Winnipeg’s Big & Bright

3Peat just ooze authenticity. With their laid back vibes, matched with their genuine talent, and exuberant passion for their craft it’s no wonder why they’ve become one of Winnipeg’s premiere hip-hop acts.
We sat down with Steve, E.GG and Dill The Giant ahead of their May 20th show at the Goodwill Social Club, to talk history, Hip-Hop and how Peg City breeds the hardest working musicians in the country.

PW: How did you guys meet?

S: We kind of all know each other through mutual friends. We’ve all done music on our own, and when we came of age we started seeing each other in the club circuit, out in the nightlife. We would see each other at The Pyramid, and we’d see each other out on the patio. Cypher was started up. I was beatboxing, and Errol would rap and Dylan would rap, and I would never get to rap and I was like “Fuck I’d like to get a chance”  and one time Errol picked up the beatbox and I was like “Whoa! This shit never happens”! We just, every time we saw each other in public we’d hook up. Dylan’s a skater so we always used to see him out on his board-

E: I used to skate too-

S: It’s a small city we’ve all known each other for a long time and recently we decided to take this all a bit more seriously.

LA: So was there one catalyst where you said “This is what we’re doing now?”

S: It was so easy for this to happen, so we might as well just keep doing it. We don’t have to think to hard, we don’t have to work to hard at it.

E: We didn’t overthink the idea of becoming a group. I think we all have strengths and weaknesses that we can all feed off.

D: I think at the end of the day you’re bound to run into the same people; on record we get asked this question so much, but it’s a very standard question to ask-you need to know.

LA: When you’re writing songs, how collaborative is it? Do you work together on the beats; what’s the flow like?

D: Steve kind of starts off making beats, we all work on them, but he grabs the helm on that.

E: He’s kind of like the conductor (Steve starts miming a conductor)

S: It’s all our own rhymes, obviously; most times when a song comes together, there will be a beat, and we’re all feeling it, and we say “Yeah we can make something  on this”. Usually we’ll come together on writing the hook, but in terms of writing the rhymes in this artform you kind of have to show your own; we always hold that we rap, and that’s the point, the first and foremost thing.
E: There’s times where we come together, and there’s times where-
D: I got a verse, you got a verse-
E: Sometimes you’ve got to wait on someone, not in a bad way, but because maybe they’ve got writer’s block
S: I can say for all of us, we’ve all been there

E: But it’s organic, I love that word, when we make songs, nothing ever feels forced

S: Especially as a group, being in a group is hard, or that’s what I hear, but for us we make it as natural as possible to avoid those conflicts. We’re 3Peat when we come together, when we’re not together we’re Steve, Dill and Egg.

LA:  When you come together, do you match the production to the rap, or the rap to the production?
S: Most times you come to the beat with a rap, or you’ll have the beat before the rap. In terms of our flow, someone will have an idea, and then…

D: I think it’s just like, it feels right

S: Someone will have an idea, and if it’s an idea we wanna run with, we’ll go with a theme, but otherwise it’s just whatever you feel on it. If the beat says something to you, and you want to say those things on that beat, then that’s what it says to you. Then the hook kind of ties everything together; here are three individuals who have these things to say, these views, but we all kind of have a similiar overview, like an umbrella.

E: It’s difficult to write raps to nothing. We’ve all done it, and if you have something on your mind you write it down, but to actually have a flow,a tempo, I feel it’s kind of necessary-

S: The beat is like a canvas, and rhymes are what you paint on it. You kind of just have to go with the flow

E: But it’s cool if you can write, and then later on match it to something

S: Because that kind of changes the initial perspective on what those words were.

E: And it can be a hit or miss, it can be like super dope.

PW: There’s a huge surge of rap music from Toronto. How do you feel about the Winnipeg rap scene?

E: First things first: A lot of people say that’s it’s nonexistent in the West Coast. I don’t know, I don’t listen to music in Vancouver or Calgary, but it’s gotta be there. That’s not on our radar; it’s Winnipeg. Everyone says it’s kind of central, it’s really not- in terms of music in Canada, the West Coast I feel there just not on the same vibe as the East Coast. There’s vibes; I don’t know how many people can feel me on that, I mean; East Coast vibes, you here what music is coming out of Montreal and Toronto; they’re dope. Some people will have their opinions on that. I feel like in Winnipeg, we have an energy that’s not taking from anything really; it’s original to where we are; we’re trying to generate our own wave, our lane.

