE NOW” were putting up big-league numbers, and bars about Zoo Pals paper plates, Kid Cuisine, Autobots, Koopa Troopas, Lunchables, Reebok shoes and Duran Duran were imbuing today’s lexicon with Zillennial iconography. But it was on NO HANDS that JVB, for the first time, sat down and wrote an album to purposely release it. “That was a chance for us, because we were so used to just doing single after single after single to stay relevant,” Joey says. “This was like, ‘Let’s drop this whole project.’ So, we made it and we put meaning into it and we talked about our journey, talked about doing it independently—we had never really put that into the music before, to tell a story. That was the first time we had gone in with a theme and an idea in mind.”
JVB’s catalog is brimming with Y2K Easter eggs, but none scream early-aughts more than the duo’s sample of the Bruton Music cut “Give It All You’ve Got”—made famous by its inclusion in the “Jellyfish Hunter” episode of SpongeBob SquarePants from 2001—in their post-PUNK TACTICS one-off single “CAN’T STOP NOW.” But I was an overweight kid growing up during the PlayStation versus Xbox wars of pre- and post-recession America, so NO HANDS is 100% that bitch—as Joey and Brae will put you in a zig-zag with their machine gun exorcism of cultural splendor. NBA 2K face scans, John Cena, Han Solo murking Greedo, Faded Glory Walmart hoodies and Ben 10 mentions run amok. But not every flow goes without a hitch, as JVB has learned that their audiences aren’t always hip to The College Dropout. “I feel like almost all of my bars go over people’s heads, because our crowd just, like, doesn’t get it,” Brae says. “On the song ‘OK,’ I wrote ‘Whipped cream-color whips, that’s pimp / White Nissan, that’s a cool whip,’ and that’s a callback to Kanye on ‘Last Call,’ because he says ‘Mayonnaise-colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips.’ I always thought that was the coolest line when I was a kid. I wanted to recreate that.” (Let the record show that Brae does, indeed, drive a Nissan.)
What makes Joey Valence & Brae such a momentous tandem is their verse game, as they offer a healthy dose of two friends trying to one-up each other or drop a gut-busting bar in real time. It’s like listening to Tasmanian devils bounce off of each other mid-sugar rush, and the phrases are quippy, quick and muscular. Brae is the thunderous, quick-triggered ballast locking down the paint, while Joey greens every jumper and gashes through screens. Their pick-and-roll verbiage is so anthemic it can rearrange your atoms; NO HANDS is a product of trust, a pop culture Scrabble board collaged by people who wouldn’t want to make a record with anyone else. “We 100% write our own lyrics,” Joey says. “We’re both pretty confident about our skills. Most of the time, everything Brae writes is great. Most of the time, everything I write is fun to me. We’re not really choosy. I’m so much more selective with my [verses], it takes me forever and then Brae is spitfire with his stuff. He gives me a lot to choose from, and then I’m so methodical.”
Last year, Overtime Sound welcomed JVB into its cypher, and Joey and Brae dropped some nonsensical heat over M.O.P’s “Ante Up,” and you could tell that their mission was to come up with the most egregiously hilarious line possible. It was like watching the 8 Mile final battle reenacted at a Pokémon gym, and one of Brae’s bars (“Freeze like ice, ice like blue / Froze like ‘Honey, where’s my super suit?’”) made it into the final cut of “DOUGHBOY.” “I kid you not, every time we go to record stuff—there are unreleased songs that people have never heard before and it’s just constant laughter,” Brae says. “Joey will text me lines and I’m just dying laughing in my bedroom, because I’m like, ‘What the fuck is he writing?’ We finished [‘Intermission’] in 45 minutes, beginning to end, and we were writing different takes of lines. ‘I only eat a booty with a side of fries’—when Joey said that, I was in the background clapping and laughing.”
“When we were doing ‘LIKE A PUNK,’ the song was playing in my room and then the [buildup] hit,” Joey adds. “I was like ‘It’s time to rave, it’s time to rave’ and we were like, ‘That’s fucking awesome, let’s put it in a song.’ And then Brae recorded it and we just could not stop laughing. All the times that Brae is laughing at the end of a track, I put that in there. That’s literally any one of the takes that we’re doing of the song. Brae’s laughing at the end of every single one.”
Last month, Paste deemed “THE BADDEST” a song of the summer, and I would personally argue that it was just as evocative as any of Sabrina Carpenter’s singles—hence why I put JVB and the Short n’ Sweet superstar next to each other in the graphic, which Joey and Brae claim put them in stitches the first time they saw it. “That song had such a purpose behind it, too,” Joey says. “We went into recording [NO HANDS] and were like, ‘We need a song like this for the album.’ We wanted it to be this LMFAO, Missy Elliot-type shit Miami bass track—something that’s a huge party anthem. And we made the exact song that we wanted to, down to the fucking last word. It felt so right and we could not stop listening to it and singing it. We knew that we made our version of a hit song. We were like, ‘This is fucking awesome.’”
