Cover Story: Meet The Bashmen

For our September Cover Story we jetted up to NY to link with The Bashmen, a musical duo comprised of Artist/Creative Jidenna and Artist/DJ/Producer Swanky.

With Nigerian and Jamaican upbringings, the duo have a candid conversation with us about everything from the origins of their group and sound, their connection to the beautiful game, their unique experiences growing up, to their vision for how soccer can grow in the states.

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COVER STORY FEATURE

Who Are The Bashmen?

With Nigerian and Jamaican upbringings, the duo have a candid conversation with us about everything from the origins of their group and sound, their connection to the beautiful game, their unique experiences growing up, to their vision for how soccer can grow in the states.

The Bashmen used AI and incorporated footy culture to develop the group’s unique style

What started out as a joke, playing around with prompts on midjourney, turned into an obsession for crafting the Bashmen look for Jidenna. This experimentation allowed him to go back to his creative roots.

“Before I did music, I was a, painter, and I used to sketch a lot. When I was a child. I fell in love with music production because I looked at it like video games and, I actually also was a young little engineer, pretty nice with a soldering iron, like hardware engineer.” says Jidenna

“It's funny because now I would consider myself, like, an AI creative prompt engineer.”

“It all started out as a joke with The Bashmen. We didn't know what our look was gonna be, and so I hopped on to Midjourney…I don’t know where it came from, but I was thinking about what would happen if I merged two things that would be perceived as opposites.”

Equipped with that thesis, and some experimentation with prompting, Jidenna found exactly what he was looking for.

“I think I typed in ‘A crew of Scottish rastas, and a bunch of guys with dreadlocks in kilts with Afro-Caribbean colors popped up’. If you think about it, its not that crazy. One, there's an Irish/Scottish heritage in Jamaica. Two the plaid that you see in Scotland has red, green, black, hints of yellow or off white, and then they had soccer socks on”

“When we saw it we laughed, that started out as a joke, but then it became an obsession for me to make The Bashmen look with Midjourney. I told Steph (Swanky) to get on it and we really refined the look.”

ON THE PITCH

Jidenna and Swanky share stories about their connection to futbol

For Jidenna and Swanky, football was always a part of their lives, growing up in Nigeria Jidenna played football exclusively before he moved the United States. Swanky, whose entire family immigrated from Jamaica, reflects on how the game brought him closer to his family members on the island as a kid growing up in East New York.

CATCH A VIBE

The Bashmen talk upcoming singles BIH & MaJo

Like much of The Bashmen’s story, things seem to develop serendipitously. A Walk down the street in Chicago sparked the inspiration for what would become the duo’s lead single BIH (B*tch I’m Handsome).

Additionally in the spirit of creative collaboration, whatsapp messages between artist birth what would become the duo’s next single, MaJo, which blends Afrobeats, Dancehall and Amapiano to create a hard hitting vibe that’s impossible not to dance to.

BIH drops worldwide on Friday Sept 20th.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE SLEPT ON

The Drop: Jidenna

We catch up with Nigerian-American artist/creative Jidenna to drop off the latest Nigeria kits courtesy of forty-one and World Soccer Shop.

“The Drop” is our new artist seeding program where we get to drop off kits with special meaning to musical artists at all levels, who have expressed interests or curiosity in the game that we all love.

Quick Finds

• Get 10% off of GIVE&GO games with code: WHEREVERYOUGO