SameSame is the Los Angeles production and songwriting duo of Rob Cohen and Blake Mares, engineers who rose together through West Hollywood's Westlake Recording Studios and years working under Grammy-winning producer John Hill before formalizing their own joint brand in March 2022. Their credits run through some of the 2010s' biggest streaming records, Portugal. The Man's “Feel It Still,” Shawn Mendes' “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back,” Young the Giant's “Superposition,” Khalid's Free Spirit, and Cage the Elephant's Grammy-winning Social Cues, and extend into a current roster of alt-pop and alt-rock acts that as of 2025 included Christian Gates, Chandler Leighton, Stacey Ryan, Bad Suns, The Wrecks and renforshort.
SameSame's own website describes the pair plainly: “LA based production duo SameSame (aka Rob Cohen & Blake Mares) have helped shape some of the biggest records in pop, alt, and R&B,” citing “over 30 billion Spotify streams, a Grammy win, and 20+ platinum records” across their combined career. Blake Mares' own professional profile uses nearly identical language, describing SameSame as “ideal producers suited to Pop, Alt, and R&B sounds with a heavy focus on exceptionally produced and mixed records.” Neither member's personal biography, hometown, or birthdate is widely published, with one exception: Rob Cohen grew up in Denver, Colorado, before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue production. No equivalent origin detail exists for Mares beyond his Southern California education and career, which begins with a Bachelor of Science in Audio Production from the Art Institute of California–Los Angeles, completed in 2011.
Both members' careers begin at the same institution: Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood. Rob Cohen started there as an assistant engineer, with early credited work on Rihanna's number-one album Unapologetic (2012). Blake Mares followed an almost parallel track at the same facility: Tech Shop Coordinator and Pro Tools Tech from July 2011, promoted to Assistant Engineer in February 2012, then Engineer from October 2013. His assistant-era credit list from that period is enormous, touching sessions for Rihanna, J. Cole, David Guetta, Ne-Yo, Ryan Tedder, Ester Dean, Drake, Scott Storch, Marilyn Manson, LL Cool J, Chris Brown, Kylie Minogue, Enrique Iglesias, Sean Paul, Big Sean, Mac Miller, Skrillex and Chance the Rapper, among dozens of others passing through Westlake's rooms in that window. A separate 2019 interview describes Mares' path slightly differently in tone, noting he first gravitated toward music in 2006 DJ'ing parties before formal engineering, and crediting him and collaborator Chad Sabo with engineering ties to Rihanna's ANTI album era.
The single most consequential thread in the duo's origin story is a shared apprenticeship under John Hill, the Grammy-winning producer known for his work with Cage the Elephant, Santigold and Rihanna. After his Westlake years, Rob Cohen began working with Hill as a full-time engineer and vocal producer, and SameSame's own site describes both members as having “spent years working closely with Grammy-winning producer John Hill... serving as his go-to team for production, engineering, and mixing.” Credits pages for late-2010s Hill-produced records, including Portugal. The Man's “Feel It Still,” Young the Giant's “Superposition,” Pink Sweat$'s “At My Worst,” and Celeste's “Stop This Flame,” list both Cohen and Mares as engineers on the same sessions, confirming the two were already operating as a paired unit inside Hill's camp years before formally branding as SameSame. That makes SameSame less a startup partnership between strangers and more the formalization of an engineering team that had already proven itself together.
Blake Mares' professional profile lists “Co-Founder, SameSame” beginning in March 2022, based in Santa Monica, California, which is the most precise date available for when the pair took their shared client base and turned it into a joint public brand. Rob Cohen has operated an individual loan-out entity, RLC Music LLC, since April 2010, suggesting he ran production and engineering work through his own company well before SameSame existed as a name. Mares similarly freelanced as “B.A. Mares Music” from August 2015 to May 2023, a period that overlaps with SameSame's 2022 launch, indicating a gradual transition from individual freelance credits to a unified duo identity rather than a single clean break.
