The Real Lore of WHATMORE

This digital cover story is presented in partnership with Toyota and the New All-Electric C-HR. Fresh off a summer on the road filled with some of their biggest performances yet, Hypebeast follows WHATMORE’s five born-and-bred New Yorkers as they move through their hometown in the C-HR. In our cover story, Cisco Swank, Elijah Judah, Jackson August, Yoshi T., and Sebastiano chronicle the group’s come-up from the early days at LaGuardia High School to playing some of the country’s biggest music festivals, and how the city that raised them continues to inform wherever they go.

When WHATMORE arrives at the Hypebeast office, it takes a good thirty minutes before we get to any semblance of a formal interview. First things first, the five-man unit — the perpetual high school friend group of Cisco Swank, Elijah Judah, Jackson August, Yoshi T., and Sebastiano — needs caffeine. Yoshi gets matcha. Everyone else gets coffee.

Snacks were secured before the guys even pulled up (per the group chat, they were “starving”), so the Nerds Gummy Clusters circulated the couches quicker than the communal vape. After more than a decade of friendship, they’re surely comfortable with communal silence. Today, there isn’t a second of it. After a couple rounds on the office’s mini golf course, plenty of off-the-record basketball talk, and some video game banter, we finally get into it.

Sebastiano, hailing from Bensonhurst, met August, an Upper West Side native, and Judah, a fellow Brooklynite, on their first day at LaGuardia High School, where each was classically trained on saxophone or trombone.“I had a giraffe on my shirt, and Jackson made some comment,” Sebastiano recalls off the rip. “I was like, ‘Who the f*ck is this guy?’” And that’s how it all started — sort of.

It took a half-baked burner Instagram account, one very important drill cover of Katy Perry’s “Firework,” a handful of predecessor groups, a few fights, countless long-haul drives Upstate, even more flipped tracks, and almost four years for the first official WHATMORE track to hit streaming.

“We booked a venue and had no music as a group,” laughs Swank, whose solo career was on the brink in NYC, touring with MIKE, MAVI, and Judah. “We were all focusing on solo stuff, but whenever someone would have a solo show, we’d all pull up and perform ‘Fireworks,’” adds August, who was in a band called No New Friends at Syracuse University at the time. “Elijah was driving up almost every weekend from Purchase to record our stuff.”

Each of the guys comes from a different corner of New York City, born and bred within the five boroughs — despite what commenters on their early TikTok flips might have suspected. Growing up here gave them a shared understanding of the grind it takes just to make rent. “You’re competing with the city itself and its economy,” Yoshi explains. “You keep going just to stay out here.”

“It’s just in our nature: we’re New York. We’re talking about the city everywhere we go. Atlanta had its moment. Los Angeles had its moment. It’s New York’s time,” says Judah. “We go to other cities like, ‘Oh, this feels like the Lower East Side of this city,’” adds August.

This summer, the guys have been discovering a whole lot of new Lower East Sides around the world, embarking on their first solo headlining tour while also making the rounds at nearly all of the summer’s major music festivals from Indio to Montreal.

“We’re not up, though,” jokes Yoshi, with Seb noting that they don’t view themselves as famous and Swank pondering if they’re in fact too outside. “It always ends with us getting in the car,” says August, who was working at his neighborhood bar up until this April. “We still drive ourselves on tour.”

You can still spot them grabbing dim sum at Modern Shanghai — though now they might also be performing there, handing out spring rolls to a line of fans waiting to get in for free. You can still find them loitering in a Lower East Side parking garage, too — only now they might be memorizing lyrics backwards to shoot a music video in reverse. “Everyone has a high school friend group you did all those dumb things with, and we just keep doing those things,” August reflects on the “same sh*t different day” mentality. “Except now, there’s just some crazy sh*t going on at the same time.”

We end up talking for two hours about all the highlights, including that one band class, a Snarky Puppy concert in Queens, the early Pennsylvania sessions — and what exactly happened in the four years between the launch of the WHATMORE iMessage chat and the first track’s release.

Could each of you introduce yourself and say what you do in the group?

Jackson August: I’m Jackson. I’m from the Upper East Side. I sing, play guitar, and help with visuals. Everyone in the group wears a million hats, so it depends on the day.

Elijah Judah: I’m Elijah. I’m from South Brooklyn. I make beats, mix the songs, and figure out our live arrangements.

Yoshi T: I’m Yoshi. Also from Manhattan. Upper East. I just do what the universe tells me to do.

