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Ask a Cool Person: DJ tiiiiiiiiiip

by Andrea Swensson

June 12, 2016

Ask a Cool Person: DJ tiiiiiiiiiip
DJ Micro P, "Yumpin"

Each week on the Local Show, we’ll meet a new person from the Minnesota music community who has some fresh discoveries to share in a feature called “Ask a Cool Person.” These people will come from all corners of the scene, including record store clerks, recording studio engineers and producers, artists, writers, bookers, photographers, and fans.

This week's guest is Taylor Madrigal, a.k.a. DJ tiiiiiiiiiip, who is a founding member of Audio Perm, DJs for Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps, and Corbin, and teams up with Red Bull Sound Select and other promoters to throw some of the hippest parties in the Twin Cities.

Andrea Swensson: You've been booking some awesome events around town. I think of you as someone who is on the cutting edge of what's cool in music.

DJ tiiiiiiiiiip: I attempt. I try to seek things out and stay on the up-and-up. There are definitely people who are more up on it than me, just because I'm constantly working and I can't always work on finding new music, but I definitely try my best.

So what's your plan of attack? How do you find new stuff?

I pay attention to Soundcloud a lot. Soundcloud and there's a couple blogs that I check, just for official releases. There's a lot of different ways; just listening to what people say, too. When I do parties I have an RSVP form where I ask people for requests for songs, and that's another really good way. Because a lot of times, you never know if a chart will lie. I don't trust anything that doesn't come from a person, really.

You've brought in three songs today, starting with Cory Grindberg. Tell me about him.

Cory Grindberg was in Audio Perm with me and Bobby Raps and like seven other people. It was a big crew. He was a producer — Audio Perm was originally a producer group, and it was me, Cory Grindberg, and Julian Fairbanks. He produces for a lot of rappers as well. He produced for Saba, who is on Chance the Rapper's new project, and just a bunch of other people around the Chicago area. So yeah, he's a producer, he's just getting into dropping new material, and this is an instrumental piece.

There's a whole realm of music going on on Soundcloud now that's more producer-based, and this is a Minnesota example of that. He's in Chicago now, but he mainly knows a lot of Minnesota artists and works with Minnesota artists. And he was in a group with me, so I wanted to represent.

https://soundcloud.com/corygrindberg/djimbo

This next one led to a really interesting conversation with my boss. [laughs] Tell me about DJ Micro Penis.

He's actually about to graduate from high school. His name is Asher, a.k.a. DJ Micro Penis, so he's an interesting fella. He's a cool guy. I met him last year, and we became really good friends just because we have similar interests and both want to work on shows, and work on music. He's mainly a drummer. He's about to go out to Berklee to study music, so he's about to move and go out there. We actually just played a show together at Mill City Nights, with him and Bobby Raps, it was a blast and a half. It was so sick.

And speaking of Bobby Raps, you brought in one from his Wicked City project. Is Wicked City a group?

Wicked City was a conceptual project put together by him and SinGrinch, the other producer on the track. Him and SinGrinch stumbled on an Anime movie from the '90s, and they just really liked the way it looked, and it inspired them to make a project around it. They took the audio out of it, so pretty much played it on mute, and made instrumentals and songs that matched the vibe of the movie. So they added the songs to the movie and released it on YouTube. We had a big release party for it a couple months back, and it's just one of the most interesting projects I've heard about. And it just so happens that it's people that I know.

Clean Water Land & Legacy Amendment
This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.