Or maybe it isn’t: Despite that record’s solid grasp of hip-hop history (and the attendant cynicism about commerce), DTMD had much to learn about the music business, says beatmaker Duncan “Dunc” Wintermyer. Four years later, he and the group’s MC, Antoine “Toine” Jameson, have grown up a lot.

“When Makin’ Dollas came out, I was still in college, Antoine was between jobs … so it was literally that we had just gotten our first deal and we didn’t know how to handle it,” Dunc says. “We got a first-person look on how the hip-hop game works, I guess. How it is a business and how it’s not just ‘for the love.'”

Another album is on the way eventually, Dunc says, but for now DTMD is releasing a handful of tracks online to rebuild its momentum. One of them, the appropriately titled “While You Wait,” pushes DTMD into a sound that’s less directly indebted to the ’90s while giving Toine a chance to riff on the audio and video ills he sees on Twitter and elsewhere.

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

“And every motherf****r got a mic and a cam/With a license to spam/But I’mma claim what I rightfully am/Analog mindstate with a digital plan,” Toine rhymes with a hint of impatience.

The song “isn’t a far departure from where we were at, but it’s more about where we want to go,” Dunc says. It’s sonically firmer and more propulsive — and certainly more evocative of beats made by Oddisee, their critically acclaimed, industry-savvy friend and P.G. County contemporary. (He’s the guy on the digital artwork for the song — Toine took the photo while on tour with Oddisee earlier this year.)

“He’s the one who taught me how to make beats. We pretty much grew up in the same area. He took us under his wing and kind of taught us how to make music,” Dunc says. “Me and Antoine aren’t shy about saying that we look up to him. We’re proud that he’s gotten so far, because he’s from where we’re from. You’re walking in a random store and you just hear his music, you can’t help but smile and be proud.”

When Dunc talks about what’s next for DTMD, in a way he’s describing what Oddisee’s career has been like in recent years.

DTMD wants to “make music we love, and live off the music we love. I’m talking about touring constantly, doing shows, constantly putting records out, just doing stuff that we’ve always talked about doing,” Dunc says.

The producer doesn’t offer any specifics about the industry pitfalls that DTMD faced. Channels are still open with Mello Music Group, the label that released Makin’ Dollas, he says, but there have been conversations with other labels. In 2014, Dunc self-released Cycles, an album of instrumentals, and Toine released the antoine jameson mixtape. “While You Wait” was issued at the same time as “The Tunnel,” a posse cut featuring some of DTMD’s longtime collaborators. Another digital single, the soulful banger “What They Ask For,” dropped Tuesday.

Whatever the case, Phase 2 of DTMD now has a lair — a new studio that Dunc opened in Brentwood, Maryland.

“Me and Antoine are in there all the time now. I had a little home studio, and now I’ve got this pretty ballin’ studio that I’ve been building out for the past seven months. Now we have a bunker, we can just lock the doors,” Dunc says, laughing, “and make music all hours of the night.”

On Cycles, Dunc’s first instrumental album since 2010’s The Leftovers, he keeps the mood downtempo. This isn’t one to blast from your car; it’s the kind of thing you’d put on while cleaning the house or thinking about life. Dunc recorded much of the album last fall during a week of rainstorms. A Pisces, Dunc says he loves rainy days and autumn—two factors that contributed to Cycles‘ oceanic vibe.

Cycles standout “Through the Storm” dates back four years, to when Dunc heard multi-instrumentalist Charles Walsh plucking what would become the song’s bass line. The two worked together at the Atomic Music shop in Beltsville, Maryland. “I had the idea to build up the track like a storm—it’s calm, then it builds up and slows down,” Dunc says. Walsh, who also plays trumpet on the track, appears throughout Cycles with Dunc and keyboardist Drew Kid.

While Dunc still loves to sample, building music from scratch gives him a chance to be challenged. “I like to be versatile,” he says. “When you can put a creative stamp on something by writing music, that’s when you take the next step in becoming a great composer.”

Producer: Drew Dave
Stats: Age 25, Alexandria, Va.
Notable collaborators: Pro’Verb, Doe Cigapom, Lyriciss

In 2011, Drew Dave—then known as Soulful!—released Mumbo Sauce and Drumbreaks, a robust collection of brassy soul that established the young producer as a promising local talent. Since then, the Alexandria artist has only gotten better. His beat for Pro’Verb’s “Too Hip-Hop”—a hypnotic web of strings, boom-bap and piano—could have resonated without lyrics; and his instrumental for Lyriciss’ “Get It & Go” provided the hard edge needed for the rapper’s dissection of capitalist America.

More recently, Drew Dave and D.C. rapper Doe Cigapom co-starred on Life As We Know It; there, Drew opted for traditional soul, an old-school approach that dates back to 2005. “When I heard Common’s Be, it was everything for me,” says Dave, now 25. “I like the crackle of the vinyl. My style is vintage soul with a modern flair.”

Dave says he’s working on a recording with rapper Cortez as well as his forthcoming instrumental album, SynthBASED, which uses a lot of beats with synthesized bass lines. He’s hoping to release that EP-turned-full-length by the end of summer.

Producer: Dunc
Stats: Age 25, Cheverly, Md.
Notable collaborators: Toine (in DTMD)

Makin’ Dollas, the 2011 debut of local hip-hop duo DTMD, felt steeped in the classics. That’s because producer Dunc—one half of the duo alongside MC Toine—built the recording’s tracks on the ’60s soul he was listening to at the time. “I was listening to a lot of underground classic soul,” says Dunc, who lives in Cheverly, Maryland. “I come from nontraditional hip-hop roots. Through hip-hop, I’ve discovered different genres.”

Dunc started making beats at 16, and found a valuable education after he met then-local producer and rapper Oddisee via MySpace. “He taught me how to make beats on Fruity Loops,” Dunc says. “It was almost like an internship.”

These days, Dunc says he listens to contemporary stuff like Little Dragon, Toro y Moi, Flying Lotus and Samiyam, which helps explain why his work now sounds more electronic and less sample-based than his past productions. DTMD’s new album, Reset, is in progress and could drop in September; meanwhile, Dunc is also working with a new rapper, BOOM, on his forthcoming EP, and he plans to release his own 10-song instrumental, Cycles, which will combine his newfound electronic influences with live instrumentation.

This song contains explicit lyrics.

Photo by Flickr user aleXwire used under a Creative Commons license.