Cisco Swank: I’m Francisco. I’m from Flatbush, Brooklyn. I do exactly what the universe doesn’t tell me to do. We’re all jacks of all trades, so I’m another jack within the WHATMORE Jacks.

Sebastiano: My name’s Sebastiano. I’m from Brooklyn. Shout out Bensonhurst. I’m one of the four vocalists — rapping, singing, doing what needs to be done at the end of the day.

You’re all born-and-bred New Yorkers. What are your families’ connections to the city?

Sebastiano: I grew up in a working-class neighborhood to an immigrant father and an artist mother. I’ve been working in construction with my pops since I was 14. He instilled the grind mentality in me very early. My grandparents on my mom’s side are also immigrants. Those two sides, my dad’s immigrant hustle combined with my mom’s creativity, really shaped me.

Cisco: My dad’s from Panama. He came here when he was 15. My parents met in church; my mom was in the choir, and my dad was a musician. I grew up Christian. Both of my parents are educators, so my dad taught me music and art, and my mom taught me math and science. My existence was Velcro’d through music. I was always surrounded by it growing up, and while I didn’t know which direction it would go, I always knew I was going to make music.

Jackson: My parents are older; my mom is from the Bronx and moved to the Upper East Side when she was 20, in the 1970s, and she’s lived in the same rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment her whole life. My dad was a butcher, and my mom worked in administration at Columbia High School. I was a very New York kid, like my mom grew up calling people from Jersey the “bridge and tunnel crowd.” Being surrounded by rich kids uptown gave me a lot of hustle. When I was 18, I started waiting tables at the bar my parents had their first date at called The Inn, and I was working there up until March.

Elijah: My parents are from Jamaica. They moved here when they were teenagers. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York, where my dad and I lived at my great-grandparents’ house in an attic-like area. When my parents split, my mom moved to downtown Brooklyn, so I would go back and forth between upstate and the city. I was really into music as a kid, too, so my mom was always pushing me into music.

Yoshi: I’m the middle child. My parents are both from Japan. They own a sushi restaurant, so I grew up in the family business. I was young when they knew I liked music. My mom says I’d get really glued to the TV when music was playing, so they put me in music classes. They were creative people. My mom’s dad was a TV producer in Japan, so that career path was pretty regular. They’re not like the traditional Asian parents; no academic sh*t really mattered to them, like I was just skipping school for a lot of high school.

Speaking of: what did a day at LaGuardia High School look like?

Yoshi: Seb and I were smoking a lot, skipping class.

Jackson: Elijah, remember that band class? [laughs] Class ended, and we didn’t even realize. I remember looking across the room at Elijah and realizing everyone else had packed up and left, and it was just us with our instruments in the room.

Sebastiano: Cisco, Elijah, and I would take the train from Brooklyn together. We’d get on the same car of the same train every day. It got to a point where we didn’t even have to text.

Before and after school, where could we find you guys? What were the spots?

Jackson: Before school, we’d link at this little cafe that’s not there anymore by the Lincoln Center movie theater. We’d get muffins and coffee and chill there before our first class, which we all kind of hated. Who wants to blow into a saxophone at 7:50 AM?

Cisco: We’d be like 20 people deep at Sheep’s Meadow.

Jackson: That cafe Gracefully, down the street from LaGuardia on 66th. Melissa’s.

Sebastiano: The McDonald’s and the pizza spot on 72nd. Little Italy, too.

What were you listening to in high school and how did your early taste shape the music you guys drop?

Cisco: Before high school, I hated hip hop. In middle school, I was really into jazz and focused on being the best jazz pianist in the world. High school was when I got put onto Chance the Rapper and Joey Bada$$, and was like, “Oh wait, I want to be a rapper.”

Elijah: Flatbush Zombies. Action Bronson. A$AP Rocky.

Yoshi: Ye. Tyler, the Creator.

Sebastiano: Biggie. Joey Bada$$. All the GOATs.

Cisco: We were really into Snarky Puppy and Hiatus Kaiyote, so a lot of my early stuff was very fusion jazz-focused.

Sebastiano: Remember we all went to that Snarky Puppy concert in Queens? Best show ever.

Jackson: I love Snarky Puppy, but in terms of my own music, I never saw myself making that kind, so that’s when I started learning guitar and finding my pocket in indie rock. In high school, a bunch of us were in this class called New Music, which was super formative, because it was all about songwriting.

