Dessa of Doomtree
The local MC talks about her urge to create.
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As one of local hip-hop collective Doomtree’s five MCs (and lone female), Dessa wears many hats: writer, rapper, spoken-word artist, and even, until recently, a trivia quizmaster at Nomad Pub. (She could probably win most trivia contests, too: Dessa earned a B.A. in philosophy from the University Of Minnesota at the precocious age of 20.) Doomtree’s annual all-crew Blowout show will take over First Avenue Dec. 6. The nine MCs and DJs of Doomtree are all very active separately in the local music scene, but the Blowout, which Dessa likens to “a political rally and a family reunion and a hurricane party,” is one of the few times all nine play live together. Decider talked with Dessa about Doomtree’s recently released group record and her own “bothered” writing rituals.
Decider: What’s the creative process like within the Doomtree collective? How much do you influence each other, and how do you work with each other?
Dessa: I feel like our individual creative processes are really different, and so working together necessitates another creative process; you have to find ways to work together. Usually, the producers will finish some beats, then they’ll play it for all the MCs. The MCs will indicate which ones they’d like to write to. And then we’ll splinter off into little groups to see if we can come up with a hook or cohesive song idea. Occasionally, some MCs will have a 16-bar verse already written, and we’ll try to find a good beat to match that piece.
Decider: So it’s not necessarily a set formula?
Dessa: It’s whatever the opposite of a set formula is. I think “clusterfuck” is the technical term for it, but I imagine that’ll be a little blue for print. [For the group record], the producers came up with dozens and dozens and dozens of beats. The MCs would say “This sounds pretty. We’ll write to it and report to you next week.” And then next week, invariably, we’d have just the barest wisps of a song. It was two, two-and-a-half years in the making, and it’s hard because people are touring, people have different schedules, people are working on their own projects. Nine is a lot of people to try to get to behave in concert, you know? Anybody who has worked on a committee, I’m sure, can sympathize with the challenge.
Decider: How do you write when you’re not working with anyone else?
Dessa: I write slowly and painfully. I write a lot while walking. I read somewhere that that is called the “peripatetic technique,” and I like that only because I like five-dollar words. But it’s not quite happy. It’s bothered—the look on my face isn’t smiley or self-satisfied while writing. I know that it’s something that I want to do, something that makes me feel like I’m connected to the world, but it isn’t always something that makes me feel good.
Decider: More like forcing something out?
Dessa: Sort of, but something that doesn’t want to come! Something clinging to the insides. I keep asking “Why would you tell someone that you are willfully doing this when all you do is swear?” You know what I mean? I’m frustrated, and I geek out, my hands are clenched and I’m kind of like … that catatonic swaying that people do, you know? I look almost not functional. And I know that I want to do it, but it isn’t happy, it’s like an appetite all unto itself, you know what I mean? It’s like something that feels like it has to be done in the same way that you have to eat or you have to sleep or you have to make rent. But I don’t do it for the same reason that I eat brownies, because those delight me. I do that to be happy, and I don’t know that I write to be happy.
Decider: If not for happiness, what would you say you write about?
Dessa: The thing that defines my style is less content than general attitude. There’s a lot of that funny/sad vibe. I think most of my songs have some angst or ennui—as long as we’re avoiding English—in them. A lot of them use relationships, although I hope that they’re more than just breakup or torch songs, because I think a lot of times we feel most desperately connected to people when they are not reciprocating the connection, which happens to occur more often in romance than in other areas. I hope that I use romantic connections as kind of a launching pad for speaking more generally about the human condition. That said, I speak about loneliness and alienation, and I use a lot of religious imagery to write from an atheist perspective.
Decider: How was the group record different from making your solo False Hopes record?
Dessa: Because the False Hopes record was essentially the first solo project that I’d done, I think half the time writing that was making art and half of it was worrying that Doomtree would regret letting me in. I was so preoccupied with trying to meet the level of excellence that this crew established that I was probably really, really self-conscious the whole time. And I was very self-conscious, but not so excruciatingly for the crew record. I felt a little more confident in my ability, and I knew that some people in Minneapolis had liked the first project, so I felt a little more confident in my attack.
Decider: You use a lot of strings in your songs, an unusual choice for hip-hop.
