Among all the deluxe reissues we’ve been getting for albums’ one-year anniversaries lately, Plato III’s Grown re-release last week was something special. Above all else, Grown was a record of exploration, one that saw the artist spreading his wings beyond the dusty trailer-park raps of The Devil Has Texas; this newer material is noticeably less indebted to melancholy indie-rock songwriters and instead more dancefloor-ready, more willfully collaborative in a way that skews these songs more pop, more metropolitan.
Yet that still may not have prepared listeners for the exciting array of names that were revealed for the recent re-release: clipping., ELUCID, Open Mike Eagle, McKinley Dixon, and Bartees Strange were all among the figures tapped to reimagine these songs, in some cases teasing out the themes that lay relatively dormant in the original versions. To hear Plato talk about it, he couldn’t be more thrilled with the guest list he assembled for the release. Yet with our insistence, he dug a little deeper into his rolodex of influences to share a playlist inspired by the figures he could only dream of landing on one of his tracks. Or maybe not; at least one of these names already appears to have green-lit a collaboration request for a future release.
Check out the playlist below featuring Plato III’s (additional) dream collaborators, and read on for more details on how he envisioned them bolstering each individual track on Grown. You can also check out the dream collaborations he did land here.
1. “Good Problems” dream collaborator: Anderson Paak
The clipping. remix that we have on the deluxe is amazing. The rules of capitalism dictate that if somebody has good problems, someone else has gotta have bad problems. It’s only hinted at in the original, so I loved that they brought that dichotomy to the forefront with their version. But if we’d gone the traditional rap-remix route, Anderson .Paak would know what to do with it. My friend Lenne Chai, who shot the cover for Grown, photographed Jonnie Park a.k.a. Dumbfoundead for the cover of his memoir Spit that came out this year. She was kind enough to bring me along to the release party, and .Paak was there having a great time. We spent a good amount of night trying to figure out what the opposite of “resting bitch face” is. We couldn’t think of a name for it, but that’s what Anderson has. There’s an effervescent joy that comes through in his music and that signature raspy croon. It’s not a frequency that I’m able to radiate often, but it is the energy I was trying to emit with the original “Good Problems.” Get Andy and the Free Nationals on there and it would definitely set the party off right.
2. “I Want (Money)” dream collaborator: DJ Quik
This remix is already close to perfect: You got McKinley Dixon rapping over a beat like this and a decent man from the city of demons coming through to elaborate on the financial reasons that n****s be scheming and n****s be shooting. If I could add anything to it, it would be just getting DJ Quik to get behind the boards and making it that much more player. For Grown, the production-side mission was exploring all the ways live guitar instrumentation had been used in hip-hop over the years. This is the closest thing to a G-funk track, so I’d love to hear what Quik would do with it: talk box, string arrangements, funked-up bassline—all of it.
3. “Stable” dream collaborator: The Soulquarians
Really proud of how this remix turned out. Kelly Moonstone really did her thing. My only wish is that we had a time machine to take us to Electric Ladyland Studios in the late 1990s. The Soulquarians produced my favorite music ever. Spiritually, that’s where Phillip Odom (the producer of Grown) and I were at when we were cooking this up—there’s just nothing like the combination of Questlove’s drumming, the swing of J Dilla’s rhythms, Roy Hargrove on the horns, the genius of D’Angelo.
4. “In a Funk” dream collaborator: Mannie Fresh
Southern rap producers don’t get their flowers like they should. Pimp C famously didn’t want to rap on “Big Pimpin’” because he thought the beat was corny. Compare it to the soulful country rap tunes of UGK’s “Diamonds and Wood” and you can kinda see his point. I’m a descendant of this style of Southern rap, and its affinity for guitars before 808s and trap became the ubiquitous sound of hip-hop. Listen to Mannie Fresh, the Hot Boys, 400 Degreez: the bass guitar is doing a lot of work. “In a Funk” is the closest I’ve come to rapping on a Mannie Fresh beat. I’d love to rap over the real thing someday.
5. “Marissa” dream collaborator: Too $hort
Bartees Strange took this remix to unimaginable heights. My original inspiration was to just make an ode to Too $hort and his favorite word. Rap used to be way more explicit than it is now. It’s really impressive to look back at how uncensored shit could get at a time that seems way more buttoned-up. Watch an old news clip from 1987 and there’s a decorum to the presentation of public life. People are dressed like they’re attending a funeral. Street interviewees speak in articulate, complete sentences. But in that same culture, you’re getting something as vulgar as “Dope Fiend Beat.” It feels like the opposite of today, where the art feels completely inoffensive, while society is more improper than ever. Sports betting is legal and advertised during every event and ad break. Formal presidential statements have been replaced by all-caps rants posted to social media in the middle of the night, occasionally accompanied by AI-generated visuals. I think we got things mixed up somewhere along the way, and my only idea to fix it is making the art offensive again. So I’d love to get Too $hort on this remix to tell us about his favorite word some more.
6. “Grown” dream collaborator: Devin the Dude
Another gem of Southern rap: Devin the Dude’s grown-man raps and lighthearted gospel for everyday life have gotten me through some rough Texas days. The drawback of the laidback delivery is that you can get slept on as people gravitate to the rah-rah, but Devin was doing the sing-rapping thing way before it became the thing to do. His discography is another example of the versatility of the use of the guitar in the Southern rap I came up on. While Pimp C and UGK made you feel like you were super tight coming down in candied toys, Devin used the same familiar sounds—the church organ, the country twang, the live instrumentation—to show the other side of Texas living, taking life slow and just getting by with what you got.
7. “Coulda Died” dream collaborator: Tunde Adebimpe
Tunde is one of my favorite vocalists of all time. His voice is capable of so much. I have a soft spot for singers that have a gentle, pretty delivery and an unhinged belting mode. Tunde and Isaac Brock occupy a similar space in my head where you can find them doing both on the same song lots of times. I would’ve loved to have Tunde level up the chorus on this one, but we connected for another song I’m dropping later this year, so it all worked out.
8. “Stay Sane” dream collaborator: Mid-Air Thief
This track doesn’t need any more rapping—ELUCID took care of that. It would’ve been cool to have Mid-Air Thief in the studio with us, though. I’d just want to put them and Bei Bei together, and I think something transcendent would come out of that collaboration. I tried getting a hold of them, but no luck. Topshelf Records whattup, let’s make it happen.
9. “Do You Still Need My Love?” dream collaborator: keiyaA
I love keiyaA’s production. You’ll have a breakbeat or chopped vocal sample come in over a beautiful jazz flute section while you in the middle of vibing to something that would fit right in on a major-label R&B record. I was going for something similar on this track. I loved getting to collab with Remi Lėkun again, and her vocal runs always blow me away. Wonderfox laid down an incredible solo. There’s a more sonically adventurous song in here somewhere, though, and I think keiyaA could find it.
10. “Let’s Get Old” dream collaborator: The Magnetic Fields
I wanted the original to be a duet with Stephin Merritt. I needed his baritone to communicate the depth of my words. There’s also a cheekiness that I wanted to come across in the lyrics that I think only he can really pull off. The guitar playing by Eli Winter is masterful, and Open Mike Eagle dropped a verse of the year contender. I only be singing ’cause I have to. Imagine taking me off and putting Stephin in there…
