By Zach Collier
These pop superstars understand what it’s like to hustle their way to the top. But in their quest for the spotlight, they’ve never been afraid to share it. Crash Adams wants to give others the shot they never had
Photographer // David Ardill | Stylist // Branden Ruiz
There’s a certain joy that comes from finding out you have a mutual acquaintance. I’ve been talking to Rafaele Massarelli and Vince Sasso – the duo known as Crash Adams – for only a few minutes before we discover we have one in common. That guy is indie singer/songwriter Zach Paradis. It’s pronounced ‘Zach Paradise.’ With a name and a voice like his it’s hard to forget him.
I’ve been in the indie music journalism space for 8 years now, and I spoke with Zach and featured one of his early tracks on a niche YouTube channel I used to run to help promote independent artists. He won me over a few years ago with his early track ‘ Selfish (feat. Jaylon Ashaun).’
Crash Adams has a much cooler ‘how I met Zach Paradis’ story. And they documented the whole thing on video.
@crashadams Replying to @Trellybosav.0417 the song is called “Give Me A Kiss” by Crash Adams!🔥 @Zach Paradis ♬ Give Me a Kiss - Crash Adams
I was floored seeing an artist I’ve been following for years get swept up by these guys and get blasted to all of their fans. He finally got some of the attention he’s always deserved – to the tune of 6.3 million TikTok followers, 2.6 million Instagram followers, and 10.2 million YouTube subscribers. Crash Adams’ reach is massive, and to pick someone off the street and expose him to the world like that is wild to me.
But that’s what Crash Adams does. They’ve built their rabid, massive following on the backs of their hard work, humility, relentless enthusiasm, and abundant generosity.
From their home in Los Angeles, California, the duo tells me that they’re in the best place they’ve ever been. They’re riding a wave of success, they’re sitting on a mountain of new music, and now they’re just ‘pulling the slingshot back’ and preparing to fire away. But they quickly explain to me that they’re really just regular boys from Toronto, Canada.
Rafaele says he originally did electronic music in college, but set it aside to finish school. A lot of his DJ friends moved away to LA and started to see success. ‘I was really discouraged because I didn’t go with them. I stayed in Canada,’ he recalls. ‘Although there are successful musicians from Toronto, the general consensus on where the money comes from in Toronto is banking, accounting, real estate. It doesn’t come from entertainment. So the general consensus is that it’s not really possible to make it as a professional musician in Toronto.’
Unsure of whether or not he wanted to continue doing music, he decided to try something new. He called up Vince to see if he wanted to make a song together in the studio and they clicked. ‘It felt like we’d been working together for fifteen years. So we just kept going back.’
The result was their first release as Crash Adams: 2019’s ‘Astronauts.’
While that single was responsible for bringing them together and teaching them how to make energetic, magnetic pop rock together, it wasn’t what propelled them to stardom. They continued making music together for two years in Toronto – barely getting by while their peers ‘grew up’ and ‘got real jobs.’
‘We were really down,’ says Rafaele. Even though they were having moderate success on TikTok with some prank-style videos, it wasn’t translating to real listeners or fans of their music. ‘The needle wasn’t really moving on Spotify. Was this really worth it? People were like, “You’re 27. You have no money. What are you doing?”’
But they stuck it out.
The duo credit the people they met shooting videos in the real world – literally strangers on the street – with the good that came to them.
‘Basically one day we were out at the Santa Monica pier trying to record videos. One guy was selling mixtapes. Usually I don’t take a mixtape if it’s 2024 and it’s a CD. But he was selling QR codes, so I said yeah, no problem,’ laughs Rafaele. They bought the QR code from him and walked off. They did a good, kind thing – not thinking much of it. A month later, they saw him again at the pier. ‘He came up to us and was like, “Whoa, you’re the guys who bought the mixtape.”’
Turns out, he was planning on giving up that day. But they bought the QR code, and afterwards people started coming up to him and buying it. It gave him the motivation to keep going. The three had a great conversation about life, about hard work, and about music. Eventually Crash Adams asked him to be in a TikTok video. The concept was simple: if he didn’t like the song, he got to slap Rafaele in the face. If he liked it, he had to follow them on Spotify.
‘We were just expecting the guy to stand in the video and tell us if he likes the song or not,’ Rafaele says.
‘He had his baby with him,’ laughs Vince.
‘I was singing, and once I finished singing he told us to keep going. So Vince kept playing the guitar and he freestyled on it. First time he ever heard the song. We were so shocked,’ recalls Rafaele. They put out the video and it went viral. It got millions of views. So they went out again and met another guy freestyling. Another viral hit.
‘Yo, straight up. We tried to go out a few more times to find more people to freestyle, but those two people made us have this unreal expectation,’ laughs Vince.
It was a lightning in a bottle kind of moment. And lightning struck twice for them.
‘But Zach Paradis,’ says Rafaele. ‘What a great verse he wrote. He’s been a guy where once he was done with the verse he worked so hard that he capitalized on that steam that he’s picked up. He’s kept going. What a great guy.’
