Producer: Tone P
Stats: Age 27, Southwest D.C.
Notable Collaborators: Wale/The Board Administration, Curren$y

Before Tone P became one of D.C.’s best-known hip-hop producers, he dreamed of a life in uniform.

A team uniform, that is. “A lot of people that know Tony, not Tone, know that I used to play basketball,” says the Southwest D.C. native born Ernest Anthony Price. “I played all sports—basketball, soccer, baseball, football—but I had hoop dreams like most kids,” he says.

There was just one problem: Price wasn’t quite tall enough to play professionally.

So with reservations, the young striver set aside his NBA fantasies and transitioned to the field he’d stumbled upon during high school while rapping over Napster-downloaded beats on a karaoke machine. Not long after his cousin Craig Balmoris brought home Fruity Loops software, they started the hip-hop production team Best Kept Secret—and Ernest Anthony Price, aspiring athlete, became Tone P, producer.

Early on, the charismatic Tone was able to sell Best Kept Secret’s beats—which he describes as just “presentable” at the time—before he’d even perfected his craft. “I was pretty much selling my stuff off personality,” he says.

Over time, the rhythms of go-go became Best Kept Secret’s signature. The duo aimed to create something that could appeal to national listeners while preserving the sound that surrounded them growing up. “If we can mesh it right down the middle to where it can be accepted in and outside of D.C., we’ll be on the money,” Tone recalls saying.

Best Kept Secret’s breakthrough came when they met an on-the-rise rapper named Wale on MySpace and put their beats in his ear. Not long afterward, the team had two productions—the go-go-infused “Ice Cream Girl” and “DC Gorillaz“—on the MC’s 2007 mixtape, 100 Miles & Running. In 2009, Best Kept Secret popped up numerous times on Wale’s debut LP, Attention Deficit, including on the single “Pretty Girls.”

Tone P would soon go solo full-time, and Craig B and producer Julian Nixon continued under the name Best Kept Secret.

“Ice Cream Girl” may have ushered in Tone P’s sound, but his vision of bringing together the local and mainstream wouldn’t be fully realized until Wale released his 2011 track “Bait,” a Tone P banger that extracted its thunderous bass and 808s from trap rap, but inherited its timbales from go-go.

Now still one of Wale’s top producers, Tone P continues to find ways to incorporate deeply musical elements into his work. On tracks like Curren$y’s “Chandelier” from 2012’s The Stoned Immaculate, Wale’s “Black Grammys” from MMG’s Self Made 3 album and Wale’s recent “MMG Under God,” Tone trades the bounce beat for something with a little more soul.

Sometimes, though, Tone likes to take a step away from the boards and assume a broader role. He says the distinction between beatmaker and producer has been lost over the years. “You have beatmakers that are just bulldozing the title of ‘producer’ because they make the beats,” he says. “Producing was back in the day like Puffy or Quincy Jones. Puffy didn’t touch anything,” he says. “Producing is knowing where the pieces fit together. Someone who puts together the entire song, not just the beat. It’s a heavier title.”

For him, the title of rapper sounds promising, too: Tone P has already spit a few bars on previous tracks, and later this summer, he plans to release his debut mixtape, A Distrixt Motion Pixture. (He recently released a cut from the EP called “Designer Bounce.”) So far, the tape is set to feature fellow DMV artists Kingpen Slim, Black Cobain, Fatz Da Big Fella and Dino, as well as out-of-towners Casey Veggies and Eric Bellinger—and of course, Wale. He says the tape will tell the story of his life as a D.C. native.

“My city…is going to have a hand in this project,” Tone says. “To me, that’s how you give back.”

Producer: SlimKat78
Stats: Age 36, Deanwood
Notable Collaborators: yU, Bilal Salaam, Eric Roberson

If you’ve attended a show at Bohemian Caverns/Liv lately, you’ve probably seen SlimKat78: The producer works the soundboard for the historic U Street venue. But the Deanwood resident is a formidable composer in his own right, having produced music for singers Maimouna Youssef, Bilal Salaam and Muhsinah, among many others.

Like many artists, SlimKat started young: As a student at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, he played music over the loudspeakers in between class periods, and later bought a sampler and began to create his own music. Still, the budding artist didn’t release anything until the mid-2000s. In 2010, SlimKat released a beat tape, Soundfreakers Vol. 1, which collected heavy drums and old vocal samples. Elsewhere, he’s produced singles for singer Nicholas Ryan Gant and California rapper Trek Life.

These days, SlimKat is working on several of his own instrumental projects: one with live instrumentation, a gospel-themed beat tape and another called D.R.U.M., which Slim says will be an expansive mix of percussive sounds. But his most anticipated project arrives later this year, when he and D.C.-area rapper yU—known collectively as the 1978ers—release a promising collaborative album. The forthcoming People of Today deals with the broad theme of people’s lives, from D.C.-based MC Grap Luva to philandering preachers. The project was conceived almost five years ago, SlimKat says.

