Music Industry News

Rapper JessB, R&B/soul artist Aaradhna, country star Kaylee Bell, reggae heavyweights The Black Seeds and Māori metal trio Alien Weaponry will have some of their best-known tracks pulled apart and radically reimagined when BEYOND THE BEAT returns for Season 2 on Thursday 29 October.

Across five weekly episodes on YouTube, the series pairs the established artists with Dani James, Verity, Myshaan, Jaedyn Randell, Tida and Jujulipps, challenging them to find an entirely new musical way into each song.

The results range from country-pop and Roots reggae to stripped-back R&B and multilingual hip-hop, with the five Season 2 transformations including:

– Kaylee Bell × Myshaan – “Cowboy Up”: country-pop becomes melodic roots reggae

– The Black Seeds × Jaedyn Randell – “So True”: reggae is stripped back into an emotional R&B ballad

– JessB × Dani James – “MOOD”: Hiphop becomes country-pop/Americana

– Aaradhna × Verity – “Forever Love”: heartbreak is reimagined through a new perspective

– Alien Weaponry × Tida & Jujulipps – “Crown”: heavy metal becomes multilingual Afro hip-hop incorporating te reo Māori, English and Shona

BEYOND THE BEAT creator and director Gal Hochman says the bigger genre clashes of Season 2 also produced something unexpected: genuine connections between artists whose music, backgrounds and creative worlds might otherwise rarely intersect.

“On paper, some of these artists couldn’t be more different. Their music, their backgrounds and even the way they approach creating can be completely opposite.

“The genre flip might be what brings them into the room, but often the connection between the artists becomes the real story.”

Each episode begins with the artists unpacking the original song – where it came from, what it meant when it was written and what it means now – before the remake begins.

Working alongside BEYOND THE BEAT resident producer Mazbou Q, the artists break down the musical DNA of each track and rebuild it from scratch. Lyrics are rewritten, arrangements abandoned and reinvented, and the artists are pushed well beyond the musical spaces in which they normally work.

For Alien Weaponry’s “Crown”, the experiment goes beyond genre. The band’s use of te reo Māori prompts Tida and Jujulipps to explore their own relationships with language and culture, ultimately bringing Shona alongside English and te reo Māori in their reinterpretation.

Hochman says the increasingly unlikely pairings made Season 2 more creatively challenging – and ultimately more revealing.

“Some of the genres we were bringing together felt so far apart at the beginning that it wasn’t always obvious where the connection was going to be. That forces you to look beyond the obvious things – the instrumentation or the genre – and find the emotion, rhythm or story the artists actually share. Once you find that, you can build something completely unexpected from it.”

Rather than presenting audiences with a polished cover at the end of each episode, Beyond the Beat puts the creative process – including the false starts, uncertainty and disagreements – at the centre of the series.

“BEYOND THE BEAT was never just about making covers,” says Hochman. “The genre flip gives us the framework, but what I’m really interested in is what happens when you put people together who see music – and sometimes the world – very differently.

“It’s about giving artists permission to take risks and letting audiences see everything that happens before you get to the finished song.”

Across five weekly episodes, some of Aotearoa’s most recognisable songs move between genres, generations, languages and perspectives – revealing what remains when everything familiar about a song is stripped away.

Check out all things Beyond The Beat below:
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BEYOND THE BEAT is an Aotearoa music series created and directed by Gal Hochman and produced by Chillbox.

BEYOND THE BEAT is produced by Chillbox Creative and made with the support of NZ On Air.