That’s the premise of their collective, Dope Music Village — a play on the letters that represent their stomping grounds, the DMV. It’s meant to support all forms of art and bring together artists and fans alike.

“It’s like, ‘Let’s build [a platform] that not only we can stand on … but other people we like and respect can stand on with us,” says Brain Rapp, who says he came up with the name at work.

That communal effort plays strongly into the trio’s first collaborative release, You’re Welcome, a project that welcomes others into their village. They join their distinct flows — Brain Rapp rides on steady, cultivated energy; Ezko hits on strong, free-flowing lyrics and Nature Boi matches his own melodic, adaptive production — in a way where not one of them outshines the other. The eight-track release shows a wide and fluid range of moods: from restless, frustrated energy in “Venting” to appreciative affection in “Ms. Amerykah Badu.”

The collective first came together in 2015, when someone said “Dope Music Village” on a track for the first time on Ezko’s Sleep EP.

Brain Rapp and Nature Boi have known each other since they were teenagers. The 20-somethings solidified a working relationship while Nature Boi produced Brain Rapp’s 2015 release Elevator Music, and they’ve even lived together. Ezko came into the mix after Brain Rapp connected with him on Facebook, noticing the younger rapper on music blogs.

“At the end of the day, these guys are my family,” Brain Rapp says.

One song, “It’s Been Lit Ever Since,” came from a phrase Ezko once uttered. Brain Rapp and Nature Boi took it and ran with it. They had to wake Ezko up to record the song.

It’s hard to categorize the hip-hop trio, Brain Rapp says. He jokes that he looks more like a Starbucks barista than a rapper. Brain Rapp’s father is a well-known entomologist, and he studied environmental science at the University of Maryland. Nature Boi has been making music for at least a decade, but he’s a collaborator at heart, and he only recently started focusing on solo work. Ezko — whom Brain Rapp likens to Joey Bada$$ —just tries things out in a freeform way until it sticks.

Together, they don’t ride only wave of hip-hop. They play with R&B rhythms and trap beats, and their subjects flow from politics to weed-smoking.

“Now that I am [older]… I can’t escape the realness and the gravity of the world,” Brain Rapp says. “For four minutes, I would like to not live in that reality.”

The three artists are working on their own projects at the moment, but Brain Rapp hopes to keep shaping Dope Music Village — into a broader collective, perhaps, or even a record label.

But no matter what, he says the focus will remain on spotlighting their music as well as their community’s. That’s what it means to be in a village.

“There’s nobody in my mind that’s up and down 295 the same way that we are,” Brain Rapp says.

Thus we have “Jada & Styles,” by Maryland’s Nature Boi and Brain Rapp, a leak from their upcoming EP titled SPRNTRL (like “supernatural”).

Over Nature Boi’s late-night, horn-buttressed beat, they get playfully old-school: “Reportin’ live from the cul-de-sac/Nature Boi/Brain Rapp/Fly so high in the sky, gave a plane dap.”

From the archives: Read Bandwidth’s profile of Brain Rapp and his entomologist father.

Maryland artist Nature Boi lost his mother last year, and music has been curative for him as he’s gone through the grieving process. But sometimes it’s produced unexpected results. Take “Uhh” (listen below), his latest release.

“I made the beat July 25th, 2014, the day before my mother passed,” writes the 28-year-old — real name Antonio Ervin — in an email. “At the time, I hadn’t recorded in a while.” He had been spending time with his mother in the hospital.

One year after his mother’s death, Nature Boi got back into the booth, put his soul out there and delivered a tribute for Mother Nature. But it’s not exactly “Candle in the Wind.” “Uhh” is equal parts turn-up and realism, addressing Nature’s survival instincts and somewhat volatile emotions.

“It may sound like a regular trap song, but everything I said in [it] was reality. I was under the influence [and] I was angry and violent,” Nature Boi writes.

His feelings ooze out of the track, just as they would from a Kanye West or a Teddy Riley, two innovative artists he cites as influences. He thinks it would impress his mother, whom he calls his biggest supporter. That’s key, he points out, because her approval eluded him at first.

Nature Boi’s mom wanted him to pursue a different career. “She wanted me to be an electrical engineer because of the money, and because it seemed like more of a sure path,” he writes. He gave it a shot at Frostburg University, enrolling in the classes he’d need to take to enter the field, but he left school the following year to commit himself to music.