SameSame frames itself around songwriting-first, vocal-centric production rather than one signature sonic stamp: “At SameSame, it's all about the song. We're a songwriting and production duo that loves helping artists find their sound... whether starting from scratch or elevating a demo to a fully finished record.” Their stated specialty is vocal production, citing their work on Shawn Mendes' “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back” as an example of “capturing something real, and making it feel effortless,” whether through comping, tuning, or in-booth vocal coaching.
Notably, the duo's site also claims influence beyond formal mixing credits: “our rough mixes have helped shape the final sound of tracks by Portugal. The Man, Pink Sweat$, Demi Lovato, Dua Lipa, Imagine Dragons, and Khalid. Even when we weren't the final mix engineers, our work set the tone.” That statement matters for reading their catalog correctly: on several of the biggest streaming hits they touch, the awarded “producer of record” credit belongs to John Hill (with Asa Taccone on “Feel It Still”), with Cohen and Mares functioning as engineers and vocal producers underneath him rather than as the credited producers themselves. Genre-wise, their client base clusters around alt-pop, indie/alt-rock and R&B-adjacent pop: Portugal. The Man, Young the Giant, Cage the Elephant, Bad Suns, The Wrecks, Pink Sweat$, Khalid, Dua Lipa, and rising alt-leaning acts like renforshort, Frawley and Christian Gates, a range consistent with a duo whose core skills (engineering, vocal coaching, rough-mix sound design) travel easily between guitar-driven rock and vocal-forward pop and R&B.
SameSame's own site lists a career catalog spanning Kevian Kraemer's “Attention,” Portugal. The Man's “feel it still,” The Ivy's “Hurts Just Right” and the album A Door Still Open, Khalid's “Free Spirit,” Pink Sweat$'s “ride with me” and “at my worst,” Young the Giant's “superposition” and “The Walk Home,” Rihanna's “needed me,” Demi Lovato's “tell me you love,” Shawn Mendes' “i know what you did last summer” and “there's nothing holding me back,” lovelytheband's “try for you,” Chandler Leighton's “Say Less,” Stela Cole's “Stereoqueen,” Jessica Baio's “Bite the bullet,” Carly Rae Jepsen's “Beach House,” and Christian Gates' “Freak.”
Rob Cohen's individual credit history, tracked separately, adds Rihanna's Unapologetic (2012), Pentatonix's self-titled album (2012), Beyoncé's “Heaven” (2014), Portugal. The Man's “Easy Tiger,” “Live in the Moment,” “Rich Friends” and “Tidal Wave” (2016), Imagine Dragons' “Rise Up” and “Zero” (2016), Charli XCX ft. Uffie's “Baby Girl” (2017), Bishop Briggs' “Water” and “Church of Stars” (2018), Alice Merton's “Funny Business” (2018), Wafia's “I'm Good” (2018), Whethan and Dua Lipa's “High” (2018), Young the Giant's Mirror Master album (2018), Sylvan Esso's “PARAD(w/m)E” (2018), Wet's “Lately” and “There's a Reason” (2018), Carly Rae Jepsen's Dedicated (2019), Cage the Elephant's Social Cues (2019), Bishop Briggs' Champion (2019), Fitz and the Tantrums' “123456” (2019), Wrabel's “Love To Love You,” “The Real Thing” and “Too Close” (2019), Yuna's “Rogue” (2019), Kesha's “Resentment” and “My Own Dance” (2019), Overcoats' The Fight (2020), Pink Sweat$'s “17” (2020), Banoffee's “Look At Us Now Dad” (2020), and Celeste's “Stop This Flame” (2020).