S: The East Coast and Toronto, those are considered the Meccas of music in Canada, so they have a lot of influence from the Southern neighbors. They kind of try to fit themselves into a mold in that way. We’re here, we don’t have anything around us, no outlet, no resources, so we kind of have to find our own way, what kind of works in our environment

E: Also while being true, being true to ourselves and to an audience that’s willing to-you can listen to a song for thirty seconds and say “It’s trash”, we hope in the first 5 seconds of the song we can have your attention. Winnipeg is bubbling, it’s special, this city-it’s weird

S: People have to work harder here, because there isn’t those outlets. We just came back from Toronto for Canadian music week, and it showed the difference in pace. Over there, people are like go-go-go, we have this to do, we have this person to meet who’s gonna do this for me, whereas here we have to do it all, I have to make the beat, we have to rhyme on it, we have to go to our own studio to record it, we have to push it with our own PR network, we have to do it all.

E: All while still maintaining how passionate we are for what we do, and not losing sight of those go-go-go moments, you know you’re working on a timeframe still, but we’re still putting 100% of us into the music instead of trying to switch up to get further, really trying to represent

S: I feel like people in turn are more talented, because over there it’s so saturated, you have to switch out when you go over there. That’s why we have such a flourshing punk scene, the DIY mentality is so prevalent, that’s all we have, you have to do it yourself or die.

LA: Who are your biggest inspirations? Who do you listen to?

D: The greats. All the greats.

S: It’s easy to say all the greats, NAS, Biggie, Pac-Yo.

S: People like that who are creatively free. Marisol; when I look at music locally, they’re not only my competition, they’re also the people who have been the most inspiring, because you’re so proud of seeing people coming from where you’re coming from, the same culture, the same industry, you see what they’re accomplishing and you’re like -damn, how can you not be proud? And yeah you can go to the greats. And obviously that’s the biggest influence that’s been put on us since youth, that’s what we kind of base our idea of what this is.

E: But I also have my plan B answer, and it’s Steve and Dill, not as an easy get-out-of-this-question, but these two guys are the guys I’m competing with, that I’m sharing with, that I’m growing with, that I’m doing things with, like how can I not be inspired by that, it’s true, it’s the vibe

S: Although I’ve been super into MF DOOM (laughter). But people who are breaking boundaries, people who are doing things that aren’t the norm, people who are ultimately, unapologetically creative.

LA: You mentioned a collab with Royal Canoe…

S: Nah we’re just gonna chill, we’re just gonna see what comes out of it, see what jives. Like-minded creatives, if we come together we’re only bound to do nice things. It’s kind of small here, everybody is starting to know each other more and more-

E: And we’re all so open to  music, we love everything, and if you want to cross genres and connect, why fucking not. That only allows you to explore different avenues and be more creative, instead of just listening to a hip-hop beat and being like “I know what I want to do”

S: It’s just finding common ground between art; it’s for the sake of expressing and creating

E: It’s like “How’d you guys get together” great separate paths, we came together…

D: To do this.

PW: Do you feel like there’s something that can be done to increase the visibility of the Winnipeg music scene, do you feel it’s going to explode?

D: I think it’s definitely a matter of time

S: Hip-hop is definitely in it’s infancy, only been around for like 45 years, and in Winnipeg it’s only been 25 years and it takes a lot of time to grow, but even artists like Royal Canoe and Begonia and..

E: Super-Duty

S: There’s more critical acclaim, more people with their eyes on them, and we’re going to take more and more steps towards that.

E: Our homie was talking to me about having that steady growth and steady incline

S: You don’t want to have this (mimics rapid incline) because then (mimics decline)

D: You want a gradual slope.

E: You want to maintain not just the pace, but a gradual direction, you want to make sure you’re being attentive to everything around you, you might want to be just this overnight celebrity, you can be forgotten tomorrow. You can be doing what someone else is doing, get in their lane and be like “I’m here now”, well, you’re here, but there can be these other 30 guys and they’re here now too. We’re just slowly trying to get to the front of the stage, like “Excuse me, pardon me” with class, being humble, and still coming correct with the artform, staying sharp.

LA:  How do you guys find samples, how do you crate-dig?

S: You’d be surprised, a lot of people still dive in the dusty finger crates. That happens all the time, I have a collection of vinyls;

D: Steve, we lost him in Toronto, we’re like “Where is this guy” of course he’s in a record store, like “Le Boutique”

S: How do we find music in this way? Any way possible. I don’t mind going on YouTube to find a sound from like 2001 that I probably couldn’t find on vinyl, to flip a beat and make something new as long as I’m inspired by it. There’s no blueprint to this shit as long as it sounds good to your ear. Everyone’s like “I wanna make music, I wanna make beats but I don’t know how to do it”, but as long as you can make beats or music that you want to here, there’s no wrong way to conceptualize it.

3Peat will be playing the Goodwill on May 20th. They have been nominated for Rap/HipHop artist of the year at the Western Canadian Music Awards,