Nature Boi had to win his mother over “more than a stranger,” he writes. When she finally gave him her blessing, she became his No. 1 fan. That meant “everything” to him.

Beyond “Uhh,” Nature Boi finds himself wearing a variety of hats, musically. He has production credits on Elevator Music, a project he worked on with fellow Marylander Brain Rapp; he DJs; and he has his own batch of songs, Super Natural, slated for release later this year. There’s just one problem with wanting to cover so many creative bases.

“My biggest issue is being a perfectionist,” Nature Boi writes.

On the other hand, he’s a rising artist without a big fanbase yet. That low profile can be an asset, he says. “Because nobody is really checking for me, it’s no pressure.”

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Raupp is a 27-year-old Maryland native who works as a certified arborist, having earned his degree in environmental science and policy from the University of Maryland. Both his parents have strong pedigrees in science: His mother is a science teacher and his father is renowned entomologist Michael J. Raupp, also known as “The Bug Guy.”

But Brian Raupp’s main passion in life is hip-hop. He’s a rapper who’s made the rounds at music festivals like Artscape, Epic Fest and Broccoli City, performing under the name Brain Rapp. Meanwhile, his dad makes his own rounds on CNN, PBS, The Dr. Oz Show and WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, discussing the world of insects.

Raupp says he’s inspired by his dad, as different as their ambitions may be.

“He tells me all the time, ‘When I started doing this, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine I’d be on Good Morning America or talking to Kojo about bugs.’ You don’t get into entomology to be that,” Raupp says of his father. “The parallel between the two of us and our careers now… is that I didn’t ever get into rap to be famous. … I just never thought that anybody would really want to listen to me.”

In the four years since Raupp began performing, he’s made significant headway: He’s released three full-length projects, played regional venues and gigged at the A3C Festival, a major hip-hop gathering in Atlanta. True to his background in science, Raupp’s approach to marketing himself is methodical: He realized the value of moderation early on, and now he mainly plays shows that put him in front of new eyes. (He also knows how to make a clever promotional video.)

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Both of Raupp’s parents are supportive. Though, the elder Raupp admits that his son’s foray into rap gave him pause at first.

“Like any parent, I thought, ‘Whoa, after all this time and education, what’s up with this?’” Michael Raupp says. “I was a little concerned about the real odds that this choice could turn into a career that would allow him to pay the rent, put food on that table, and maybe have a family of his own if that is what he wanted to do,” Michael Raupp says. “But I also told him that if he had a dream, then he had to chase it.”

For Raupp, working up the courage to pursue hip-hop took time. He started writing raps at 13, but it wasn’t until he got involved with a hip-hop group at the University of Maryland called The Undergrounduates that he gained the confidence to start recording at 19.

An obvious student of hip-hop, Raupp writes cleverly candid and personal lyrics, each song exposing portions of his autobiography as he pays homage to the artists that inspired him.

On “Hello,” the opening track on his latest project Elevator Music, Raupp addresses the obvious head-on: “Hello, I’m Brain, I rap, I’m white.” It’s not a topic he shies away from, welcoming the opportunity to speak on both race and rap.

“I think it’s humbling,” Raupp says. “People lose their lives over this and I just get to feel uncomfortable because I’m the only white guy in a room — and I don’t feel uncomfortable, actually. The main thing is to always be adding to a narrative instead of trying to drive it, since that’s what white people have always done.”

Raupp attributes at least part of his racial awareness to his upbringing in Columbia, Maryland, a town created with the explicit goal of eliminating class and racial segregation. (It was here that he also met Elevator Music producer Nature Boi.)

Ultimately, Raupp hopes to build a bridge between science and hip-hop, too.

“There’s a social responsibility [that comes with] with being an artist,” Raupp says. “That’s the way I see my part.” He says his audience might not be listening to his dad on the radio or TV, so he’s happy to be the rapper who finds unique ways to talk about science. “It might not be on a record that I get to talk about the environment,” Raupp says, “but I’m going to do it.”

In a way, Raupp is still following his father’s lead.

“He had to go for it,” Michael Raupp says of his son’s hip-hop journey. “I chase my dreams and don’t have regrets.”