A group with a No. 1 hit song is a tough act to follow, particularly if you”re in that group. Far East Movement earned the top spot with their song “Like a G6” in 2010, and made some headway on radio, too, with “Rocketeer.” Now the hip-hop-loving dance quartet is back with their album “Dirty Bass,” with the hope to achieve some of the same widespread success. Cameos from artists like Tyga, Cassie and freakishly popular Justin Bieber should, y”know, help.
“Right after ‘G6″ we kept staying on the road and we”d see the crowds and thought, ‘This is crazy.” But we went into the studio, we didn”t want to think about how we did off the last album, and let”s totally reinvent,” Far East Movement”s Kev Nish said of their newly released album. “That”s what the Beastie Boys would do. We played around with our visuals. When we were touring with Rihanna or [Lil] Wayne, we”d duck right back off stage or on the bus or the backstage and take that energy from the crowd and work it into new ideas.”
That reinvention led to one of the group”s fans – Bieber – to get in touch, to lay down the track “Live My Life.” Despite the 18-year-old superstar”s status, Nish said that Bieber didn”t roll in with much of an entourage and remained down-to-earth during the recording process.
“It was just him, a close manager member and an engineer,” he said. “We didn”t expect him to be as humble as he is. It was really refreshing. He has the size of a large country following his Twitter. But with that influence it was cool of him being so open and humble. When we knew we were finished with the song, we put it on and we saw Justin over there just dancing, doing some crazy footwork.”
Check out FM”s new music video for “Turn Up the Love,” featuring Cover Drive, below. And the group hasn”t totally left their big hits behind them: They released a new remix for “Like a G6” over the weekend.