[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you so much for sharing part of your day with me. This past summer, a soft rock vocal group you may have heard and seen busking in Central Park went viral with this song.

[music]

No, that's our theme song. It's going to happen.

[MUSIC - Hater's Anthem by Infinity Song]

That song is called Hater's Anthem. It caught fire on TikTok and the band who wrote it go by the name of Infinity Song. They're a group of siblings; Angel, Israel, Abraham, and Momo Boyd. Their careers didn't just happen nowhere, out of nowhere from this viral moment, they've been putting in the work for years. From all the way back to their days in Detroit, growing up in a musical family, nine kids total, and singing with their dad's choirs, to when the family picked up, moved to New York when they became familiar faces performing around the city in Times Square, on the subway, and one of their favorite spots, Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.

Those efforts led to a day in 2016, it's a legend by now, when the band got an opportunity to perform in front of Jay-Z in his office, one of the songs they sang, Dream On by Aerosmith. Well, Jay-Z liked them, signed them to his label immediately, and the Infinity Song dream continues on. The band is here for a special performance of songs from the new EP Metamorphosis. Welcome the Boyd Siblings; Abraham Angel, Israel, and Momo Boyd on acoustic guitar, we've got Anthony Boyd on bass and Benet Brutus on drums. Thank you all for coming in.

Infinity Song: Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: This is huge. You're going to start us all with a song. What are we going to hear first?

Abraham Boyd: We're going to do Metamorphosis first.

Alison Stewart: All right. Anything you want people to know about the song before we hear it?

Angel Boyd: This song is a good song to go into the new year with. It's all about transformation.

Alison Stewart: Right on.

[MUSIC - Metamorphosis by Infinity Song]

Those are my guests. Infinity Song, live from WNYC, studio five. That was great. Gorgeous.

Infinity Song: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: I'm just going alphabetically. I was trying to figure out who to ask what question, so I'm just going alphabetically, but feel free to jump in if you hear a question, you think, oh, I really want to answer that. Abraham, start with A, what's the writing process with this group?

Abraham Boyd: It's a varied writing process. Metamorphosis, the song we just performed, is a special song in that it was really the first song that we all wrote together. Angel led it off. She came to the group with an idea, a skeleton, and then from there, we all contributed, we all built it out together. It was very collaborative. Normally, we're all individually sequestered in our spaces of creativity, and then we come to the group with a finished product, a finished song at least, and then we go into the studio and whoever writes it usually produces it as well. It's a varied songwriting process.

Alison Stewart: Angel, what was going on with you when you came with that idea of this song about change and evolving?

Angel Boyd: That is such a loaded question because like the song says, sometimes I don't like myself, that is exactly what was going on with me. If I'm being honest, I'm still in my own personal process of metamorphosis, which feels like that song a lot of times, but it also has very strong days of like, okay, I'm into the light now. I think that song represents a lot for us as a band, because it was by design that we wrote it together. I came to everyone and I was like, we're all going to write on this song. It's not just going to be me writing it. It's not going to be one person. We're all going to write on it.

It was actually, if you listen to the record, it's sung in unison from top to bottom or from beginning to end. It's sang as one voice and written as one voice. As a group, that's super important. That's why we titled the REP Metamorphosis.

Alison Stewart: You guys were busking around New York for 10 years. That's a lot of time to hone your craft. What opportunities did busking offer you and how do you think it really helped you all grow?

Israel Boyd: I think that more than like, yes, busking offered the opportunity of meeting famous people, I suppose. Even it was the pipeline to us getting signed, but I think more than that, busking offered us the opportunity to perform. You have a lot of artists who they don't perform. They might make music in the studio and then live with it, but performing, to get that opportunity can be hard sometimes. To make your own stage, just to take the, what is it? Take the deer by the reins or the horns, or whatever. Take the bull by the horns. I don't know what that saying is. I probably messed it up.

Alison Stewart: No. You had reindeer on the mind.

Israel Boyd: Yes. [laughter] It more than anything, afforded us the opportunity to perform, which is really important as performers. I think now when we get on stage, we can really perform. That's something we're super confident in, is our performance capabilities. Not just our ability to write the song and produce the song, but the ability to perform the song in a captivating way that draws attention and holds the audience's attention.

Alison Stewart: Momo, when did you really realize, "Oh, this is going to work. This is going to be what we do"?

Momo Boyd: I think I have that realization very often, because very often, it's easy to doubt. It's a very, very challenging career, very challenging path. It's not just laid out for you and the milestones, they can be few and far between until you hit a stride. I often have to come back to that realization because, yes, I have periods of doubt where it's like, "Can I even write songs? Am I good?" Just normal human doubts. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Abraham, you guys talk about being soft rock, so I'm going to ask you this because I'm a Black person asking you as a Black person. What is the wildest thing someone has said to you about being a Black group singing soft rock?

Abraham Boyd: This is a funny question. I think once I told somebody that we were a soft rock band, and they immediately followed up with, "So you do R&B?" I was confused. I was like, "Wait, no, we do-- I said soft rock, I'm--" I hate that I told that story, but it struck me so hard. I was like, "Soft rock is the genre," but I'm fine with it. I think everyone's discovering us, and everyone is rediscovering that specifically, Black artists belong in soft rock. Actually, it originated with Black artists, but I won't get into that because music belongs to everyone, but in its origin stories.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, that response from that person is like, oh, I decide-- a box. Even just without even thinking about it, they probably didn't mean anything about it, but it's just-

Abraham Boyd: They didn't.

