Today we’d like to introduce you to THEMXXNLIGHT.
THEMXXNLIGHT, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
We are Indian-American identical twins from the bay area! We grew up very academically focused, but loved to participate in extracurricular activities such as drawing/painting, playing instruments, sports, etc. All thanks to our parents for allowing young Indian boys to discover their passion, which is rare. Basketball was our main path along with our academics, which led us to get recruited to many top schools. We finally decided to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Upstate NY to play Division 3 basketball and study Engineering. At this point, music wasn’t really on the scene. But, we did have a favorite artist, The Weeknd. After recording some covers on a headset mic, we received feedback that it sounded good and that we had potential.
Since we were in Upstate, NY, it would snow every day and it soon became a struggle to go outdoors, so we needed an indoor activity. We bought ourselves $500 worth of equipment and set up a dorm studio. We started to play around with Garageband and record for fun. After recording our first original song in December 2015, we decided to drop it on our birthday, December 30th. The track, “No Problems” received a lot of love from blogs and even got decent traction in Canada and The Weeknd fans. Since we were studying Engineering, we only spent 2-5 hours a week recording and dropped a song every couple of months. Things changed when we released our track “Drunk”. It caught the attention of Taylor Gang producer Sledgren, who heard it on SoundCloud and reached out to us saying that he was a fan and that he wanted to work. We were shocked because we never thought something like this was even possible for two Indian kids studying Engineering. Sledgren would keep sending over beats and we would keep sending back hooks.
After about five months of working with Sledgren, he told us that he had been showing our tracks around to major artists. One morning after studying for a math test, we got a text from Sledgren and it was a video of Wiz Khalifa in the studio bumping one of our songs. We went totally crazy! A few hours later, Sledgren face timed us and played us one of our tracks with two Wiz verses on it. This charged us up and we recorded more hooks each week and kept sending them back. We then saw Wiz Khalifa post 2-3 Instagram stories a week with our songs playing in the background. We still had no clue what he would do with the track, but it was crazy enough that he was listening/recording on them. A few months before graduating college, Sledgren advised us to make the trip and attend Wiz’ Rolling Papers 2 listening party in NYC.
So, we convinced our parents to let us buy bus tickets and go. Best decision of our lives. Wiz came up to us and put his arms around us and told us that he had some special news for us. Later that night, we were in the elevator together and that’s when he told us we had three tracks on his Rolling Papers 2 album. The rest is history. Ever since we have been growing with Sledgren, Wiz, and the rest of the Taylor Gang team (we aren’t signed, just affiliated). Recently, we signed a non-exclusive deal with Sony Music India to represent our Indian culture. Our “Mashallah” dropped last month with the title track hitting 11.5M views on YouTube. We have lots of upcoming music and collabs in the works that we can’t wait to share to the world.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Definitely has not been a smooth road, but no complaints either. The main obstacle was getting our parents to even understand what recording music was and the process of uploading it to digital streaming platforms so that the world could hear it. It was very new to our family since we were always so academically focused. Another obstacle was our fellow classmates in college, believe it or not. Lots of kids tried to tell us to stop making music and to focus on school and that Indian kids have no place in the music industry. We proved them wrong and we are proud of ourselves for pushing through the hate. And of course, we faced many challenges when it came to splitting our time between music and Engineering. But, we graduated and got it done.
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
We are identical twin R&B singers and we go by THEMXXNLIGHT. We are known for our unique airy vocals, which caught the eye of Sledgren, Wiz Khalifa, and many other major artists. People first started to catch on when Sledgren started posting about us and when we were featured three times on Wiz Khalifa’s album Rolling Papers 2. We are most proud of being an inspiration to other Indian-American kids out there that want to pursue their passions. What sets us apart is our unique twin brand, sound, as well as our ability to create music in English and in Hindi.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Our parents are our biggest supporters and we are blessed to have them in our lives. Indian parents usually would never support their kids pursuing a music career, but they have been there for us through it all. Sledgren is our mentor and “bhaiya” (brother in Hindi). He discovered us and we are so grateful for what he has done for us. Wiz Khalifa for believing in our sound. Being featured on 5 of his songs will always be a highlight in our lives. Each other. We are twins and we feel blessed to have each other to bounce ideas off of and support each other in our decisions.
Contact Info:
- Website: themxxnlight.com
- Instagram: themxxnlight
- Facebook: themxxnlight
- Twitter: themxxnlight
Image Credit:
THEMXXNLIGHT
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