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Ty Dolla $ign blows into a room like a melody unfurling. It\u2019s quiet, and then there\u2019s music, a hummed note, a tapped-out drum pattern. In an instant, it makes sense why he\u2019s seemingly everywhere at once, adding sultry hooks to rap and R&B songs, penning hits you might not have known he was involved in as a writer. Making music is as natural to him as exhaling.
\n\nI first met him over a year ago at Electric Lady Studios, a legendary facility nestled in a lower Manhattan side street with an unassuming fa\u00e7ade, belying the fact that since its creation in 1970 (at the behest of Jimi Hendrix), it has been the birthing ground for a wealth of classic recordings from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, and Erykah Badu. Dolla $ign was at Electric Lady putting the finishing touches on his third solo album, following 2015\u2019s Free TC and 2017\u2019s Beach House 3. Historically, his singles sound smooth and effortless, but his albums are densely layered, with unexpected twists. Rare is the artist with the range and the connections who can put Kanye West and Diddy on the same song without being subsumed by two massive egos.
\n\n \n\nThe lush, expansive album Ty played me at Electric Lady is not quite the one he\u2019s releasing on October 23, though a handful of holdovers from those sessions made the cut \u2014 including the Kid Cudi collaboration \u201cTemptations\u201d; \u201cTrack 6\u201d with Kanye West, Thundercat, and Anderson .Paak; and \u201cEgo Death,\u201d where Kanye, Skrillex, and FKA Twigs join Ty in revisiting the Chicago house flair of The Life of Pablo\u2019s \u201cFade.\u201d (More of that sound can be found in last year\u2019s \u201cHottest in the City\u201d and \u201cPurple Emoji,\u201d the latter of which secured a killer J. Cole verse because he happened to be recording in the next room.) The plan was to put it out in autumn or winter of 2019, but a year would pass before another mention of a release date, and by the next time he and I connect again so he can play me the latest \u2014 and ostensibly final \u2014 version of the album, it\u2019s mid-September 2020. More than half of the original Electric Lady songs are gone. \u201cI kept recording, and I accidentally did another album,\u201d he explains. \u201cI\u2019ll still probably drop that other one sometime later during the year, or \u2026 Who knows? Maybe I won\u2019t. When you make seven songs a day, you get a new playlist.\u201d
\n\nWhere last year\u2019s album was a seamless and immersive headphone experience, the new one leans more toward the sleek West Coast soul of Ty\u2019s early releases. It once carried a working title \u2014 Dream House \u2014 that was a nod to Beach House, the 2012-2017 mixtape, EP, and album series that helped make him a star, thanks to musically bubbly, lyrically ruthless singles like \u201cParanoid\u201d and \u201cOr Nah.\u201d A renewed interest in guitar is at the core of the experiment. Sometimes he plays it with a subtle southwestern flair, as he does on the single \u201cExpensive\u201d with Nicki Minaj; sometimes he noodles exquisitely, like an old blues player. Throughout, Ty matches wits with a summit of R&B singers including Kehlani, Jhen\u00e9 Aiko, 6lack, and Musiq Soulchild, and rap stars such as Young Thug, Future, and Roddy Ricch.
\n\nTy landed on a formula \u2014 trap drums, punchy bass notes, and the occasional classic R&B sample \u2014 a decade ago watching friend and L.A. producer Mustard captivate a party by dropping the Atlanta snap group D4L\u2019s \u201cScotty.\u201d (Ty has a keen memory for his musical a-ha moments \u2014 he tells a metaphysical story to explain his appearance on SZA\u2019s comeback single \u201cHit Different\u201d: \u201cShe had all these, like, crystals set up, and she wanted me to stand in the correct way to get the right energy. I did it, and the hook came immediately.\u201d) The night inspired him to make the beat for his friend Compton rapper YG\u2019s 2010 breakout single \u201cToot It and Boot It,\u201d earning both artists their first Billboard Hot 100 chart successes and inspiring a spring of hits including Tyga\u2019s \u201cRack City,\u201d YG\u2019s \u201cMy Nigga,\u201d and Ty\u2019s own \u201cParanoid.\u201d His touch is now renowned. Since working on 2016\u2019s Life of Pablo, he\u2019s cemented a reputation as Kanye West\u2019s muse, which seems both true and a touch overblown. It\u2019s perhaps a mistake to see Ty as a ward of any one artist or crew; he\u2019s more like a ronin, lending a hand when and where he sees fit. He guested on Drake\u2019s Scorpion the same year as West\u2019s Wyoming albums, at the peak of the inexplicable static between the two artists, and no one bat a lash. The freer he is to work, the more hooks everyone gets.
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Ty Dolla $ign, born Tyrone Griffin Jr., is the son of session player and touring musician Tyrone Griffin Sr., who played in the funk band Lakeside (see: \u201cFantastic Voyage\u201d) for 15 years between the \u201980s and \u201990s. \u201cHe always had instruments around and different homies that came through,\u201d Ty remembers. \u201cI would learn shit from everybody.\u201d When Ty\u2019s mother, a realtor, separated from his father, she pushed him to consider a different path. He suspects it was because of the strain his career put on their relationship: \u201cShe wanted me to focus on school and a real career, something more promising. I felt like it was a him thing, and she was putting it on me.\u201d Tensions between mother and son reached a breaking point when she kicked him out as a teen. Ty\u2019s paternal grandmother, also a musician, took him in and let him work on beats and play around in the back room of her home. He learned to play bass while trying to nail a part from Mista Grimm, Warren G, and Nate Dogg\u2019s Poetic Justice soundtrack gem \u201cIndo Smoke\u201d and other songs he heard on the radio. He picked up guitar, keys, and drums gigging around Los Angeles\u2013area houses of worship. \u201cChurch taught me everything I know from having a relationship with God to being a performer, playing music in front of people,\u201d he says. (The densely layered vocals and daring chord changes in his songs suggest experience playing Black church music; the shelved album featured vocals from adventurous gospel singer and producer B. Slade.)
