INTERVIEW
“The Goat Spring Edition” is a wildly fun mixtape of 10 underground hip-hop tracks with different flows, melodies and beats featuring seven different artists.
Producer DJ PRO LBC mashed the entire mixtape into a single track of 3 minutes, 52 seconds, and the reason was those seven artists.
“It is absolutely about the artists,” said DJ PRO. “That’s what I care about. I care about giving the artists the publicity. At the end of the day, I’m nothing without them.”
What he wants from the whole project is to call attention to Daytone 500; Superstar Stone; Timia Bene’t; Mani Coolin; Dnyc3; FastMoney Goon; and Slain Illz.
“Something that’s really important to understand is that as times change and we live in a social media era, science has shown that if you can’t capture someone’s attention within three seconds, you’re gonna lose them. So I figured out a creative way to be able to keep people’s attention by making adjustments and changes with the songs every three to five seconds.”
The heart of the concept is to get fans thinking, “If I was interested in this person for three to five seconds, I wonder what it’d be like if I actually engaged with them by going to their profile and listening to their music.”
Mixtapes to call attention to a mix of artists are not new, but the concept of an entire mixtape in one track is, and it is DJ PRO’s idea.
“And you know,” he said, “I’m gonna tell you, I’m the first to do this, and I guarantee you, within the next year, there will be others.”
“There will be more,” he said. “This is something new and something different, and the feedback we’ve been getting so far has been astronomically great.”
The individual songs highlighted in “The Goat Spring Edition” will not be released in an album. Instead, each of the songs featured on the mixtape/song will drop individually. Some of the songs are being finished now, and the uploads will begin in about a week. From there, he said, each song takes seven to 14 days to get into the system.
“Albums in the digital era do not give us the same creative control in terms of promotions and strategy,” he said. “But they will all be on the same playlist, which is, which is called ‘The Goat Playlist.’”
“We like to consider our playlist our album, our living, breathing album.”
One song will be released every couple of weeks.
“The beautiful part about it is I can continuously update it as we’re working. We generate so much content on a weekly basis that it’s actually more beneficial to use the playlist.”
The tracks will drop on DJ PRO’s platform, with the artists listed as co-collaborators and links to the artists’ channels.
The official video has drawn a lot of approving comments, like, “This is really really fire! The collaboration between the artists makes for something special!”; “This is amazing … fire bro”; “super creative!”; and “DJ PRO saved the rap game.”
DJ PRO is Long Beach, California, born and bred, but one of the things that he is most happy about is the variety in artists on the project.
“It’s a bicoastal collaboration. Slain Illz, he’s from Virginia. FastMoney Goon, he’s from Jacksonville Florida. We got Dnyc3 out of Compton, Daytone 500 and Timia are out of Long Beach. We got guys all over the place featured on this, but they are collaborating in a way that typically doesn’t happen in the current state of hip-hop, especially on the underground scene.”
More is coming. This mixtape/mixup/mashup can do for producers what it does for artists, and DJ PRO has plans to highlight them. Producers, he says, are by and large introverts who “don’t like to talk too much and deal with people.”
His next project is in development now with the Grammy nominated producer Coteezy, formerly known as Co-T. Coteezy, he said is intrigued by this kind of presentation and is getting his artists together.
“My hope, going forward, is that producers and artists are going to continuously reach out. Reach out, DM me, email me, whatever the case, reach out and let’s work,” he said. “I don’t care where you’re from, let’s just get it done. If the music’s good, send it over.”
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