DOMi & JD Beck release second album Who Asked?

DOMi & JD Beck have released their second album, Who Asked?, and discussed it with NPR's A Martinez on Morning Edition. DOMi plays keys and JD Beck plays drums; the two have been playing together since they were teenagers and are now in their 20s. Grammy-winning singer and rapper Anderson .Paak has called them "the future," and their list of collaborators and famous fans includes Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg, Thundercat and Ariana Grande.

Asked whether they consider themselves a jazz duo, as Wikipedia describes them, the pair gave characteristically uncommitted answers. "That's up to everybody's opinion, I guess," DOMi said. Beck was similarly noncommittal: "I think we're inspired by jazz. We grew up playing it. I don't know if you could call us that."

Beck once described the duo's approach as trying to "play everything imaginable and try to do something weird," a quote he laughed off as sounding like his 14-year-old self, though he said he still stands by the sentiment behind it on Who Asked?. Rather than everything imaginable, he clarified, the goal is closer to everything they personally can imagine, pushing themselves toward music they have not made before.

That pushing comes with a cost, both said. Beck described near-constant self-doubt: "every, like, month, we feel like idiots" after realizing something that could have changed their approach. DOMi said the feeling runs even more often than that, daily rather than monthly, framing it as necessary: "if you really truly want to push, you have to have a quality standard that is personal and abide by it."

Who Asked? is the duo's second album, following praise for a genre-crossing style that resists easy labels, whether jazz or otherwise. It joins the rest of the year's releases tracked in the release calendar.