\n\nThe journey to solo success was slow. During a short stint living in New York City in his early 20s, he hung out with a young 50 Cent and later worked on scores for the films The Cookout and Biker Boyz. \u201cBut at that time,\u201d he recalls, \u201cnone of that shit was bringing in money.\u201d Back out west, he connected with the sometime G.O.O.D. Music signees Sa-Ra Creative Partners, whose 2007 debut album The Hollywood Recordings contains some of his earliest features billed as Ty Dolla $ign. Sa-Ra brought him along for European dates on West\u2019s 2005 Touch the Sky Tour, the beginning of an ongoing creative union between the two. Ty had a child of his own by then and needed to provide not just for himself but for his daughter, Jailynn, and her mother. In the late aughts, he formed a singing group alongside East Coast vocalist Kory. The duo sang the hook on \u201cU,\u201d from Detroit rapper/producer Black Milk\u2019s Popular Demand, pitched backing vocals on \u201cMaster Teacher\u201d off Erykah Badu\u2019s New Amerykah Part One (4th World Order), and released two Raw & Bangin\u2019 mixtapes. But it wasn\u2019t until \u201cToot It and Boot It\u201d that Ty began to feel his luck changing. By 2012, he\u2019d signed to Atlantic Records and released the first Beach House tape to growing acclaim. His mother works for him now. \u201cShe molded me business-wise,\u201d he says, \u201cas far as property ownership and [pursuing] things other than music.\u201d
\n\n \n\nFamily, and fatherhood in particular, inspire Ty Dolla $ign, now 38, in ways you might not expect from listening to the more salacious songs in his catalogue. The shelved album came out of a pledge to give up smoking and drinking (that dovetailed with a deal he cut to resolve 2018 felony drug possession charges by submitting to three months of a sobriety program with random drug tests). He also wanted his material to be less overtly sexual, he explained in the studio, cradling his loud, adorable French bulldog, Julio. (Julio was named after Ty\u2019s favorite tequila, Don Julio, at A$AP Rocky\u2019s suggestion. Originally, his name was going to be Miller, after Mac.) \u201cI was intentionally trying to not make club songs [talking about] hoes and bitches and all the shit I used to talk about,\u201d he said. \u201cI was trying to, like, talk about my life, and what it is now, and really do something different with it. I got a daughter going to high school this year, and she\u2019s paying attention, and all her friends are paying attention, so I can\u2019t talk as crazy or do the crazy shit that I used to do.\u201d He\u2019s still proud of his back catalogue and interested in clearing samples to get the Beach House mixtapes up on streaming platforms. (In the studio, he realized someone had quietly snuck them onto Apple Music under his government name.) But his change in perspective came after a year full of personal challenges.
\n\n2020 has brought \u201ca lot of deaths and a lot of suffering and not a lot of wins,\u201d Dolla $ign tells me over a call from Los Angeles, where smoke from the massive Complex Fire had turned the West Coast sky burnt orange. He went to the Grammys in February, having been nominated for Best Dance Recording for his song \u201cMidnight Hour\u201d with Skrillex and Boys Noize, his first time being recognized at the show as an artist and not a producer. Then, on the red carpet, he learned that Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, a stunning loss for basketball fans and Angelenos alike. That night, the Grammy went to the Chemical Brothers. By June, he had lost both his grandmother \u2014 the same one who took him in and nurtured his musical curiosity \u2014 and the longtime friend who\u2019d introduced him to YG and Mustard: \u201cThe two people that I feel molded me into Ty Dolla $ign, I lost. That shit fucked me up.\u201d Then, his friend Abro died in a car crash.
\n\n \n\nBack in the spring, coronavirus flare-ups in California necessitated keeping a tight geographical circle. Ty spent his days indoors, with his daughter and his girlfriend, and poured his free time into cooking and making music. The new music was recorded in part at home and in part at Perfect Sound, the gorgeous live-in studio in the Hollywood Hills that has been used by Post Malone, J. Cole, 6lack, and Skrillex. The subject matter stemmed from the circumstances: \u201cI\u2019m in the house. I\u2019m with my girl and my daughter, and that\u2019s about it. When we write songs, it\u2019s about what\u2019s going on. That\u2019s where I\u2019m at right now.\u201d It\u2019s also easy to see his return to the sound of his early records as the result of an artist working out of his comfort zone in a tough time, and the prolific bout of recording that produced an entirely new album as the outcome you\u2019d expect from forcing a world-traveling creative to stay put for several weeks at a time.
\n\nBetween September and October, the album sprouted five new tracks, including an answer to Erykah Badu\u2019s \u201cTyrone\u201d and an interlude from Young Thug. It also had a new title \u2014 Featuring Ty Dolla $ign \u2014 that nods to Ty\u2019s long and winding journey to mainstream acclaim. He excitedly explains how the beefed-up instrumentation and creative transitions added in the last few weeks create a link between the new album and the unreleased one. (Over screen share, I spy an iTunes playlist history that makes me wonder just how many versions of this album there are.) There\u2019s a sense that, given another few weeks, he might come back with yet another body of work. Quickly evolving plans and an endless vault come with the territory when you\u2019re the music biz\u2019s most prolific hook man.
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