As He Releases a New Mixtape, Montana 700 Talks About Using Rap to Build Unity

Last Memorial Day weekend, DJ Hollyhood Bay Bay made history.

At the inaugural TwoGether Land Festival in Fair Park, the K104 FM radio personality spotlighted generations of local talent during his “Dallas All-Stars” set. This lineup was a moment that saw Big Tuck, Mr. Pookie, Dorrough, Yung Nation, Chalie Boy and many more perform on a big stage in front of thousands in their hometown. After going through recognizable hits that represented each era, Bay Bay introduced the all-stars of today, concluding with Zillionaire Doe and Montana 700, two rappers who have been on the rise. Unbeknownst to the audience, they were witnessing the early stages of the “New Dallas” movement.

This past August, Montana 700 signed a record deal with Remain Solid / 300 Entertainment. At the start of 2025, Zillionaire Doe signed to Yo Gotti’s CMG record label. The “New Dallas,” a term coined by Zillionaire Doe, is gaining steam in the industry. Under the “New Dallas” banner, a group of about 10 rappers, including buzzing names Mb Pee, Kevangotbands and HeadHuncho Amir promote a message of unity and community. It’s about self-motivation, getting to the money, and staying out of drama while standing side by side to support each other.

“It’s what is going on right now in the city, banded together. Everybody as one,” Montana 700 tells the Observer via Zoom, describing the sound of the “New Dallas” movement as “timeless music, something you could listen to forever.”

One of the main characteristics of “New Dallas” is beats that have heavy bass lines and a distinct influence of Southern trap classics from the 2000s, often flipping old Cash Money songs. For example, Trapboy Freddy’s “Having Our Way,” which features many “New Dallas” rappers, has them rhyming over Big Tymers’ “#1 Stunna.” They are bringing back that same energy of D-boy dreams and stunting in Rolls-Royce Phantoms. “See? We will still play that today, that’s what I mean by timeless. So hopefully one day somebody is sampling my music, make something, and bring it back to life,” Montana 700 says.

Montana 700 has all the momentum as one of the leading faces of "New Dallas." During our call, he is fresh off a road trip from Washington, D.C. to Dallas, returning home to celebrate the release of his first mixtape with 300 Entertainment on Feb. 7. In one Instagram teaser for his tape 700 Reasons, Montana 700 is popping Ace of Spades Champagne with his crew in front of a mural, telling the camera he can finally make a living off music. The tape represents a motivational story of changing up hustles and leaving trapping behind to be a full-time rapper. At 15 tracks, 700 Reasons includes previously released songs “Count a Hunnit,” “Brinks Truck,” and “Back Door,” the latter with a growingly popular video of Montana 700 cooking and stacking money at Rudy’s Chicken.
BigXThaPlug appears on a new version of his song “Pipeline,” with the video featuring a theme of showing power in numbers. "I had a lot of fun," Montana 700 says of the shoot. "A lot of people expected me to put somebody else on the song. We kept it for the city.”

He expands his reach with bigger features, bringing Detroit and Atlanta to the Dirty D with Peezy (“Million Dollar Run”), Tee Grizzley (“Joy Road to Camp Wisdom”) and Hunxho (“Red Lights”). He pays homage to Jeezy, a beloved rapper in Dallas, with “Count a Hunnit,” sampling the Mannie Fresh-produced “And Then What.” Much like his "New Dallas" mission statement, he is uniting hoods state-to-state with his music.

The track “Robert Horry,” named after the multi-time NBA champion, is the most meaningful to him. “To do what I’m doing is like winning a championship in the streets. To be able to switch lanes, find another way to make money, feed your family, and build generational wealth, that’s like winning a championship,” he says. “I’m the last one. All my partners are dead or in jail. I can count on my fingers how many partners I have left. I ain’t over 25. I had partners since I was 15.”

Montana 700 puts things into plain perspective. The 25-year-old rapper is forever indebted to where it all started on the 700 block of Ivywood Drive, shooting the mixtape’s front cover at his local corner store and the back cover at Mark Dean Burnough's gravesite, a brother-like associate who passed in 2017. Montana 700 named his label Double M Records after him, honoring the one person who knew he could rap before anyone else.

Montana 700 was born in Oak Cliff and comes from a family of six siblings. He describes his relationship with Mark, who was the same age, as someone who has been through everything with him. “We have been heads and tails our whole life,” he says, recalling a conversation he had with him about wanting to pick up rapping.

“We was on the phone. I had moved to Houston. This was when I was staying in Houston,” he says. “We just got out of juvenile. Like I said, we did everything together from [when] we was kids. So when we went to jail, we got home. I moved to Houston three months later. We was talking everyday like he was my best friend. We talked for hours.