Yoshi: When we went to college was when our tastes solidified and separated a bit.

Jackson: I got really into bands. Fleetwood Mac. Pinegrove. The Strokes was my New York band. We all identify with different genres, and I think that’s why it’s easy for us to recognize when something is fire, regardless of genre.

When did each of you start making music beyond what you were doing at LaGuardia?

Elijah: I started making beats in middle school with our friends Sam and Cash. I’d make them rap on my stuff. Then I started making Cisco rap on my stuff [laughs]. Cisco always wanted to make music. I remember the first time he came over to make music and his mom came too. My parents weren’t home, so she just sat upstairs the whole time. I’d go upstairs to check on her, and she’d just be chilling there.

Cisco: I was living a double life on SoundCloud as a rapper while playing in Youth Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Jackson: Yoshi always wanted to be a rapper, but he was super gung-ho about not rapping. One summer he made a Ye cover with our friend Danny as a joke, and then junior year he started rapping.

Yoshi: I was in a group with Cisco, Elijah, Cash, and Danny called 908. We performed at the after-prom.

Elijah: Super legendary performance.

Sebastiano: We need another interview only for that.

Jackson: I was in a band called No New Friends at Syracuse University. It was a really formative time. The scene in ‘Cuse was super indie, and we were playing a lot of house shows. Elijah came up to produce and record all of our music.

Elijah: Hauling every single piece of equipment, borrowing sh*t from people, stuffing it all in my car and driving from Purchase.

Yoshi: Elijah and I both went to Purchase. Cisco’s at Berklee College of Music. Seb is in Albany.

Sebastiano: I also started rapping as a joke. I’d send them to Elijah and our other musician friend Joe, and they’d be like, “Yo, this sh*t is fire! You got to rap!” I went up to Purchase for a weekend, and we made my first piece of music called The Weekend Tape.

Jackson: The track with Cisco is still one of my favorite Elijah beats ever. Seb has a line that goes: “Living the dream ‘till we rock Coachella.” That sh*t was crazy back then, and now we’re here.

When did you formally converge at WHATMORE?

Jackson: Yoshi came up with the name in 2023 before we had any official music. We were walking back from Carl Schurz Park when you made the Instagram.

Yoshi: I made it as a burner just to save the account name. Our friend group was called WHATMORE, and it was also the group chat name. It was definitely inspired by BROCKHAMPTON — the all-caps, pairing-of-words kinda thing.

Jackson: Seb wasn’t in the chat at first. We added him to a FaceTime one day, and we didn’t realize that when you FaceTime someone from a group chat, it automatically adds that person to the chat.

Yoshi: So Seb gets added, and the first WHATMORE music doesn’t drop for another four years.

Elijah: Technically, the first official WHATMORE song was made at Jackson’s house in Syracuse in 2021, though, when we all came up for the No New Friends release party. It was a drill cover of “Firework.” It set the precedent for a lot of the flips we’d do, us rapping over pop music.

Jackson: Whenever someone had a solo show, we would all perform “Firework.”

Cisco: I opened for MAVI and MIKE on tour, and we had a show at the Market Hotel at the end of 2022. Elijah, Yoshi, and Seb were on the stage for over half the set. Even though Jackson wasn’t on stage, it felt like the biggest WHATMORE moment at the time.

Jackson: For sure. And it led to how it all really started: Cisco gets offered a show at Baby’s All Right, and he doesn’t want to do it. So we’re like, “F*ck it, let’s do a WHATMORE show.” But we had no music as a group. That’s when we started making music.

What did those early sessions look like?

Jackson: We made “go!” in our first session at Cisco’s house.

Elijah: Ironically, it was also the last one to be finished. We didn’t touch that song for so long.

Jackson: All of Summer 2024, we were recording. My family has a place in super desolate Pennsylvania, so we went up there and made the bones of the album. “empty,” “jennie’s,” “bombay,” “never let go,” “jackie chan.” It was crazy. Then we finished it by the end of the year.

Sebastiano: So now we had all of this music, but 200 followers on the WHATMORE Instagram.

Jackson: That’s when the flips started. We wanted to establish that the five of us were a group.

Yoshi: We used the flips to build a foundation for our real music, which we didn’t start rolling out until Summer 2025 with “eastside w my dogs”.

Jackson: I feel like we tricked everyone when we dropped “eastside,” like we aren’t just the flip guys.

Cisco: We were like, “How are we not going to be TikTokers?”