“Mike [yU] and I are lifetime friends, and a lot of the album stems from agreements and disagreements we’ve had,” says the producer. “It’s like a discussion we’ve had amongst ourselves.”

Producer: Kev Brown
Stats: Age 38, Landover, Md.
Notable Collaborators: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Gods’illa, Phonte

Kev Brown once preferred rapping over making beats. But after a few performances in the local open-mic scene, Brown decided he wanted to rhyme with original music. In 1998, the Landover native—who cites Pete Rock as a major influence—heard a copy of Rock’s landmark project, Soul Survivor. “I thought, ‘Whoa, this is how you make beats,’” Brown says. His production style combines the music he grew up on—Dilla, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan—with his own low-key vibe.

In 2005, Brown released a solo album, I Do What I Do, on which he rapped alongside members of the local Low Budget crew (Kenn Starr, Quartermaine and Oddisee) with rapper Phonte (now a singer with The Foreign Exchange) and vocalist Raheem DeVaughn.

Yet over the years, Brown hasn’t rapped as much. He’s released a slew of instrumental projects and spit a few bars on other work, but he doesn’t enjoy it as much as making beats. “I’m not that technical,” Brown says. “It’s like school to me to write. I might as well be in math class or something.” With that said, Brown is finishing a new project that includes more of his own rapping, but it won’t be like I Do What I Do. He says it’s more like “I’m doing whatever I want.”

Kev Brown image by Daniel Love

Producer: i.V.
Stats: Age 22, Gaithersburg, Md.
Notable collaborators: Alex Young, Royal, Lindsay Lowend

Producer i.V. isn’t technically a D.C. guy: Born in Arizona, the 22-year-old spent most of his life in Rockville and Gaithersburg, Maryland—and often indoors. i.V. suffered from asthma that kept him in the house. “I could only stay inside because of the pollen, and because I couldn’t really do a lot of activities, I never played sports,” he says. But he credits his ailment with getting him into hip-hop. “I was always in my basement working on loops and trying to make things sound good when I was 11 or 12,” he says.

For someone who spent a lot of time close to home, i.V.’s production can sound surprisingly otherworldly: He prizes ambience and futurism, crafting his beats by looping and altering everyday sounds and voices to create soundscapes. His sound has attracted a fairly large following on Soundcloud, particularly in the U.K. In this hemisphere, i.V. co-owns Bethesda’s Indigo Studios and frequently collaborates with fellow DMV producers Alex Young, Royal and Lindsay Lowend.

In the long term, the producer has his eye on Top 40. “There’s something about pop music that I just gravitate towards,” he says. “It’s just the music that gets me going… I would love to produce [pop] records.” He’s currently working on some of his own pop productions. Farther down the line, he hopes to break into scoring films.

As far as i.V. is concerned, the asthma that kept him inside was a blessing in disguise. “I’ve always been spiritually in tune with things, and I believe that lives come predestined and we are programmed by a higher power,” he says. Making music “feels kind of like a calling,” he says. “There’s nothing else that I could do.” —Briana Younger

Producer: The Arckitech
Stats: Age 20, Woodridge
Notable collaborators: Ras Nebyu

When D.C. rapper Ras Nebyu plays an early slot at this year’s Trillectro festival, the crowd on RFK’s festival grounds will be nodding their heads to the mellow instrumentals of his most vital in-house producer, The Arckitech. The 20-year-old D.C. native played a crucial role in Nebyu’s breakout mixtape, Babylon’s Most Wanted, contributing five beats of his own and recording and mixing most of the project in his home studio.

“Right now my focus is on projects,” Arckitech says. “I’m really big on albums, helping people put together their projects, and just establishing my sound. Doing more than just making beats and really being involved in the process.”

Arckitech began to explore hip-hop in his freshman year of high school, when he and Nebyu would swap and critique classic hip-hop albums in the halls of D.C.’s Benjamin Banneker High School. It was something of an informal hip-hop book club, in which the two teenagers delved into works almost as old as themselves, like Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Those discoveries and conversations shaped both teens’ artistic sensibilities, articulated on Nebyu cuts like “Lion Talk.”

Now, Arckitech is helping to put the finishing touches on Nebyu’s forthcoming album, Ras Griffin III, as well as a project with his older sister, Kamila Gem. He expects both to drop late this summer. “I don’t really have a whole lot coming up as far as major placements,” he says of his immediate future. “I’m just trying to have everything really organic. I’ll have to wait and see if anything else pops up.” (Harold Stallworth)

Photo by Flickr user Brandon Baker used under a Creative Commons license.

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.