Dive Head First into Bathes’ Musical Pool

Words by Matthew Spence:

Wine-tap the music discourse; for the past few months, the oldheads and young gens of music connoisseurs have been having a peace treaty rollout. Day 1: Re-Record “We Are the World for 2025”. Day 2: Superglue Side B of Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” vinyl to the Side B vinyl of Frank Ocean’s “Blonde” to create the ultimate unity record. Day 3. Banding together on the streets, getting on their knees to beg and plead.

Why? All for the cause: Make R&B Great Again.

Dip into Tinker Bell’s fairy dust stash all you want; not even that can compare to the euphoric high of great, and I mean Great, and I mean GRRRE– <notification goes off> Hmm, I see. On Second thought, let’s hold off on the extension of Great, cause I just got a text from the Kellogg Mob, and frankly, I don’t want rat poison in my Frosted Flakes. Censorship and trademarks aside, Great R&B is a different level of Couples Therapy. Flipping through the Love Language card deck and plucking the petals off a flower for the longest game of “She Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” to the morning trip to CVS for cold medicine, for begging in the rain from the previous night.

From makeup to breakup, to wedding days to the final days, and more in between, it’s the genre that can break the toughest shield of dudes who eat bananas like sunflower seeds (aka the “Straight Way” because of course they do) and have them hit a note higher than Prince when he stubbed his toe. Universal to the Black experience: cookouts, weddings, and your aunties’ cleaning playlist. Now don’t get me wrong, I fond over days when singers were begging and STRESSING and expressing love. The Men:

and the Women:

However, I’ll never be the one to utter the words “R&B Is Dead,” compared to others who live by it currently. The torch was passed, and talented people have been out and about taking the genre forward in their own direction, with the landscape of the 2010s filled with Frank Oceans, Weeknds, SZAs, Solanges, Brent Fiyazes, Jhene Aikos, Daniel Ceasers, Blood Oranges, etc. Now, we’re in the 2020s, and artists have grabbed the baton to continue the real race. Traditions may be switched and aesthetics are rearranged, but however there’s a certain spirit still around artists are keeping afloat: creating from the heart and making sure your heart is still working. Among those artists right now is the duo Bathe.

No Hypebeasts, calm down, yo. I said “Bathe,” not “Bathing Ape.” BATHE!

Bathe, the R&B duo, currently based in New York (Dev being a native and Corey being from Hartford, CT Stand Up) and based in general, they’ve been building a portfolio that’s filled with sweet vocals, grooves that make your ears perk, and lyrics that feel like your journal entries transcribed to poetry. Dev and Corey aren’t just a chip off the old block but a brick that can help complete the wall of contemporary R&B of today. Their 1+1=2 catalog of their debut album, 2019’s “I’ll Miss You,” and their EP, 2025’s “Inside Voices: Side A,” a 6-track EP containing the first act of their latest follow-up sophomore album, “Inside Voices.”

11 tracks, 32 minutes of genuine emotions spoken through lyrics and melody. Courtesy of Corey Smith-West and Devin Hobdy. Dev on Vocals, Corey on Guitar. (a nice He’s the DJ, I’m The Rapper combo). Now, boiling it down to its simplicity is fine, but it’s more than that. They’re two creative homies that’ve created a companionship that goes beyond the music, but within the art, they’re able to guide each other’s visions to ultimately mesh into one like peanut butter and jelly. One [Corey] is inspired by artists like Beach House and Blood Orange, the other has ties to Soul Traditions [Dev], with a mutual middle ground of the eclectic R&B landscape and other genres with artists like Frank Ocean and so much more. Lo and Behold, you’ll end up with tracks like Avalon.

A song like Hosannas

Perhaps a track like “Heaven,” which sweeps you off your feet on their latest project. Go back in time to their 2019 project, and you might fall for their title track, “I’ll Miss You,” which scratches the musical itch. A track that culminates what they’re about and what they can create and will continue to create. Homely music, which I like to consider “Band-Aid R&B.” It eases you into an insouciant state and comforts you in a time where art can help the most. Like a parent giving a kid a band-aid after falling, a nice, secure feeling. By the looks of their monthly Spotify listeners, their streams, and their own headline tours, as well as a tour with Black Hibiscus (shout-out to him) and a Mick Jenkins guest feature.

It’s safe to say I’m not alone in joining the ride of Bathe. Submerge and bathe in their water imagery and enjoy their ever-growing fluid potential and dopeness. Who would’ve thought this all came to be from a bad mushroom trip at college?

Now, lucky for me, a couple of months ago in March, ahead of the release of the new album, I got to speak to the duo…… for about 4 minutes. In the first 10 minutes of the interview, I was talking to Dev while Corey was trying to log on to the call, and the moment Corey joined, Dev’s connection crapped out on him since he was on the road. It felt like Inconvenience was National Lampooning us, so most of this interview is just Corey. Hey, 1/2 ain’t bad. Plus, turning water into lemonade, we didn’t get too down. As much as it would’ve been dope to have Dev in the entire call, however, Corey held it down.