Blake Mares' songwriting-specific credits, tracked apart from his engineering work, include lovelytheband's “never leave the house,” “feels like summer” and “take me to the moon”; Kevian Kraemer's “Attention” and “Dopamine”; Chandler Leighton's “EMERGENCY (SOS)” and “Waiting For You To Heal”; and Frawley's “Vanilla.” His production-specific credits include Chandler Leighton's “Say Less” and “EMERGENCY (SOS)” and Joey Bada$$'s “Shine.”
SameSame's most direct connection to a currently active artist runs through Christian Gates' 2024 debut album No Strings Attached, released independently on November 1, 2024. The nine-track album runs: TOXIC (featuring Dutch Melrose), SECRETS, FOOD POISONING, GIRLS, BABYDOLL, FREAK, SAYING GOODBYE, LIAR LIAR and SHREDS. Across Apple Music, Shazam and YouTube's content-ID credits, track six, “FREAK,” lists two producers, Elation and SameSame, alongside five songwriters: Christian Gates, Nick Lopez, Will Mandel, Blake Mares and Rob Cohen. Deezer's credit breakdown for the album matches that writer list for the track. The presence of Mares and Cohen as credited songwriters, not simply a collective production tag, indicates the duo contributed to the song's composition and not only its engineering polish, and the credit is specific to this one track: Deezer's per-song writer breakdown for the rest of the album's tracklist does not carry the SameSame names.
Christian Gates has described “FREAK” as the pivot point for the whole record: “After I wrote 'Freak', that track really set the direction for the production of the entire album. Elation and I started using similar samples and effects across the project to create a more cohesive sound,” he told Hashtag Magazine at the album's release, adding, “the goal was to pull together a collection of songs that, while diverse, still felt like they belonged to the same body of work.” That quote, repeated across the outlets that covered the release, names Elation, described in press materials as Christian Gates' long-time collaborator, as the person who carried FREAK's sound forward across the rest of the album. SameSame's own client list independently confirms the relationship from its own side, naming Christian Gates among “recent collaborations and upcoming releases” alongside Chandler Leighton, PEGGY, Kevian Kraemer, Alexa Cappelli, Chloe Adams, Stacey Ryan, Frawley, Bad Suns, The Wrecks, renforshort and Nicky Youre.
Taken together, the record shows SameSame's contribution to FREAK is real and formally credited on both the production and songwriting side, but it sits inside a song whose broader narrative importance to the album, in Christian Gates' own account, is tied to his ongoing work with Elation rather than to SameSame specifically. No public interview, session account or direct quote from either Rob Cohen or Blake Mares addresses the FREAK session, their specific contribution to it, or their working relationship with Christian Gates beyond the credit itself and the mutual listing on SameSame's site.
SameSame operates a private studio in the Los Angeles area, based out of Santa Monica, and publishes an unusually detailed gear list on its website that functions as a pitch to prospective clients. Outboard and interfaces include a UAD Satellite 8-core (x2), Apollo X8, Apollo X6, API 3124, Tube-Tech CL1B, a vintage Neve 1081, a Motown MTP-66 preamp, a John Hardy M1 with Jensen transformer, a Retro Sta-Level, Empirical Labs Distressors (x2) and vintage Urei 1176 Rev F units (x2). Microphones include a Telefunken ELAM 251, Sennheiser 421 and 441 (1970s), a Coles 4038, Shure SM57 and SM-7B, and Neumann KM-184s. Monitoring runs through PMC Twotwo 8s and ProAcs with Bryston 4BST amplification, with Yamaha NS10S available on request. The instrument collection includes a Nash S-63, Nash JM-63, Martin D-16GT, a Les Paul Goldtop, a Bilt Volare, a Silvertone 1448, an Epiphone Firebird, a Fender P-Bass American Professional II and a 1964 Höfner violin bass, alongside a Hobart M. Cabel upright piano, Wurlitzer 200A, Roland HS-60, Moog One, Minimoog, Mellotron, Korg Mono/Poly, Sequential Prophet 10, Casio CZ-5000, Yamaha DX-7 Reface and a 1969 Ludwig SuperBeat drum kit with Istanbul cymbals. The software stack spans Pro Tools, Logic Pro and Ableton Live as DAWs with a full plugin arsenal from FabFilter, Soundtoys, Waves, UAD, iZotope, McDSP, Valhalla, Arturia, Native Instruments, Slate Digital and others, plus Auto-Tune, Melodyne and Splice. The combination of vintage analog outboard with a deep in-the-box plugin stack and a genuinely large live-instrument collection reflects a hybrid, band-in-a-room production approach suited to the alt-pop and alt-rock crossover acts that dominate their client roster.
