What is
Perfect State?

We started writing songs about 67 because we couldn't stop thinking about it. There was no plan to make an album. We were watching the Maverick clip on repeat like everyone else, throwing the sign around the kitchen, rating things 6-7 at dinner first as a joke and then in earnest. After a while it stopped feeling like a passing internet thing and started feeling like a piece of cultural luck we'd lived through, the kind it'd be a shame not to do something about.

The basics for anyone showing up cold: the number started in Philly. A drill rapper named Skrilla put it on a track called Doot Doot (67), shouting out his block. A basketball edit picked up the sound. A 17-year-old rated his coffee 6-7 on camera. A 12-year-old completely went off screaming it at an AAU game. And the world picked the whole thing up, somehow agreed on it without ever discussing it, and turned a two-digit number into a hand sign and a private joke that strangers in different countries can flash at each other and laugh.

We had instrumental tracks sitting around that fit the energy. The 67 thing gave them a reason to leave the hard drive. So we put words on them, finished them up, and put them out. Eight tracks on the album, twenty minutes thirty-two seconds, loud and silly in the front half, soft and weird in the back half, plus four singles around it.

The name came out of one of the songs. While we were writing 67 in Heaven, the second verse landed on the line "I stay stuck in this perfect state" and it stuck on us too. Calling ourselves Perfect State while making an album about a meme that rates everything a deadpan 6-7 (mid, fine, whatever) is the loudest possible irony. But it's also the exuberant reading: a perfect state is Maverick at the AAU game with both arms in the air, screaming. Both meanings at once. That's exactly the vibe of 67. Once we saw the phrase written down, we couldn't be anything else.

The thing we wanted to avoid was a parody record. From outside the whole 67 phenomenon looks ridiculous; from inside it isn't, and we wanted the album to live inside. Maverick gets a real song. Skrilla's block gets a real song. TK gets a real song. Even Page 67, that moment every classroom in the world cracks up when the teacher says “turn to page sixty-seven”, gets a real song. Especially the version where the teacher is also fighting a smile.

The music is on Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music. If you want a high-quality MP3 of “67 (The Sign)” without paying for anything, the form on the home page sends one over and puts you on the email list. (It's the only place we'll tell you about merch drops or anything else worth knowing about.) If you want to reach us directly: perfectstate67@gmail.com.

The hand sign isn't going anywhere. Neither are we. Six. Seven.

Perfect State