Here’s a Q/A of a Q/A, and when you Q/A, don’t forget the Q/A.

Describe your sound in 3 words.

Dev: Dreamy, wavy, and guitar-based. We gravitate towards tons of reverb, tons of delay, and this feeling of spaciousness that’s present in all of the music we like.

Corey’s in the House

Corey: Soulful, flowing, and dreamy

Creative Burnout vs. Imposter Syndrome. What affects you more?

Corey: In the beginning, I’d say imposter syndrome by far. It would get to the degree where it would stop me from ever reaching burnout because it would make me procrastinate and not do as much, cause I’d second-guess myself so hard. But now, I don’t get imposter syndrome as much, and when I do get it, I can work through it a bit faster than burnout.

Dev: Yeah, I think for me it’s always been burnout. Well, I don’t know; I think “burnout” is the wrong word for me, but I’m naturally the kind of creative who creates in chunks. So, like, “I’ll have a period where I’m frantically creating and having new ideas popping up in my brain, then all of a sudden someone would turn off the tap and I’d kinda have nothing left. And I think before, I used to try to fight through that, and I would experience that as burnout, but I kinda just have come to accept that’s this sorta natural cycle of creativity.

How do you work on/balance individually working on staying confident in your own ideas vs. being open and able to compromise for the homies’ ideas?

Corey: I think the most concise answer is just experience. I think Dev and I have been in a lot of musical groups and in different musical settings, we’ve just got a lot of chances to collaborate and I think the most important thing about collaboration is that some of the parts, it’s gonna sound cheesy, you gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them <laughs> gotta know when an idea is essential to you and know when to be open and flexible. I also think it’s important to see from either person’s perspective and try not to just listen to someone to just counter and get what you want. But to actually listen and try to understand the world their in and their viewpoint cause then you’ll be like “Oh I see how they even came to that conclusion” and then ultimately, certain times, if you’re a good collaborator, you’re not gonna [win]. You’ll have to stand on that and be ok with that.

Dev: Oh yeah, 100% agree. I’ll like to add, knowing how to collaborate is in the abstract and having developed a relationship with a particular person whom you’ve come to love and respect. That’s something #1 to understand. We’ve had yo learn what the best to presenting new ideas to each other are, like how to take the other person—-

Disconnected Dev

How did the Mick Jenkins collab happen?

My cousin’s Mick Jenkins DJ/producer. I’ve known Mick since I was 19, he’s always been one of my fav rappers, so when the opportunity arose for an open verse, I sent it over, he got us a verse back, it was like “Phew”. I mean, [we] don’t have a lot of rap verses on our songs, that is on the new new music though. That was one of my favorite musical moments we’ve had, just listening to his verse for the first time. So yeah, he’s just a friend of the band.

What Bathe song would you recommend someone play to get back their partner/get over their partner?

To get back their partner, maybe “Bicostal” might work. To get over, maybe “I’ll Miss You” feels right, or “Hazel”. Cause when I used to break up, I wanted to listen to breakup songs that made me feel better, so I think Hazel would work.

Do you plan on touring with the metal band?

Dude, I don’t know what’s up with them, Idk what’s going on. I don’t know <laughs>, I don’t know if that tour is gonna happen.

With this Rollout, do you think you’ll continue to go above and beyond with future releases?

Yeah, and I think this goes back to earlier to my other answer about not being too worried about what other people think of the record. At the end of the day, to me, for I guess most years of my life, like when I’m in the gym, I’m trying to lift heavier weights than yesterday. I feel like I’m the same thing with music, and the album rollouts and etc. With this [Inside Voices] it’s the furthest we’ve gone and our best attempt at it. The best we can do with the information and experience we had at the time, but now having amassed more on the next record, I wanna do something that blows Inside Voices out of the water. I think as an artist, it’s just fun to reach a point where you’re like, “I can’t believe I figured out how to do it this way.”

Pick one: Be on the soundtrack to Frank Ocean’s upcoming film or convince him to drop his long-awaited album?

Soundtrack to the film! You know, I don’t know him personally, but from a fan perspective, it seems that he doesn’t have that much of a passion for music anymore, but I get it, especially if you’ve been doing this as long as he has been doing this and go through what he did. I can understand of getting to the point to where maybe your process to coming back to make another album is a lot longer than what people want it to be so I wouldn’t want to rush him. He seems more excited about the film, so I wanna be apart of what he’s excited about.

Future Plans?

Just getting “Inside Voices” out, getting back into the lab, and make more music. We’re putting together a live band version for our live show, so just working with the musicians to do that and just trying to make a record that’s even better than the one we’re about to share. But the one we’re about to share is really good in my opinion.

Listen to the “Inside Voices” and the rest of Bathes’ music wherever you enjoy music. Follow and keep up with the Brooklyn duo on any platform you prefer for social media. Remember when the music stops, life stops with it.