Alison Stewart: -with the way the society trained us to think.

Abraham Boyd: It's unfortunate.

Alison Stewart: It is.

Abraham Boyd: We're excited to reintroduce it in a different way than what collectively, we're all used to.

Alison Stewart: 100%. Angel, would you tell us a little bit about your dad?

Angel Boyd: Sure. Our dad is a pioneer, the OG creative of our family. If you think we're creative, then you have not met him. Yes, he's where we get all of our independent thinking and a lot of our work ethic and values from. Our existence is obviously an extension of his existence. The way that we are together as a band has everything to do with him. It's not easy to stay together as a band at all, or especially as a sibling band, and then to work together as siblings going into adulthood and all of that. He's definitely the glue and he works as our manager as well, so that helps.

Abraham Boyd: Also, songwriting and producing, it was our family tradition growing up. Around the kitchen table, we would write songs.

Alison Stewart: It's organic to the family?

Abraham Boyd: Very much.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear-- you're going to hear, play the song for us, Haters Anthem. Israel, I'm going to ask you to set this up.

Israel Boyd: Haters anthem. I would love to set it up, but I feel like I'm not as well-equipped as Momo who wrote it.

Alison Stewart: Momo, you're up.

Momo Boyd: Yes. Haters Anthem is really just a satirical fun song. It pokes fun at everybody's nature to be a little bit jealous or to be a little bit comparative, and to think like, "Oh, I could have did that better." Even if we try to act like we're so good and such a model citizen, sometimes we have that inside of us. This pokes fun and just makes light, and brings it to light of that feeling that we sometimes have.

Alison Stewart: Here's Infinity Song.

Infinity Song: [singing]

[MUSIC - Infinity Song: Hater's Anthem]

Alison Stewart: We'll have more with Infinity Song after a quick break. This is All of It.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour is the band Infinity Song. We've got in studio Abraham, Angel, Israel, and Momo Boyd, and who's got-- Angel, you're up. Tell us who else we have here.

Angel Boyd: We have Anthony Boyd, who is not our relative, but he's on the bass, and we have Benet Brutus on the drums.

Alison Stewart: All right, just wanted to give y'all a shout-out. Thank you for being here as well. All right, Momo, what was it like on your way up to Jay-Z's office knowing that this could possibly become your record label?

Momo Boyd: When I really think about it, it was really, really nerve-wracking. We didn't know what it was going to be like, how he was going to receive us. We didn't know anything. We were just going to the top floor and hoping for the best, but as soon as we stepped off the elevator, he just had such a warmth about him radiating off of him, a big smile. He was just so excited to see us and have us there and hear what we had for him and hear what we were all about. I don't know, it was the most exciting and most just affirming moment, I think of our lives.

Angel Boyd: It was a cinematic moment. It was the most surreal cinematic moment. I literally think of back in like that felt like a movie.

Momo Boyd: It did.

Alison Stewart: Like you're in the elevator, the door opens, and then there's Jay Z. [laughter]

Angel Boyd: You're up the top floor of a skyscraper in Times Square so you're looking out and you're just seeing this whole view of all the city around you. That really stands out in my mind for some reason.

Momo Boyd: He being the king of New York, and we had been busking and making our own name in New York for 10 years at this point, it just all made so much sense.

Alison Stewart: Abraham, how do you decide what to sing?

Abraham Boyd: I don't even know honestly. [laughter] We had been rehearsing the songs we performed specifically Dream On by Aerosmith. During that time in our lives, that was our anthem. We didn't know when it was going to happen. We didn't know when our dreams would be realized, but something in us just kept us pushing forward. We are so grateful to God that He allowed us to experience that moment because it was special. Dream On was an easy pick.

Alison Stewart: Israel, I want to hear from you about that day.

Israel Boyd: What did that day feel like? Momo said nerve-wracking. I feel like that was absolutely put. I feel like that is exactly how it felt. I was very nervous. Just looking back, we were just so young and had so much growing to do. Looking back, it's just I can see, we were very good still at the time, but just the youth that we had at the time was really apparent. We were on the very beginning of our metamorphosis as a band. Me and Momo were pretty much new to joining the band, and we were teenagers. We had been in the band for some few months, at that point.

Momo Boyd: A few months, yes.

Israel Boyd: It was nerve-wracking, it was an eye-opening moment. It was really needed too at the time because sometimes you need these victories in order to keep you going.

Alison Stewart: Absolutely.

Israel Boyd: At the time, that was a victory that we really needed. I'm very grateful that we got it.

Alison Stewart: Abraham, what's in the plans for Infinity Song for 2024?

Abraham Boyd: 2024 is going to be a great year for Infinity Song. We look forward to performing for a lot of people. I want to quantify great. Everybody's going through our own challenges like everybody globally. As a collective community, everyone is going through something. The job of entertainers, I believe, is to remind people that we're still breathing. That's our job and we take it very seriously. We look forward to inspiring a whole bunch of people. We look forward to singing songs that resonate with people. We look forward to seeing a lot of people through whatever they're going through.

Alison Stewart: The new EP is called Metamorphosis. The name of the band is Infinity Song. Thank you so much for coming to the studio and performing.

Israel Boyd: Thank you.

Infinity Song: Thank you for having us. [crosstalk]

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