One of the projects that I featured in my last The Come-Up article was the Best of Minnesota Mixtape, Vol. 1, by DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip, J. Plaza, and Mr. dolo. A couple weeks ago, I met up with DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip and Freewifi's J-Plaza to talk about the project, how they selected the songs on the album, and what this mixtape represents for Minnesota's growing Hip-Hop Scene.

Here's our conversation:

How did this project come together?

J-Plaza: I feel like we all had the intentions on this, but we just came together as a group, you know, FreeWifi, Tiiiiiiiiiip, and Dolo. Dolo is one of the top hosts, Tiiiiiiiiiip's one of the top DJs, we one of the top groups in Minnesota, and we thought we could use our platform to show local music around the world. There's a lot of dope music around here.

Tiiiiiiiiiip, how did the conversation start for this project?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: Well really, it's sort of a natural thing, too, because we all work together and we all have known each other for a long time, and we kind of know all of our intention … I know that Plaza really cares about local music and the local scene, and I know that Dolo does the same, so I didn't want to do something without involving all the right people.

I really wanted to make sure that we all had an equal say in the songs that were on the tape, because we all have different backgrounds. We all come from different lanes … Dolo is more of the street side. I'm more on the alternative SoundCloud side, and FreeWifi are in their own lane all together. It's really just kind of a synergy thing to where like, if I were to do it alone, it wouldn't be as cool or as big as if we came all together.

Does collaborating with creatives from different lanes make it challenging?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: It's kind of just pushing your pride to the side, which is something that doesn't really come into consideration anyways, because we are all boys. We all want each other to succeed and we want the state to succeed on a whole, because I know that we have potential to get to bigger places than we are.

We have really good music here, or at least people need to know what music from here sounds like … It's not really an explained thing what Minnesota rap sounds like now; someone from out of state couldn't pinpoint that. They couldn't say, "Oh it sounds like this," or "It sounds like this," [so] just giving it sort of an identity.

How did you get this project off the ground and start selecting the artists that are going to be represented on the mixtape?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: As far as the way that we selected the artists and selected the songs, we really started off with a basic mix of what we liked and what we knew about [music in the state], and then we took it a step further. I, personally, went through — I have a list of every rapper in Minnesota. J-Plaza put together a list of as many local songs he could find and put the best onto a playlist that's like, how many songs?

J-Plaza: That was like 380 [songs], all in one playlist … I did that like two years ago.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: He already put that together, so I made sure I hit up every YouTube channel and posted local videos.

What was the criteria for the song selections?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: The only constraint that we had was [that the songs were from] 2017 or later, so we didn't do anything before that … We put together a huge list, and we went through it all. That was basically the whole month of May. We [also] had to be really honest with ourselves and with each other. If [the song is] not up to the quality that we want to hold ourselves to, it's not going up there. It's no hard feelings against anybody.

How about the submission process for the mixtape?

J-Plaza: Dolo was already doing Dolo hour, and that's Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can go on his site and on Facebook, and then send him submissions to play on live for other people to be like, "Yeah this is hot or not." We basically took that idea and said we're going to do this on Dolo Hour on Facebook and on Tiiiiiiiiiip's Instagram … We did it at the same time, so it's two live videos, two phones sitting in front of us, and we'll just play the music.

We had people commenting, saying, "Play my song. Play my song." We'll look for their email and then play it and then people would say, "Yo, this is hot," or they'd be like, "Yo, this is trash." [Artists] would have basically like 15 to 30 seconds to get sh** played, but if it's super fire, then we'll probably end up playing the whole thing. That's pretty much how we went about it. There's so many good songs that you can't really put a hundred songs on one tape, so we're definitely going to have more volumes. We ended up having 28 [songs].

How many artists in total?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: There's a couple of people that have appeared a couple of times, but it's around 28 artists.

