“I was in the middle of putting together a verse when you called, so this interview might end up in a song,” says 20-year-old rapper Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege (pictured right) who, along with producer Noah “Xaphoon Jones” Beresin (pictured left), is known collectively as Chiddy Bang. Laughing, he adds, “We’re in the studio cooking something up right now.” When they emerge, Chiddy and Xaphoon will have enough new material to release their debut album, The Swelly Life. The former Drexel University students spent the majority of their short-lived college careers—they dropped out at the end of their freshman year—fusing together the clever rhymes and eclectic mash-ups that have catapulted them well past campus fame. Two mixtapes and two EPs have already showcased their ability to transform indie-rock staples courtesy of Passion Pit, Gorillaz, and MGMT—whose “Kids” provided the template for their breakout single “Opposite of Adults”—into progressive hip-hop with mass appeal. Before their debut album hits stores next year, the duo will also release their third mixtape Peanut Butter and Swelly, but as Chiddy tells us, they’re only getting started.

Was your fall 2010 EP The Preview literally, well, a preview of what fans can expect on The Swelly Life album? We were going to have an album with ‘Opposite Of Adults,’ ‘Truth’ and all the new material we’re working on, but then we decided to just put them on the EP and start with a clean slate. ‘Opposite of Adults’ and ‘Truth’ are two years old and we wanted to get into a creative spot where we could start fresh, so The Preview was the music we composed after those original songs. It was stuff that we created on the road - in buses, in vans, and hotel rooms. Now we’re working on the next level, and we’re gonna make sure that it’s pretty dope.

Are there samples on the new album or all original beats? C’mon, samples are one of the things that brought us this far, so we’re not gonna change that up too much. We’re gonna polish and add some sprinkles to it. Xaphoon is cookin’ up some original beats, but the reason people started identifying with us early on is because of the weird and vast amount of samples we chose. After getting the rights to use all of those songs, we probably won’t make any money from the album, but who cares? We just love the music.

Xaphoon has already tackled artists like MGMT, Passion Pit, and La Roux. How left field will The Swelly Life be, in terms of exploring new genres? There will definitely be songs that people wouldn’t expect. We’re influenced by the music in the different places we travel to – Australia and New Zealand for example -- so the album may contain samples from New Zealand or Australian bands. Everywhere we go, we listen to the music, hear what’s poppin’ there and try to take some of that in. We also meet other talented musicians when we’re on the road and it comes to a point where we’ll be touring with a great act, and we’ll collectively agree: These people are sick, we need to work with them. That’s how a lot of this album has come about, people we meet on tour, we get them into the studio. Hopefully all of our new friends can add something positive to what we do.

Are you going to introduce mainstream listeners to a few artists they’ve probably never heard of on the album? There are some people who may be big names in other places, but they will definitely be very obscure in some sense. For our American fans, it will be a lot of people they won’t know. We’re trying to reach for more on this album and take the sampling to another level. Instead of just chopping up the sample, we may have someone re-sing it -- get people from indie bands who can actually hit those notes. It’s definitely about exploring, and experimenting.

Will there be features from any rappers? Black Thought, from The Roots, dropped a verse on The Swelly Express mixtape. Is it time for round two? He’s going to be on the album for sure. I talked to him recently and he said, “I’m proud of everything you’re doing, when you want to get on some shit with a real hip-hop OG, holla at me.” Not many people know that we have the track "Slow Down" with Black Thought, unless they’re real Chiddy Bang fans and have the original mixtape. Unless you know what’s up, then you don’t. Tracks like that are what make a collective piece of music great. People still hit me up today about that collaboration and I tell them that it’s off the mixtape that came out over a year ago, but it’s wonderful that people continue to be exposed to it. That’s the goal with the music we’re making here -- no matter when you get put onto it, hopefully you’re gonna love it.

On The Preview, you worked with Pharrell on “The Good Life.” What was it like, going into the studio and collaborating with someone like him on a beat? We met Pharrell in Los Angeles, which is the perfect place for crazy things to occur. We were in a nice little low key studio, Pharrell was there and he introduced himself, “Hey, my name’s Pharrell.” We were like, “I mean, yeah, we know!” It was surreal in the sense that we never imagined any of this could really happen since we started making music on our computers in a dorm room and sneaking into studios on our college campus. He offered a level of musical maturity, as far as just knowing what to do in the studio. The studio is tough because you’ve got to know when to channel this spontaneous energy into creating, but also know when to chill and then get back to creating again. Pharrell doesn’t waste any time. He knows how to use his time in the studio effectively. We cooked that beat up, Xaphoon added his element to it, and it just came out great.

Let’s define some terms right now: You talk about ‘swelly’ all the time, it’s in the title of your mixtapes and the upcoming album. What does it mean? Here’s the background: “Swelly” is a word I came up with in high school and it just means anything that is fresh, or dope. Anything that is cool is “swelly.” I took all the words that people would usually say and made it into one super word. So our mixtape, The Swelly Express was our journey to get into the game, going back and forth on the train from Philadelphia to New York, having to meet label executives, shake their hands but ultimately not getting anywhere, and still having a positive attitude.

You think “swelly” is better than a word like “swag?” I don’t need to say swag. I say swell. Period. It need not be complicated. It stands alone as a defining word in our generation.

And what about the catch phrase “Xaphoon You Crazy?” It’s great for screaming at your concerts. I came up with that too. It’s literally an ad-lib from a song. I get into the booth all the time and say a whole bunch of random shit. If you listen to ‘Opposite Of Adults,’ you can hear that. So on the intro to one of our songs, I started with “Xaphoon You Crazy” and it turned out to be amazing, so he put it on his personal mixtape and from there it sort of developed a life of its’ own. In three or four years “swelly” will be peaking, but right now it’s all about “Xaphoon You Crazy!”

Can we expect any more projects before the debut album drops? Our new mixtape Peanut Butter and Swelly will be out soon. Ideally, we want to get it done by the beginning of the new year; the sooner the better, because it’s been a year since we’ve released a full mixtape. It’s going to feature a lot of our good friends from the American scene, that we’ve had the pleasure to work and tour with, like XV and Big Sean. It’s going to have some remixes, full tracks, and it’s going to be very lavish because we don’t have to worry about clearing samples for a mixtape.