“THE BADDEST” was a phenomenal dance track upon its initial release months ago, but JVB gave it an Ayesha Erotica-assisted, “BADDER” remix recently, in preparation for this week’s forthcoming deluxe-edition of NO HANDS. And Ayesha’s verse is, to put it succinctly, batshit bonkers. “I make these rap heads go and beat some dick, with my big fat ass and my sleazy lips” is her introduction, while “Without cash, couldn’t sext no bitch / In the club put his dick in my tits, and I might shoot it off in this bitch” are her closing remarks. Despite having 5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Ayesha’s cult-following made for a perfect storm on “THE BADDEST,” which JVB asked her to be a part of via Instagram DMs. “Brae and I both had been wanting a feminine voice on the songs, that’s something we really wanted to have representation of in our music,” Joey says. “That felt like a perfect moment, and she just makes really up-tempo, cunty-ass party music. We thought she was a perfect fit. I sent her an open version of the song and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so down.’ She sent her vocals back in 40 minutes and the track was done.”
JVB also got Danny Brown to write a couple of licks for “PACKAPUNCH” by sending him a DM. “Joey Valence & Brae, we’re famous for the Instagram DM collabs,” Brae asserts. But the duo’s white whale still outmaneuvers them: the Cheesecake Factory. “We love the Cheesecake Factory so much, and I messaged them and was like, ‘How do I become a president of the Cheesecake Factory? I need to be an ambassador.’ And there’s no reply,” Joey says. “We fucking love it. We get it all the time on tour.” [Editor’s Note: Cheesecake Factory, if you’re reading this, I think you should make JVB some custom jerseys that they can wear onstage.] [Brae’s Note: “I would wear the shit out of that jersey. That’d be hard.”] JVB has also sent out a Hail Mary DM to Skrillex, but they’re very intentional about who they reach out to. “It’s not always a shot into the dark,” Joey adds. “There’s a lot of people we’d love to work with but I’m waiting to message until we either grow or they are on our radar—or we’re on their radar, somehow.”
Joey and Brae are known for coloring their live shows with adrenalized chaos. They keep their stage production minimal, but they sound dead-on with how they come across on their records—and that’s not always something you can count on in the rap game, but it is something you can bank on at punk shows. “When we first started, we were like, ‘Let’s just go out there and rap,’” Brae says. “There was no thought behind it. Obviously we were gonna rap the track, which is rare these days, because I feel like with a lot of rappers—especially big rappers—it’s all back-tracking and they’re yelling the hook while everyone else is yelling it with them. That’s not a bad thing, because a lot of shows warrant that, because it’s hardcore party music, but for us, I feel like there’s something to be said about us spitting on the mic the entire time for a 60-minute set. We’re always going to be going 100%.”
JVB recently finished a tour with Sum 41, and longtime fans of the pop-punk outfit got a sweet and confusing taste of the duo’s pot-stirring, merry prankster bravado. “We would come out onstage and be like, ‘What’s up? We’re AC/DC!,’” Joey says. “We knew it would piss them off. We had so many dudes on Reddit being like, ‘I don’t even know who these guys are, they kept calling themselves Limp Bizkit and Motörhead. Who even are they?’” But JVB went out there every night and didn’t change a thing about their stage antics. It was polarizing, sure, but Joey and Brae don’t hold much interest in compromising for the sake of impressing anyone. But, when they’re on a festival bill playing before Dua Lipa, they do play everything up for the sake of winning people over. First impressions are everything, and their 30 to 45-minute sets are fueled by every banger they can pull out of their catalog. I’ve put JVB’s music in front of quite a few people, and nearly all of them have fallen in love with the ballast of vaunts that each track becomes.
But I discovered Joey Valence & Brae’s music around the same time that Netflix and HBO both put out documentaries about Woodstock ‘99, and the duo’s music sounds like it wouldn’t be too out of place gliding over the piss-hot tar of the Griffiss Air Force Base. It’s nostalgic, high-energy, no-frills punk-rap that caters to a younger, still-green generation without pandering to a culture of violence and anger. It’s a “let’s rage and let’s laugh” kind of ethos, gospelized by a couple of Happy Valley miscreants tossing nods to Danny Phantom and Vans Off the Wall while hyping up their destiny through dagger bars that glow like a tractor beam on “JOHN CENA”: “JVB with the hits on hits.” I’d say these guys are next up, but they’d figure out a way to syphon that into a punchline before I could even finish typing the sentence.
At the end of the day, Joey Valence and Brae are just a couple of nerds who like cars, skate fashion, make intoxicatingly catchy and rebellious music, host “How to Produce Good” YouTube livestreams, film music videos on a Nintendo 3DS, were strombolis in a past life and dream of working with Tyler, The Creator one day. [JVB’s Note: “Tyler, hit us up!”] Many of us have grown bored, pulled out GarageBand and tried to make a song out of nothing. And, if you somehow stumble into something reasonably legible when doing so, it’s what I imagine climbing Everest might feel like. That’s what JVB did at least, pulling in rap heads and anime fans alike by just being themselves. On our call, Brae is wearing a Thrasher hoodie, while Joey stands in his studio and is ensconced by a bunch of Pokémon paraphernalia. At one point, Joey steps back from his webcam and shows off what the text on his oversized T-shirt says: “EXTREMELY HORNY PERSON.” “The people that are just like us, there’s so many kids who are out there making music and we’re telling them that we 100% did this by ourselves,” he adds. “We built everything from the fucking ground up, and it’s possible. You don’t need anything else except yourself. We’re not trying to be anything that we aren’t.” “It’s genuine chaos,” Brae concludes. “It’s fun and sexy.”
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.