Dessa: I love strings. I think my second-favorite instrument besides the human voice is probably the violin or the cello. And I’m not sure exactly why. I’ve argued with Anatomy—the DJ from Kill The Vultures—about the primacy of melody. He’s sure that rhythm and percussion are the most basic building blocks of music, and he and I walk around the lake every so often and endlessly, endlessly debate it. I think maybe [I like strings] because my mom’s voice sounds a little bit like a violin. She has a really good voice; she can do Whitney [Houston] like note-for-note, really.
Decider: What’s the creative process like within the Doomtree collective? How much do you influence each other, and how do you work with each other?
Dessa: I feel like our individual creative processes are really different, and so working together necessitates another creative process; you have to find ways to work together. Usually, the producers will finish some beats, then they’ll play it for all the MCs. The MCs will indicate which ones they’d like to write to. And then we’ll splinter off into little groups to see if we can come up with a hook or cohesive song idea. Occasionally, some MCs will have a 16-bar verse already written, and we’ll try to find a good beat to match that piece.
Decider: So it’s not necessarily a set formula?
Dessa: It’s whatever the opposite of a set formula is. I think “clusterfuck” is the technical term for it, but I imagine that’ll be a little blue for print. [For the group record], the producers came up with dozens and dozens and dozens of beats. The MCs would say “This sounds pretty. We’ll write to it and report to you next week.” And then next week, invariably, we’d have just the barest wisps of a song. It was two, two-and-a-half years in the making, and it’s hard because people are touring, people have different schedules, people are working on their own projects. Nine is a lot of people to try to get to behave in concert, you know? Anybody who has worked on a committee, I’m sure, can sympathize with the challenge.
Decider: How do you write when you’re not working with anyone else?
Dessa: I write slowly and painfully. I write a lot while walking. I read somewhere that that is called the “peripatetic technique,” and I like that only because I like five-dollar words. But it’s not quite happy. It’s bothered—the look on my face isn’t smiley or self-satisfied while writing. I know that it’s something that I want to do, something that makes me feel like I’m connected to the world, but it isn’t always something that makes me feel good.
Decider: More like forcing something out?
Dessa: Sort of, but something that doesn’t want to come! Something clinging to the insides. I keep asking “Why would you tell someone that you are willfully doing this when all you do is swear?” You know what I mean? I’m frustrated, and I geek out, my hands are clenched and I’m kind of like … that catatonic swaying that people do, you know? I look almost not functional. And I know that I want to do it, but it isn’t happy, it’s like an appetite all unto itself, you know what I mean? It’s like something that feels like it has to be done in the same way that you have to eat or you have to sleep or you have to make rent. But I don’t do it for the same reason that I eat brownies, because those delight me. I do that to be happy, and I don’t know that I write to be happy.
Decider: If not for happiness, what would you say you write about?
Dessa: The thing that defines my style is less content than general attitude. There’s a lot of that funny/sad vibe. I think most of my songs have some angst or ennui—as long as we’re avoiding English—in them. A lot of them use relationships, although I hope that they’re more than just breakup or torch songs, because I think a lot of times we feel most desperately connected to people when they are not reciprocating the connection, which happens to occur more often in romance than in other areas. I hope that I use romantic connections as kind of a launching pad for speaking more generally about the human condition. That said, I speak about loneliness and alienation, and I use a lot of religious imagery to write from an atheist perspective.
Decider: How was the group record different from making your solo False Hopes record?
Dessa: Because the False Hopes record was essentially the first solo project that I’d done, I think half the time writing that was making art and half of it was worrying that Doomtree would regret letting me in. I was so preoccupied with trying to meet the level of excellence that this crew established that I was probably really, really self-conscious the whole time. And I was very self-conscious, but not so excruciatingly for the crew record. I felt a little more confident in my ability, and I knew that some people in Minneapolis had liked the first project, so I felt a little more confident in my attack.
Decider: You use a lot of strings in your songs, an unusual choice for hip-hop.
Dessa: I love strings. I think my second-favorite instrument besides the human voice is probably the violin or the cello. And I’m not sure exactly why. I’ve argued with Anatomy—the DJ from Kill The Vultures—about the primacy of melody. He’s sure that rhythm and percussion are the most basic building blocks of music, and he and I walk around the lake every so often and endlessly, endlessly debate it. I think maybe [I like strings] because my mom’s voice sounds a little bit like a violin. She has a really good voice; she can do Whitney [Houston] like note-for-note, really.