‘I’ll hit him every once in a while and just say yo, what’s up? He’s a great dude,’ says Vince.
This ability to form sincere, genuine connections is what I love most about Crash Adams. They talk constantly, laugh freely, but never feel like they’re trying to be anything other than themselves. They’re humble, full of life, and enthusiastic about everything.
When I ask them if Vince is a typical guitarist who likes to sit in front of an amp and turn knobs all day until he finds the perfect tone, they lose it. ‘This guy’s so funny saying that guitarists are always the knob twisters,’ laughs Vince. ‘Literally last night I was testing out this new thing I got. I would strum once and check the tones. “Hey yo how does it sound with this?! How does it sound with THIS?!” When I get inspiration on something I will literally just record and stack guitars for hours. It’s not good.’
Rafaele is not about that. Laughing he says, ‘I am not a knob-twister.’ Instead, he loves studio production. He’s the kind of guy that loves stacking vocals, loves reversing things, loves getting weird. And he feeds off the energy of others. But Vince needs his space. There’s inherent tension in their creative process. When they’re working on a song, Vince says he works best when he’s writing alone. Even when they’re at odds, they’re big fans of each other.
‘But it actually does translate well,’ says Rafaele. ‘We do get some of our best ideas when it’s built like that.’
Pointing at Rafaele, Vince fires back: ‘This guy makes the best bass lines in the game right here.’
Vince isn’t wrong. The new Crash Adams song, ‘Hotel Party,’ is almost entirely driven by a catchy, raging synth bass line. Fans may notice a departure from their usual pop/rock sound with this new single. Gone are the funky electric guitars, quirky piano licks, and lush stacked acoustic guitars from their smash hits ‘Give Me A Kiss’ and ‘Good Side.’
‘Our songs are usually upbeat and pretty happy, but this one is a straight dancefloor banger,’ says Rafaele. ‘I come from dance music, and it has little nods to the music that I used to love. It really feels like us as well.’ The new sound is both a major sonic leap for them and a full circle moment, given Rafaele’s early experience as a DJ.
‘When you look back, you can say oh wow, we’ve improved on this, this, this, and this,’ says Vince enthusiastically. ‘We’ve made some huge leaps. And now we just want to keep making those big leaps.’
Fans can always expect one thing to remain constant with Crash Adams though: an affinity for fine Italian suits. ‘It’s gotta be Italian or we look like hockey players,’ jokes Vince. ‘I mean, it’s fine to look like that if you’re a hockey player. But we’re not hockey players. They’re big boys.’
‘We need them nice in the shoulders and then they gotta taper in a little bit,’ says Rafaele, motioning with his hands to illustrate the proper cut of a suit for a slender gentleman.
‘And we’ve found they’ve gotta be a little flexible too,’ quips Vince. ‘We don’t want them to rip in the middle of the street while we’re carrying a couch.’
The great thing about Crash Adams is that their love of Italian suits isn’t one born of vanity. It was born out of a desire to make others smile and laugh. Their initial idea to carry a big couch out to a bunch of different locations and perform on it was good – but it didn’t stick until they were wearing suits. The couch was weird enough.
‘But we thought if we did that in a suit it would be really funny,’ says Rafaele. ‘When do you ever see two guys in suits carrying a couch in the middle of the street?’ The suits made it even weirder. And it’s created a stable brand that allows people to recognize them visually instead of having to recognize them aurally. No matter what they sound like, you know what Crash Adams looks like. You know they’re dapper, goofy, and there to make you feel joy.
That image is so recognizable, that joy is so transcendent, that one of the people they collaborated with on the street turned them into a custom bobblehead with ease. She sent it to them to say thank you for letting her freestyle. ‘You can tell. We’re characters,’ says Rafaele, showing me the bobblehead.
While some artists are afraid to become caricatures of themselves, that’s been the plan for Crash Adams since the beginning. They wanted to create an image so strong and so recognizable that it immediately sparked joy in the hearts of the people who saw it. That’s admirable. That’s powerful. And Crash Adams owns it completely. ‘We’re blessed to do this. This is the best job in the world,’ says Rafaele. ‘Why not be happy and try to make others happy along the way?’
‘For anyone who believes in themselves: there are going to be so many moments where people try to bring you down – or even yourself,’ says Vince. ‘You’re going to be sitting at home and things won’t feel right. But there is also going to be that moment where you’re sitting in your basement and you come up with that one idea and boom. It just might change your life.’
‘You just have to have neverending belief in yourself. Even if you have nothing,’ says Rafaele.
‘When we meet people – playing shows or through our content, however that is – we want to make people feel like they can do whatever they want to do,’ says Vince.
‘If they want to be a musician, they’re going to see these two guys from Toronto and Vaughan, Ontario that just wanted to do it, worked hard, and now we’re on our way.’
Crash Adams knows what it’s like to be the little guy, slaving away and waiting for their lucky break. They also know how it feels to have strangers take a chance on them and share abundance and success with them. It’s no wonder they’re so willing to share the spotlight.
I can’t help but think the world would be a better place if we had more Canadians in suits carrying couches all over town. I feel like more dreams would come true if we did.