Jackson: Also, I’m really not a rapper, so I was getting violated in the comments. Having the album in the bank made me feel better. Definition of “trust the process.”

Yoshi: We knew we had some sh*t coming…

Jackson: Towards the end of the flips era, I was like, “We need to show them what we can do,” and that’s when we dropped the vignettes about our lives, which was our first switch from unserious to more legit content. In the flips, people only knew us as number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Cisco: They’d be like “Yo, two’s verse was fire.”

Yoshi: They literally called us number two.

Cisco: People would also comment calling us transplants, so once we dropped the vignettes, people actually realized that we were just like them.

That same accessibility carried over to your early shows, which were free and happening in places like diners and garages. Why was that important?

Sebastiano: It was really important for us that our shows were free. People shouldn’t have to pay to see us. We’re trying to get our name out there and create a fun space for people to listen to our music. Especially because during these early pop-up shows, none of our real music was out.

Jackson: Our mentality was: “How can we take this concept from the internet and make it exist in real life?”

Sebastiano: Seeing a line down the block at Modern Shanghai for us was crazy. We gave out spring rolls on the line.

Fast-forward to this past summer and all of the major festivals you guys performed at. Seb, you called out Coachella in an early lyric, but did any of you actually imagine getting here this quickly?

Yoshi: We definitely didn’t envision this. When we found out about Indio, it was a “Holy sh*t” moment, but I feel like we were ready for it. We went through all the baby steps before. Ironically, our first big festival is the biggest one in America.

Elijah: It was the first festival I’d ever been to.

Sebastiano: Same.

Yoshi: We had a pretty good slot too: Saturday 4:00 PM. On Justin Bieber‘s day.

Jackson: Something is so motivating about festivals, too. Going to the Turnstile set and seeing their crowd — we want that someday.

Yoshi: Seeing people show love and sing along in different cities just as much as they would in New York is surreal.

Jackson: Even at a 1:00 pm set.

Sebastiano: Touring is still very run-and-gun. One of us is driving the van. We always hit side quests.

Where can we find you guys these days?

Jackson: Doing the same sh*t, except maybe Robert Pattinson is over there. Everyone has a high school friend group that you did all those dumb things with, and we just keep doing those things, except now, there’s just some crazy sh*t going on at the same time.

Yoshi: But we’re not up. We’re still driving the van.

Jackson: It always ends with us getting in the car.

Sebastiano: We don’t see ourselves as famous. People will be like, “I can’t believe I’m seeing you,” and we’re like, “What do you mean?”

Cisco: We might be too accessible…

Sebastiano: I have thought about that. We really are everywhere…

Have there been any times that you’ve thought about quitting?

Cisco: There’s always going to be ups and downs, but once you make that one song, or you have that one cool interaction with someone, that’s what keeps you going.

Jackson: You’ve just got to keep taking at bats.

What are some “I made it” moments your younger New York selves would’ve lost it over?

Sebastiano: Playing Bowery Ballroom. It was one of our first headline shows here, and it’s a venue that we’ve passed by our whole lives and said we wanted to sell out. And we did. That was a point when we realized we were building something special in the city we love.

Yoshi: The Knicks Playoffs were crazy. Being in the room with Sheck Wes and Spike Lee.

Sebastiano: Meeting Joey Bada$$, an artist we’ve been listening to our whole lives.

Cisco: He told Seb he was nice.

Sebastiano: Denzel Curry, too. Jean Dawson. It’s those experiences that keep us going: when we not only get to meet people we’ve listened to for so long, but they show us love. It’s wild.

What else is driving you to keep going?

Yoshi: This city is competitive. Not just the people, but the city itself. You’re competing with the city itself and its economy. You keep going just to stay out here.

Sebastiano: People are rooting for us now, too. Not only family, but friends and other artists that we’ve met, and we want to show up for them.

Yoshi: Family is super grounding, too. We know each other’s parents, and we’ve known each other for so long that it’s pretty hard to act a certain way and not get checked by somebody.

Do you have any specific goals for WHATMORE in the next five years?

Yoshi: To have WHATMORE and our individual careers fueling one another.

Jackson: We’ve always talked about having a TV show.

Yoshi: I’d also love to run our summer festival tour back with a higher slot.

Elijah: I’d love to buy a crib

Cisco: A brownstone.

Yoshi: Or an apartment in LA. Or Tokyo.

Sebastiano: Let’s start by moving out of my one-bedroom.