SameSame's marketing materials cite “a Grammy win” among the duo's achievements, and this traces to Rob Cohen's individually documented Grammy history rather than a joint SameSame-credited award. In 2020, Cohen won a Grammy Award as vocal producer and engineer on Cage the Elephant's Social Cues, which won Best Rock Album. In 2017–2018, Cohen worked with John Hill on Portugal. The Man's “Feel It Still,” which won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards, though the official Grammy-credited producers on that record are John Hill and Asa Taccone, with Cohen's role being engineering and vocal-production support rather than the awarded producer credit. In 2015, Cohen received a Grammy nomination for engineering on Beyoncé's self-titled album. SameSame's site also cites “20+ platinum records” and “over 30 billion Spotify streams” as aggregate career metrics; these are figures published by the duo itself rather than certifications tied to a specific issuing body, and given that the SameSame brand name only dates to around March 2022, the Grammy itself predates the joint brand and was earned under Cohen's individual credit.
SameSame's site, as published through 2025, lists an active pipeline of collaborations and upcoming releases including Chandler Leighton, PEGGY, Kevian Kraemer, Alexa Cappelli, Chloe Adams, Stacey Ryan, Frawley, Bad Suns, The Wrecks, renforshort, Christian Gates and Nicky Youre. Chandler Leighton, one of the named recent collaborators, continued releasing new music through 2025 and 2026, including “LOSIN' MY MIND” (May 2025), “SUPERMODEL” (August 2025), and “Waiting For You To Heal” (April 2026), the latter co-written by Blake Mares. Stacey Ryan, another named collaborator, released “Bad Omen” in August 2025. Christian Gates continued releasing new material after No Strings Attached, including “Dangerous State of Mind,” the single “BLEED” (August 15, 2025), and further singles into 2026 such as “SOMETHING BETWEEN US” (May 29, 2026), though there is no additional credit tying SameSame to any of that later Christian Gates material specifically; the FREAK credit and the general “recent collaborations” mention on SameSame's own site remain the two confirmed points linking them. SameSame's Apple Music artist page also shows a four-track “Give Me Some Xtra” EP dated January 16, 2026, though it is not established whether that specific credit belongs to the Cohen/Mares duo or to a separate act using the same or a similar artist name, given the number of unrelated acts worldwide that also use the “Same Same” or “SameSame” name.