J-Plaza: Because of Features and sh**

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: We wanted to include as many artists as possible, and didn't want to have it be sensory overload — people can only take so much. But yeah, we got a lot of exclusive songs, too, because once the word kind of got out, people would be like, "Let me send you a song for this," and it's people that we work with, too, so that's another cool reason for people to listen to it.

Who'd you get exclusive songs from?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: We have unreleased music from Bobby Raps, who just won a couple of Grammys with the Weeknd. We actually have two unreleased songs with him. We got unreleased Student 1. Prince Will, who's someone who's really good coming up on the street side of things, and then a bunch of people — it's just perfect, I love it, honestly.

There's a point on the track, where Dolo says, "We got St. Paul on the track, we got you too." How do you go about making sure that you have good representation of both sides of the Twin Cities?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: With that, that's something that was more of an afterthought, because really positioning where a person is from doesn't really dictate the quality of the music, necessarily. At the end of the day, the overall umbrella of this quality is making sure that we have good content … But it is something that we thought about in our minds, like, we don't want to have it be all St. Paul, because really, St. Paul is going super hard right now and the North Side is going super hard right now.

I really was trying to find some South Side people, because there's a little bit of a lack of South Side artists, but then again, even all of us combined don't know everything. And that is something that we know … This is the volume 1 of the some of the best of Minnesota.

Was there any pushback from some local artists about the mixtape?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: People have gotten bent out of shape about who's on it and who's not on it. None of this was intentionally disrespectful to anybody; we didn't leave anybody out because we don't like them as people. It's just one of two things: either too many artists, and if you've already gotten a lot of shine from local press, we might leave you off of this version … A lot of people have been widely ignored by local press, and that's just something I've seen personally. I can't speak for [FreeWifi or Dolo] on that end.

J-Plaza: No, we feel the same way.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: That's something I noticed about a lot of these artists and why I wanted to [show] artists that are more unknown to press outlets, and another side…

J-Plaza: Other than Rhymesayers and stuff. We want to show a different side to Minnesota, as far as hip-hop goes, because you know, there's other genres in music that's amazing too out here. It's absolutely crazy out here. We wanted to have people from different areas, you know: St. Paul, Minneapolis, like Tiiiiiiiiiip was saying, and people from the 'burbs … Just put all the dopest tracks that everybody picked from live … We can't put 50 or 40 tracks; we're just going to leave it at 28 because it was perfect. It was about an hour long. Tiiiiiiiiiip did the intro with Asher — shout out to Asher! Dolo did the drops, and we did some drops, and we put it all on one track.

It was interesting that you mixed all the tracks together, instead of just having individual tracks like the traditional mixtape. What was the thought process behind that?

J-Plaza: I feel like a couple reasons that we put it all on one track is first of all, just to show Minnesota is one, saying that it's a unity. I feel like a lot of artists out here are separated out here, or cliqued up and being like, "They don't f*** with me, I don't f** with them." It's like everybody has to stay in their own lane, but still have respect and love for each other. We all can work for each other … but we shouldn't feel a certain way about another artist, just because they don't want to work with us … I came from Georgia, and seeing Atlanta artists, they all shine together. There might be a little beef here and there, and sh** like that, but everybody all shine together down there, so that's what I want to see up here.

Another reason that we put it all on one track without the track list was so that everybody could go on there and be curious. First, for the artist to be curious and see if they made it or not. Then second of all, just in case anybody has any biased opinions about any other artist. We don't want them to go on there and be like, "Oh, they made it? I'm not going to listen to that sh**." We just wanted people to hear the music.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: We were originally going to drop the tracklist [earlier], and Plaza did it for a little while and then took it down, because we wanted to have a more official release. He did it and it was up for probably like five minutes, and already other artists were like trying to throw shade to a certain extent. That's kind of a bummer. We didn't want it to be like this.

J-Plaza: We're actually putting our own money into this.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: This isn't something we're directly benefitting from … We're doing this as a service to show everyone that f**** with us that there's other music like this. There's other music that you would like … It's not like a popularity contest or something that is meant to be spiteful; it's meant to be a good thing for the people.

