Sonik Youth

Meeting Ninjasonik in the daylight, and sober no less (well, relatively sober) is a strange experience. It almost feels wrong. The guys from the band are to be witnessed in a filthy warehouse or overcrowded dive bar somewhere in Brooklyn in the early hours of the morning when you’re off your face amongst friends, covered in sweat and losing your mind on the dance floor. Not at Piano’s at dinnertime.

Which is why it seems almost unfair that some people’s first experience with Ninjasonik will be the band’s forthcoming debut album, Art School Girls. It should come with a bag of your favorite illicit substance and a teleporter that sends you to a party in Bushwick packed with 21-year-old Pratt girls losing their shit.

Because, and not to sound too lofty here, but it’s about more than just the music. It’s an experience, an atmosphere brought about by guys who were like, fuck it, if you’re not into our sound leave us to our own devices. We’re going to have a fucking blast, make our music and burn this shit down to the ground.

“This record wasn’t based on some A&R guy sitting around like, ‘This is a great idea,’” says DJ Teenwolf. “It’s not made for the music industry, we made it for ourselves. We’re not trying to sell a million records.”

Ninjasonik formed in 2004 when Teenwolf was DJing parties in the Bronx while attending Fordham University and met Jah Jah. They moved to Brooklyn a few years later and set up in the DIY scene populated by bands like Matt & Kim, The Death Set and Japanther.

“That’s my favorite scene in New York, the most creative scene,” says Teenwolf. “I’m just proud to be able to perform with all those guys.”

The guys DJed all over Brooklyn and gained some attention with the song “Tight Pants Nigga.” Eventually the guys hooked up with Telli Federline and came up with a sound that corny-ass journalists like to refer to as hipster-hop. They kind of defy categorization but if you held a gun to my head I’d call it electro-punk-rock-Pharcyde-dance music.

Since then, the band has developed quite a following, playing shows what seems like every week in Williamsburg, Bushwick and on the Lower East Side, gaining as much attention for insane live shows as for the band members’ hard partying ways.

But with a weeks worth of shows in early May opening for Clipse, are mainstream rap fans and people outside places like Brooklyn and Baltimore going to understand the hilariousness of songs like “Art School Girls”—“she likes to draw on pads/ her sketches are so rad/ her bills get paid by dad/ she loves me cause I’m bad”? Ninjasonik is not concerned.

“Everyone is going to be able to relate. Even if you don’t see it [the live show], you can paint a picture in your mind,” says Jah Jah.

Telli adds, “That’s the last thing I’m worried about, I’ll play in Kansas City or in the south in a redneck dive bar doing ‘Tight Pants Ass Nigga.’”

In fact, these guys generally don’t seem worried about anything.

“We made this album for fun, and if you can’t understand that, we don’t give a fuck,” says Teenwolf. 

“We don’t give a fuck. We’re real, we live this shit,” adds Telli. “We don’t rehearse, we just go onstage and be ourselves.”

In fact, the only time in the interview Telli turns serious is when he talks about all the people that have supported them. “We’re friends with everybody,” he says. “To the naked eye this might look like smoke and mirrors, but it’s all about relationships. None of this shit ever happens without your friends.”

>Ninjasonik

April 20, Pianos, 158 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-505-3733; 7, $8.