Ty Dolla $ign: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

You gained’t see Ty Dolla $ign’s title within the manufacturing credit for Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” However with out him, the track that this spring put an exclamation level on Lamar’s long-­simmering beef with Drake — a jovial however menacing observe primarily produced by Mustard, constructed round a pulsating set of strings — may very properly not exist.

Lengthy earlier than Mustard turned the highest purveyor of Cali bounce, he was a good friend and scholar of Ty’s. They each rolled with a crew referred to as Pu$haz Ink that included artists throughout disciplines — rappers, singers, graffiti artists, producers and even a number of gangsters for good measure. As a part of the group’s in-house manufacturing squad, Ty would host the crew at his house whereas he cooked up beats for them. And whereas he toiled away, the younger DJ Mustard steadily documented all the things he noticed, clocking Ty’s each transfer to see simply how the magic was made. One night time, the crew was having a celebration at a home in Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills neighborhood when Mustard performed the track “Scotty” by Atlanta snap group D4L; Ty nonetheless remembers how everybody went loopy and began dancing. He was blown away by the beat’s simplicity, which reminded him of the jerk music then rising in reputation in California.

The following morning, nonetheless impressed, Ty began making some new beats. One in all his manufacturing companions, Chordz, gave him a file to pattern that Ty slowed down and pitched completely to intensify the 808s, hi-hat, a snare and a piano sound. The beat turned “Toot It & Boot It,” the 2010 debut single for Ty’s Pu$haz Ink peer, the rapper YG — and Ty’s first hit file. However, extra importantly, the beat laid the inspiration for what turned the de facto sound of the West Coast for the subsequent decade, one which Mustard perfected and made his personal.

Learn the total Billboard Ty Dolla $ign cowl story right here.