Another thing about having everything on track is we're not necessarily taking plays away from other artists. We want people to find these tracks on this, then go to their page. I've already seen it happen. I've seen other people that didn't know about Nimic Revenue and go follow her, and go follow all the people on the tape … So they're doing the digging and trying to figure out who the artists are. Once we start getting plays, and it gets momentum, it's a good look — I'm part of this that's booming.

So, you get the final 28 tracks, after curating roughly 1000 songs. Once that work is done, you then have to start mixing everything. How do create the vibe for the mixtape?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: It's really hard. I didn't think it was going to be difficult … [Dolo and FreeWifi aren't going to sit and mix like that], they're not nerds like I am. This is what I do. I like to do this type of sh**. I had to sit and put this together, and that's the process that took the longest, is taking all these tracks. I don't do a lot of producing anymore, I do more co-production. And just going through and curating and putting in the sound effects, and the intro music, and the in-between stuff, that's something that was a huge process and wasn't something we all planned together.

How did the intro of the Mixtape come together?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: I hold myself to an artistic standard to where I kind want things to be a little bit abstract, or just not corny … Minnesota is really bad with that type of stuff. They do a lot of copying, and that's something I touched on the live. It's like even the really good artists in Minnesota, it's like a good copy, even it's a song that gets on … So really, I want to push forward the originality in Minnesota and starting to develop our own sound. If you hear any song, it's not like obviously from Minnesota. Prince was the last person from Minnesota that did that.

Even with Atmosphere and Rhymesayers, not to discredit them, but even that stuff sounded like boom-bap. There wasn't a lot of new sound being developed. The last time that happened was with Prince, and I want to see that happen with Minnesota, where when you hear a song, it sounds like Minnesota. Giving us our own new sound, but you kind of have to ease into that, you can't just go 100 percent original right away.

The original intro was weird, it just didn't make sense, so I just wanted to come up with something that people would get right away, and understand and show that we know about all of these things. We're not strangers to "Funkytown," Rhymesayers, and just adding the Mall of America — things that Minnesota is known for — and then [the mixtape] is the next step. This is what we think we should be known for in music.

I felt that was a strong transition in the mixtape. You're legitimately forcing the listener into this black-and-white world, and as soon as they get comfortable, you add some color. The beat changes and then everything is fresh. If I had to give it a color, I'd say purple and pink. It was dope.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: I knew it was good, too, when I sent it to them. The thing about working with [Dolo and FreeWifi] is that we're not yes-men by any sense … There's a lot of people that won't tell someone if their stuff is whack or that they don't like it, it's the Minnesota-Nice thing … It's something that we need to adopt. We're not pushing forward if we're going to allow our friends and the people we want to work with to release subpar music, or not their best work. Or something that is going to push forward the genre or music in general. [If so,] what is the point of releasing the music?

So, in other words, you're trying to drop Minnesota Nice for the #BoldNorth identity Minnesota claimed during the Super Bowl?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: To a certain extent. I'm not really up on anything like that, but that is sort of the idea. We really want to be more against the yes-men-type thought process. Because, even when I would send them stuff, they're like, "No, no, this is not hitting," or, "This is kinda whack."

Doesn't that hurt your ego a little bit though, if you've put the time into your craft?

J-Plaza: Naturally it does, but at the end of the day, it feels good to have somebody being real with you, instead of somebody sitting with you and telling you, "Aw yeah, its tight. Yeah, it's cool. That's fire." Cause when it's not, people need to know that it's not that good. That's how it gets better … It's like the basketball reference: your team is telling you you're not playing that good, so you just got to get better. Obviously, you're going to feel some type of way about sitting on the bench, but next day at practice you're about to be shooting a hundred more jump shots, trying to get better. That's what people need to hear, so that it can make them better.

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: And that goes into survival of the fittest, because when people tell you that you're not good enough, you're gonna do one of two things: you're either going to say "F*** you to him," or go harder. A lot of people choose the "F*** you" route or the giving up route, because they're like, "This dude is a hater. Plaza, all them dudes? Haters. Like all them dudes that didn't get on the mixtape, haters."

