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.”

Much of the credit goes to up-and-coming director Jay Brown, who gave “First Step” a smart little narrative arc, with MCs Uptown XO and yU hopping through D.C. to share a hookah with bandmate Oddisee. The sequence feels thoroughly authentic. And the video for the 1978ers — yU’s duo with producer SlimKat — is mildly trippy and yet perfectly representative, with the rapper rhyming while piloting an eccentric cast of customers around D.C. in a pedicab.

“No one wants to take time to make a video right anymore,” Brown says about the current glut of visual hip-hop content. “They’re just like, ‘Oh, let’s just get this dude, give him a camera, get iMovie, slap something together.’ The quality of everything has taken a huge hit, in my opinion.”

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Brown — a 27-year-old skateboarder and resident of Portland, Maine — finds inspiration in the genre-busting classics of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. The director’s previous efforts include a paranoid video for “The End” by L’Orange that incorporates some of the self-aware tone in the work of his heroes.

“Going into anything, I always try to do something that I’m not sure how to do … to expand what I can do, and just make something cool,” he says.

Brown’s work with L’Orange led him more tightly into the fold at Mello Music Group, the label for both Diamond District and The 1978ers. He says he’s shot one more clip for each group, to be released later this year, and others could be on the way.*

I asked him to give the backstory for the first two videos. (Both songs, by the way, come from critically acclaimed albums: March On Washington and People Of Today.) Here’s what Brown said:

About “First Step” by Diamond District: “The goal of that one was to give an idea of each of the artists. Not necessarily just through the locations, but how it’s shot, how it’s edited … When you meet them, you realize they’re all homies and they vibe well with each other, but they’re so different than each other. Their styles are so different. And I think that was the goal — that’s why it seems a little bit like puzzle pieces, I guess. … We wanted to capture each one of their styles, and show off who they are as individuals, but have it all come together at the end, and show off how as a team, they’re amazing, but as individuals they’re equally amazing.” (Oddisee is indeed a hookah fanatic, Brown adds: “He’s the shisha king.”)

About “OneNine7-T-8” by the 1978ers: “[The pedicab idea] was all yU. That was the man himself. He used to operate a pedicab, so he had all the connections to make that happen, and I was game for it. I have a really good relationship with Mello at this point, so the concept development with all these videos is very healthy — between the artists, and myself and [the label]. But that was largely yU. … He was like, ‘Man, I used to drive a pedicab, and I’d love to shoot a video riding people around — riding SlimKat around — in that.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’d be dope.’ And from there it was like, ‘Well, the album’s called People Of Today, so why don’t we load it with all different kinds of people.’ … From there, it took on a life of its own.”

* When interviewed last week, Brown wouldn’t say when the new clips would drop. One of them — Diamond District’s “A Part Of It All” — came out today: