Warm Brew

California trio Warm Brew formed when Ray Wright, Manu Li, and Serk Spliff first crossed paths as high-school students in Santa Monica. There the friends absorbed the area’s abundant musical influences while rapping together, celebrating, and connecting over material that stretched from De La Soul to the Doors. They lifted the group’s name from afternoons spent cruising with unrefrigerated beer cases in the backseat, carrying that same relaxed optimism into their creative approach. Early releases—Natural Spirit in 2010, followed by the funky, chilled-out Kottabos in 2012 and The Ride in 2013—earned them a loyal regional audience and revealed a lightly psychedelic strain of West Coast rap.

After graduation the members took low-paying jobs to finance studio time and began booking local gigs. Their profile rose sharply in 2014 once they joined L.A. rapper Dom Kennedy’s Other People’s Money imprint, which issued the 2015 album Ghetto Beach Boyz. The resulting attention prompted Red Bull Records to sign the group for its first rap project, the 2016 EP Diagnosis. That release included guest spots from Racella and Hugh Augustine as well as Buddy, whose appearance on the track “I Swear” remains one of the trio’s most widely praised recordings. In the years that followed, Warm Brew kept momentum with singles such as “Small Victories,” “Butane,” and “Psychedelic” while preparing further material.