“So we was on the phone, I was wondering like, ‘Damn, a n***a might need to rap.’ He wasn’t feeling it. So, I make a song and see what it sound like. Make it, he said, ‘Shit, I ain’t gonna lie that was hard.’ That was it. Then he used to be funny cause I called him back every day after I wrote a song, he said, ‘I know you finna start rapping. What do you got to say today?’”

It was three weeks later when Burnough passed, Montana 700 says. He had never been to a studio before that conversation with his late friend.

“My n***a died at 17,” he says. “The world gotta know this shit. I gotta get his name known. I’m already rapping, and this the way. I don’t know anything else I really like doing. I know I can put some rhymes together though. And they pay you to do it? All right, let’s try.”

He is a self-made rapper who had to teach himself everything from paying for studio time to buying new clothes for his look after returning to Dallas. “I moved out of my momma’s house,” he says. “Everything I did, I had to do by myself. I got to live and try to rap.”

This decision didn’t come without some hard lessons. The music industry can be an insidious place if you’re just starting and you don’t have any guidance to keep you away from shady people. Montana 700 admits he was taken advantage of early in his career. “People in this game, you gotta understand, they see money, they don’t give a damn who you is, they gonna take it,” he says. “I’m paying stupid prices for shit that it don’t even make sense to where I don’t work with certain people anymore cause I know y’all n***as was playing me when I was coming up. Y’all played me now that I know the game. Y’all played me in my face. That’s why it’s step by step.”

He credits his sister for telling him to use his Instagram handle (@montana.700) as his rap name. He recalls recording his first song, “Paranoid,” in the 12th grade. “I remember when we dropped it. I was in eighth period,” he says. “By the time the eighth period was over, it had 1,000 views. It was playing in the park by the time we was walking out of school.”

From his early days until now, Montana 700 had to remain consistent to get noticed. This meant hitting IG rap pages like Say Cheese TV with his music, doing freestyles on rap platforms like On the Radar and pushing his songs any way he could. He dropped two EPs, The One in 2022 and Omertà in 2023. "I ain’t blow up overnight. I had to put the work in," he says. Notably, he collaborated with Zillionaire Doe on a joint album, 70042, in 2024, and the pair teamed up again on "Call My Bluff" off 700 Reasons.

“Doe, that's like my blood brother," Montana 700 says of their chemistry. "He’s a genuine person. He’s never shown me a flaw since the day I met him. Me and his character are damn near the same, but opposite. It’s basically like peanut butter and jelly. Put that shit on a sandwich, it’s gon’ stick together.”

Montana 700's brand of ride-out music that hits you at the core has gotten some co-signs. Moneybagg Yo, BossMan Dlow and YTB Fatt have shown him some love. Yella Beezy and Trapboy Freddy are also firm supporters of the "New Dallas" movement, which is important to him. "A lot of people’s city doesn’t support them at all," he says. "For the ones that were doing it right before me, they came from the same thing I came from so to be supporting me means a lot."

He is doing his part too. He doesn't want to gatekeep the "New Dallas" movement to just his friends, encouraging any new artist to join their cause of pushing positivity and unity. "I got the door open. I’ma hold this bitch for as long as I can until everybody get in. We gonna stampede. You can’t gatekeep what is destined to happen," he says.

700 Reasons adds to the canon of “New Dallas” projects, where you can listen to Zillionaire Doe’s D Boi Dreams and HeadHuncho Amir’s Ain Nun Bigger to be on the ground first in their development. Montana 700 talks in depth about the trap like his past is interfering with his present life, depicting those experiences in vivid detail. “When I first walked past that pot, Unc showed me the kitchen / Showed me how to get it, told me if they ever play you, you better stand on business / If you gon’ be inside this shit, you gotta lose your feelings / That’s gon’ get ya hurt,” he raps on “Dogshit.”

“I’m done with it,” he says of the street life. “I ain’t never made this type of money one day out the streets, so why would I go deal with the streets? I’ma get this money off rapping and this is how it starts out? Ask n***as how they started in the trap, what they used to make. This is how we are coming in. This ain’t even the peak.”

As his perspective grows, so do the topics in his music.  With more riches comes more responsibility to be a role model.

“It feels good really to know to stay down, it is going to all make sense,” Montana 700 says. “I got videos on my phone from years ago. I keep everything. I got videos from years, years ago even before my brother passed away. I can pull up videos of me and him right now. Stay down. It’ll all make sense in a minute.”

He sees himself as an inspiration to his fans and the younger generation, using his life story as proof that you can make it out too.