Interview: DJ Banga The Dumpoff Kid Is A Cornerstone In Virginia Music

DJ Banga The Dumpoff Kid is a member of The Dumpoffdjs collective that was established in Richmond, VA with the help of DJ Play. In his over a decade span, he hosted mixtapes that featured the likes of Drake and Nickelus F, Future, Baby Jay, Young Crazy, and more. Randy Wilson affirmed in his interview with Banga in 2020 that he’s the Virginia mixtape king. Banga was also featured in Nickelus F’s The Gold Mine Volume 1 and 2.

Jay: In 2020, there’s plenty of grey area within what is the definition of a mixtape, album, LP, or an EP nowadays thanks to streaming and artists monetizing off streams. Back in the mixtape era where I can recall personally starting with DJ Drama, it was mostly a promotion tool where it was given at pop up shows and tours as free hard copies. Somewhere around the early 2010s, the pay to be on an online trend began hand in hand with the prime stretch of the blog era. Correct me if I’m inaccurate with that statement. How do you view the significance of mixtapes today and how would you classify it?

Banga: You’re accurate with that statement. It was a lot of people paying for slots verified where you was at in the scene. The beginning was REAL REAL REAL exclusive for artists about to drop albums and used to basically judge what would happened next. People used to put all the big names for the first four tracks on a mixtape and then put the less known names later in them. I don’t do that. I blend them in between so people can go through all 21 tracks rather than 4 tracks so people can get more familiar with the independent artists as well as hearing the mainstream ones they look out for. Some artists I can think of that greatly benefited from mixtapes are Maino, T.I. Young Buck, Boosie and Pimp C. I can’t forget to mention The Superfriends. Pertaining to DJs, I was the first to go hard with it. Myself and Stat Quo who with Dr. Dre before and when Kendrick started popping up. He worked with Game before Game was on G-Unit. Mixtapes basically are still significant because artists still need rollouts. So certain things that you as an artist may want to put out that may not be ok the album sure can be a worthy fit on the mixtape. Currently, I’m getting more to the production of the mixtape itself. Right now, I like to get to the real production unless it’s a live cypher type of thing. By doing that, we both get paid through streams and use that as our perspective promos. It’s still significant but it’s a different rollout because both of technology. Like Nick F for example. How he would gauge his fan base