The name “SameSame” is a common phrase used by numerous unrelated acts and companies worldwide, including a Thai pop duo formed by former Moffatts twins Bob and Clint Moffatt, a Munich-based DJ/producer duo active on SoundCloud since 2013, an electronic-music solo artist releasing on Rawax and Pleasure Zone, and an Australian label, SameSame Records, that struck a distribution deal with ADA/Warner Music Australia, all separate from the Los Angeles duo. Rob Cohen also shares his name with two other unrelated, more widely known figures: Robert Alan Cohen, the Hollywood film and TV director known for entries in the Fast and the Furious franchise, and a separate Emmy-winning television writer/director whose credits include The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory. Despite engineering or vocal-producing several of the 2010s' biggest streaming hits, including “Feel It Still” and “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back,” neither Cohen nor Mares holds the awarded “producer of record” credit on those specific songs, which went to John Hill, a dynamic their own site is candid about when it describes their “rough mixes” as having “set the tone” on records even when they weren't the final credited mix engineers. The duo also runs a “Masterclass” page on their website, suggesting an education or mentorship offering that runs alongside their production work.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2010 | Rob Cohen establishes RLC Music LLC, his individual production loan-out entity, predating SameSame's formal branding. |
| 2011 | Blake Mares joins Westlake Recording Studios as Tech Shop Coordinator/Pro Tools Tech; Rob Cohen is already assistant-engineering there. |
| 2012 | Cohen works on Rihanna's number-one album Unapologetic; Mares is promoted to Assistant Engineer at Westlake. |
| 2013 | Mares is promoted to Engineer at Westlake. |
| 2014 | Cohen engineers on Beyoncé's “Heaven.” |
| 2015 | Cohen receives a Grammy nomination for engineering Beyoncé's self-titled album; Mares leaves Westlake to freelance as B.A. Mares Music. |
| 2016 | Cohen and Mares work together under John Hill on Portugal. The Man's “Feel It Still” and other tracks. |
| 2018 | “Feel It Still” wins the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (credited to John Hill and Asa Taccone); Young the Giant's “superposition” and Shawn Mendes' “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back” both carry Cohen/Mares engineering credits. |
| 2019 | Cage the Elephant's Social Cues, Carly Rae Jepsen's Dedicated and Khalid's Free Spirit are recorded with Cohen and Mares' involvement. |
| 2020 | Cohen wins the Grammy for Best Rock Album as vocal producer/engineer on Social Cues; Pink Sweat$'s “at my worst” and Celeste's “Stop This Flame” are released. |
| March 2022 | SameSame is formally launched as a joint production brand, based in Santa Monica, California. |
| November 1, 2024 | Christian Gates releases his debut album No Strings Attached; track six, “FREAK,” credits SameSame as co-producer and co-writer alongside Elation. |
| 2025 | SameSame's site lists an active roster including Chandler Leighton, Stacey Ryan, Bad Suns, The Wrecks, renforshort and Christian Gates; Chandler Leighton and Stacey Ryan both release new singles. |
| January 16, 2026 | A four-track “Give Me Some Xtra” EP appears under the SameSame name on Apple Music. |
SameSame is Rob Cohen and Blake Mares, a Los Angeles-based production and songwriting duo who both came up as engineers at Westlake Recording Studios before working for years as a team under producer John Hill and eventually launching SameSame as a joint brand in March 2022.
The duo's engineering and vocal-production work runs through some of the 2010s' biggest streaming hits, including Portugal. The Man's “Feel It Still,” Shawn Mendes' “There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back,” and Young the Giant's “superposition,” plus Cage the Elephant's Grammy-winning album Social Cues.
SameSame's marketing cites “a Grammy win.” That award traces to Rob Cohen individually, who won Best Rock Album in 2020 as vocal producer and engineer on Cage the Elephant's Social Cues, a credit that predates the SameSame brand's formal launch by roughly two years.
SameSame is credited as co-producer, alongside Elation, on “FREAK,” track six of Christian Gates' 2024 debut album No Strings Attached, with Rob Cohen and Blake Mares also listed as co-writers alongside Christian Gates, Nick Lopez and Will Mandel. Christian Gates has described FREAK as the song that set the direction for the rest of the album, though in his own account it was his ongoing work with Elation, not SameSame, that carried that sound across the remaining tracks. SameSame's own website lists Christian Gates among its recent collaborations independently of the FREAK credit.
SameSame's site names Chandler Leighton, PEGGY, Kevian Kraemer, Alexa Cappelli, Chloe Adams, Stacey Ryan, Frawley, Bad Suns, The Wrecks, renforshort, Christian Gates and Nicky Youre as recent or ongoing collaborators.
Further reading: for the album that FREAK appears on and the surrounding creative team, see Christian Gates and Elation; for the track that opens the same album, see Dutch Melrose.