In digging through Musical Family Tree’s previous EPs in a Weekend, Indianapolis producer Rob “Bangers by One” Goldsmith noticed something: there was no hip hop.

“I kind of did some research and saw that mostly only alternative bands were doing EPs in a Weekend,” he says. “So when I thought about that, I was like, ‘Yooo! That’s going to be so dope.’”

Bringing his love for bringing artists together with his music, the in-house producer at CityDump Records decided to coordinate MFT’s 12th EP in a Weekend. Planning to take on the production responsibilities himself, Goldsmith began brainstorming which local rappers he’d like to feature on the project—a process he admits was a little difficult at first. 

He says, “I knew that the whole idea of EP in a Weekend was getting artists who had never worked together to come together to do an EP. But in the hip hop community, everybody has worked together, especially in the younger generations. So I was like, ‘Shit. How am I going to do this?’” 

Eventually though, he was able to recruit an impressive cast of local emcees, including Poindexter, New Wave Collective, Freshduzit, Dose, Sapiensxiii, Rehema McNeil, and Taleb Fazle. 

With so many schedules to coordinate, Goldsmith initially had trouble getting the project off the ground. But after putting it off three different times, he was finally got everybody into CityDump for a weekend recording session.

“We were in a room full of rappers, and I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure that everybody walked out of there with nothing but love and positive energy from each other,” he recalls. “I just had to make sure that everybody knew, like, ‘Hey! I’m not tolerating no bullshit.’”

Goldsmith decided to have all of the rappers freestyle together. He remembers, “I needed to come up with something that would unify everybody, especially because not everybody had worked with me before. So I thought of this idea to do a cypher, and they came together with that.” And from there on out, “the rest of the process was beautiful,” he says.

Much like the success of the recent Chreece hip hop festival, Goldsmith sees the success of this hip hop EP as a mirror image of the local community’s sheer talent. He says, “The talent that we’ve got going on is like the water and the reflection is things like Chreece and this EP in a Weekend.” 

And as he continues with his own pursuits, Goldsmith hopes to keep bringing artists together like he did with this project.

“I like seeing people do shit, and I like building up the relationships that I’ve been able to help form,” he says. “I may not say anything, but I love it man.”