Instead you got to be like, "I'm going to prove them wrong, I am the best in the city. If they don't put me on, they're slipping." Prove us wrong. Make the best music that you can, we're not haters. If its fire, we're gonna put it on. I don't care if you want me dead, if it's banging, that's gonna make us all look better.

If we, as a city, have a compilation of music that's all good and someone from out of state hears that and goes, "Damn. Minnesota is actually coming with it. That's cool. I didn't know they made music like this here … I haven't heard nothing from Minnesota since Prince."

It's deeper than just throwing out a whole bunch of music out there. Even for myself, the second hardest process was the artwork.

Why was the artwork so challenging? What were you going for?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: I did over a hundred different covers. I worked day and night for weeks and weeks about how this was going to be represented. It turned out that cover that we used, I made the day of the release because I was like, "I hate all of this." So now we have the choice and I realize, we don't need to have one cover; we can have 10 covers if we want. Why limit yourself?

J-Plaza, what has this process been like for you as an artist and co-inspirer of this project? How do you feel about the end result?

J-Plaza: Like I said at the beginning, I always wanted to do this. I've always loved the Minnesota scene. When I first started putting music out here in 2014, I didn't know anybody like that, and then I ended up meeting Tiiiiiiiiiip and meeting Dolo and all these artists out here that were super dope, and I always thought to myself, like, how are they not famous, or how are they not super known for their music?

And then there was a time when there was no radio station for hip-hop neither, it was just all pop. So, there's really not that many resources out here for hip-hop, and still there isn't. Shout out 95.3 for "Shut Up and Rap" and the other local stuff, that help artists get their name out there, and Rhymesayers for putting on a couple artists each year. But since we have a high platform now, we should start putting in and adding what we think is right for the Minnesota music scene, because I'm all about seeing everyone flourish.

I just want to hear people from other states say that Minnesota goes hard. Because right now, if I go out of state and I say I'm from Minnesota, they're like, "What's out there besides the Mall of America?" Or 50 Tyson and sh** like that … So that's what we're trying to do. This is going to be a forever thing for us. We just want the hip-hop scene to get bigger and bigger. Since I started rapping, it's only been getting better. It's been a beautiful experience.

I didn't even know half the artists that were on the tape. Never heard of them. So to me, it's like, "Damn, there's more." We want everyone that didn't make this tape, it doesn't mean that you're whack or anything, or we don't f*** with you. I have lot of associates and friends that didn't even make the tape, and probably will never make the tape depending on how hard they go. It's really about your music. This [mixtape] is the FreeWifi edition, that's where there's a few FreeWifi tracks, but Dolo and Tiiiiiiiiiip will always be doing this sh**. I'll always have a play in it, to say this and that, but this is really the fans' edition. They were the ones to say this was hot, or this was not.

Now that you have Vol. 1 on the way, there's talk of Vol. 2 already. What's really next for the Best of Minnesota Mixtape? Could we be seeing some of these artists going on tour or doing a big Twin Cities rap show?

DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip: I definitely think that would be a wonderful idea. We have really busy personal careers, [FreeWifi] is signed, and I'm doing a bunch of shows and I do design. Dolo hosts shows all the time, when it comes time to it. What we want to do first and foremost is give this project the attention it deserves and really boost this project. We don't want to take away from it by having other things going on … This is something I can stand on and that I'm very proud of; it's not just something that we threw together. This is something that if I show this to any person, they're going to like something on it.

If you haven't listened the Best of Minnesota Mixtape, Vol. 1, check it out here:

Jeffrey Bissoy-Mattis is a Twin Cities native by way of Yaounde, Cameroon. Outside of reporting Hip-Hop for The Current, he's the host of Maintainin' and co-host of the NBA podcast, The Come Up. Got a suggestion or wanna leave a comment? Follow him on Twitter, @JeffEmbiid.

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