After years of recording critically-acclaimed grimy, industrial club-tracks, Bronx-born Joey Labeija is having an emancipation of butterfly proportions, dahling! The 2010s saw Joey release excellent EPs such as Enemy of Progress & Tears in my Hennessy, but the House of LeBeija DJ has decided that 2021 is the year to switch things up and….be happy!

In the search for this happiness, Joey has gone back to his roots and now looks to NSYNC, Blaque and 702 as his current reference points. The first track from this new era is the super-fun ‘heels’ which is all about being ‘head over heels’ in love, ‘I got two shoulders for leaning, anything you need, baby I will come running to protect you.’ Everybody say love!

Loverboy catches up with Joey to discuss why painting your room black is never a good idea and the snobbery within Dance music.

Joey Labeija! How the devil are you?
I’m alright, I’m just home alone chilling out in Brooklyn, looking at my dog. I just got him last month. He’s a toy Australian Shepherd with a toy Poodle. His name is Jupiter. What’s the decor? Well, I was living at my Mom’s for  the peak of lockdown and I had the bright idea of painting my small room black! Everybody was like, ‘Don’t paint your room black, it’s going to make you depressed.’ But I was like, ‘No, it’s not.’ Cut to a year later and I’m like, ‘Why am I so sad when I come home? Oh yeah because my whole fucking room is black!’ So this place is completely the opposite, it’s all white.

Nice, mine too! Congratulations on the release of ‘heels’!
Thank you, it’s so weird because I’ve not put anything out in a year. I waste time on the internet, posting memes. I often wonder if people stopped following me because they wondered if I was going to make music again! So I put something out as a nice little reminder.
And everyone seems to like it, which…I don’t want to say I’m not surprised because I love the song so much but it’s so different from everything I’ve put out. It’s the first time I’ve put something out and I’ve not been super nervous. Usually I am freaking the fuck out.

Why were you so nervous before?
I don’t know. I think with my other material I was still getting used to other people getting used to me making music and I didn’t know if anyone actually cared. I guess I just got a little more confident. But I’m really happy with the response. Honestly this is the first time I didn’t really care if anyone really liked it. 

I feel like people in RnB take themselves less seriously than people in Dance…
I completely agree and I think that’s why I felt under so much pressure in the past, especially as a DJ. I think that people are such music snobs about Dance music when it should be the opposite. Dance music should be about bringing on the feeling of being free!
Also while I was making my previous music I was always making more down tempo stuff like this on the side. I was just too afraid of what people expected from me, to actually release it. Lockdown helped me get a little bit more confident in that because no one was going to the club! 

Bicep said they toned down their album because people would be listening to it at home during the pandemic. Were you thinking a similar way?
For sure. When I wrote my last project I felt a huge amount of pressure to make dance music because it was coming out on Diplo’s label and also my history as a DJ. All that music came out at the beginning of lockdown which was a nightmare in itself but whatever…

You can’t just say ‘Whatever’. Haha. What happened?
Bless them, it was a learning experience for all of us. Everything happens for a reason. I came out of it all a lot wiser but I did go through a really nasty moment of sadness. Nobody’s going to take care of your music the way you do. Besides the fact that there was a lockdown, they just had no strategy. They just put the music out to see what would happen and that was really it. It can put you in a really bad headspace when your music isn’t doing what your label promised you it would do. Meanwhile I was in the house thinking ‘This is the perfect time to just make what you want to make.’ I made so many songs.

And was ‘heels’ the first?
No, it was the last one I made! We were well out of lockdown, we made this in March. Why did I choose this one to release? Well, to be fully cheesy, I wrote it when I was single and like, ‘Well what if I write a song about meeting the perfect guy…’ and then a month later I met my boyfriend. Haha.
But there’s also something about the melody which is really infectious. Everytime I listen to all these songs collectively they all kind of hit the same. I just felt this one seemed the most….not commercial because that is never a reason to put something out, but the most ‘easily digestible’ to a bigger audience which is what I really wanted. 

Are we getting an album or an EP?
Originally I had the idea of putting all these songs out on like an EP/mixtape but then I started to think about how I’ve released my music in the past and I’ve just always put out projects. So I think I’m just going to put everything out as singles and let them exist on their own. That’s just the way people digest music these days – it’s a different generation. I like to listen to an album from the beginning to the end. But the internet has fucked everyone’s attention span.

There’s been a serious makeover I feel too, right?
Yeah. Moving forward I’ve made a conscious decision to separate my music self from my actual self – because I do turn into a different person. My boyfriend brought that up to me. He appreciated my music before he met me and now that he knows me as a human being, he said, ‘Oh my God you are nothing like your music self.’ So I decided that really it’s time for me to try and keep the two separate. So I really wanted to try and have fun with this imagery.

You seem happier…
Oh yeah, for sure. I think my whole life I’ve been a really sad person. Lockdown was a blessing in that sense because I like really got to know myself. I got really depressed about my record coming out, I was living with my parents, I gained 25lbs then I lost 25lbs. I tortured myself for a year.
Living in a city the size of New York you don’t really let yourself feel because otherwise you will fall down a hole so you just push through. Then when shit hits the fan it really hits the fan. So I decided I had two choices to either keep on living like this or to try and live my life like my authentic self. So I spent a lot of the last year just being happy.

Which artists have you been listening to when recording this new material?
When it comes to references, I wanted to go back to my roots and listen to NSync, 702, Blaque, Britney. But you’re talking to someone who listens to the same twenty songs on loop all week.

Does this twenty-song playlist have a name?
No, honestly I let Spotify handle my business. If I’m not listening to old stuff then I try and listen to my friends’ music because they inspire me like Shygirl, Chloe and that whole gang.

Today is the anniversary of Aaliyah’s passing. I wondered if she had been on that playlist of yours?
Oh I mean without a doubt. There’s a photo that just came out in Paper magazine that I call ‘My Aaliyah photo’ because it’s very that. I remember being so obsessed with her as a kid and when the ‘We Need a Resolution’ video came out. But Aaliyah is a huge inspiration for me, I mean when the Normani ‘Wild Side’ song came out I was like ‘This is One In A Million!’
One of the first ever remixes I put out there as a producer was an Aaliyah mash-up and that was really my gateway in, back when deconstructed club music or whatever the fuck they called it was coming out. I remember tuning in to Just Jam and Nguzu Nguzu, who I totally looked up to, were playing my remix so I was like, ‘Oh, cool!’ Aaliyah was my gateway into being a producer.

Lastly we are named after the biggest-selling single of 2001 so I always ask what is your favourite Mariah track?
Oooh. This is so hard because I love all Mariah. I want to say ‘X-Girlfriend’ or ‘Stay The Night’ but if I am going to be 100000% nerdy, my gateway to Mariah was ‘The Roof’. That was just a hip hop song with her singing RnB over it. She was bridging the gap. We listened to a lot Mariah in my house growing up. Mariah for the win always. 

Joey LaBeija
Stream ‘heels’ here.
Instagram / Soundcloud / Spotify