WEEKEND MUSIC PT. 67: IN CONVERSATION WITH PARTYOF2
PARTYOF2, the Los Angeles-based hip-hop duo consisting of Jadagrace Michiko Gordy-Nash and Tyson Coy Stewart known as SWIM, are releasing their newest album AMERIKA’S NEXT TOP PARTY! on October 17, 2025. In a relaxed and friendly conversation with Numéro Berlin, the two well-dressed young musicians sit casually on a sofa, radiating confidence and enthusiasm as they talk about how their music has evolved since continuing as a duo, their collaborative songwriting and production process, the mix of political commentary and danceable music, the spiritual side of creating music, and how their acting experience inspires their innovative music videos.
We are commenting on the political state, the state of America and what it feels like to be a black artist at this time.
Jadagrace: We just wanted to establish what our sound really is as PARTYOF2 and as a duo. It just naturally sounds different with just the two of us going back and forth and our individual influences. Coy – SWIM – has been producing a lot on the new album. We wanted it to be intentional and cohesive, but still experimental. It’s evolved a lot since group therapy.
SWIM: It’s a lot more focused. I’m from the East Coast and it’s very hip hop based and Jadagrace from the west coast and grew up more with like a Motown kind of R&B sound and I don’t know if that’s something that we were able to explore as much previously. Now it feels like a cool kind of blend of both of our worlds.
J: Swim is always bringing me the weird and crazy stuff that maybe doesn’t make sense to me at first. But he always has a genius idea of how to make it feel like us. I focus a lot on melodies um vocals. When he brings me production um sometimes I’ll throw in some melody ideas and and help him with that. I would say when it comes to songwriting and production we we work really close together. For the songwriting we open up a note and we just throw ideas at the wall. We make each other better, I would say.
S: Yeah we like to lean into the parts of us that don’t agree, parts of that have different opinions because I think that’s where the magic is. I love it when we disagree creatively because it brings out something so special.
S: Especially being a black American, it feels really hard to not comment on what’s happening in our country.
There’s so much chaos happening in the world right now. But there is also so much distracting us from it. People are saying just dance, just ignore what’s happening.
It’s very easy to feel powerless in what you see happening in the world and feeling like there’s nothing you can do to change it. Sometimes you have to as an artist. Sometimes you have to free yourself of that.
J: And that ties into the album title as well, America’s Next Top Party. It was really important for us to have some political commentary. But also for the people that just want to dance and just want to hear good music. We have a lot of lyrics that are commenting on the political state, the state of America and what it feels like to be a black artist at this time.
It kind of just sparks within you.
S: I think there’s certain things you make, that feel bigger than you. That’s where the spirituality becomes a thing. It’s like when you get an idea and you don’t know where it came from. It kind of just sparks within you. We say God is in the room.
J: We are just go into it trying to heal. Just talking about everything that we we’ve been through. It has been a hard couple years and it just feels like this music that we’ve made is bigger than us and for it to also affect other people and for people to hear it and relate to it. It’s a beautiful experience. It is always our goal to just put our heart out there and leave it all on the track.
S: I think it’s very freeing to see it from a spiritual perspective. It takes the pressure off you as an artist to reach a certain level. If you see yourself as speaking through the universe, you don’t have to perform at a specific standard every time.
Make a certain kind of song.
When you take a step back and look at that, you have to say that that’s bigger than me. That wasn’t me. And that’s relieving to me as an artist, because then you just show up every day and you hope that… You just wait for the source. You wait for that source. You hope it knocks on the door. If it doesn’t, that’s okay. And if it does, you take advantage of that.
J: To be honest, we are just so creative and we love movies. We get inspiration from anything. When we make music, we almost instantly see something visually with it, which sometimes honestly helps us make the song.
Because of our acting background, we’ve made a lot of friends in the industry who have amazing gear and cameras, and they’re always up for trying new things with us. Visuals are very important to us.
S: I think we’re so lucky that we have the acting background because it’s really our cheat code and we know what it takes to make a visually pleasing video doesn’t take much. I think it just takes great ideas and strong execution. We’re in an era where visuals are so important with social media. We were just talking about this earlier. Nowadays, they see your music before they hear it. Having something that, um, still feels authentic to you, but also draws people in to stay. We recognize how important that is so we put just as much much work into videos as we do the songs.
S: I think what’s interesting is that we kind of bring ourselves into the world of these other genres. We bring hip hop and R&B into rock and pop. We bring that into dance, electric house.
J: Redefining POP.
S: We both love every single genre of music and I just don’t love being put in a box and people would be surprised how much more music they would love if they just heard it in a certain context and so one of the goals for us when we’re making an album is to always put our fans on to something new that they maybe would not have listened to before.
So we try to just take, bring ourselves into these other worlds and explore as much as we can.