Though he adapts to almost any collaborator, Ty is at his best when he’s with his long-time cohorts. To wit: a duet with Jeremih, “Dawsin’s Breek,” feels decidedly minor next to other cuts on the album, and yet its hook-“I’ve got a brand new coupe”-is impossible to dislodge from your brain. This is in step with the rest of the record, where songs revel in low stakes and stay within themselves. The five different interludes with “Famous” in the title could have served as the scaffolding for a career-making hit for a young artist from Toronto or Miami, but instead exist here as tossed-off asides. It doesn’t have the longer thematic crescendos of TC, but is even more ruthlessly listenable, stacking hooks on top of hooks and flitting between an array different, pop-viable aesthetic frameworks.
14 on Billboard.Īnd so Beach House 3, released almost exactly two years after Free TC, is a superbly refined collection of songs, carefully crafted and smartly cast. radio and didn’t leave for well over a year. It was anchored by “ Blasé,” a Future- and Rae Sremmurd-assisted song that embedded itself in L.A. Named for his incarcerated brother, the record was packed with stars and had a radical musical diversity, from plodding, post- Dre processionals to frenetic pop, from minimalist SoundCloud R&B to defiant guitar with Babyface. Finally, in the fall of 2015, a debut album called Free TC hit shelves. There were some misfires, but Ty mostly maintained a steady stream of guest turns and test balloons. When it came to his solo career, though, he had to hurry up and wait. Those songs and an early string of mixtapes, including the second Beach House installment, garnered Ty a significant following, and placed him in various high-powered sessions as a writer, producer, and collaborator. A trio of successful singles followed: the Jeezy-aided “ My Cabana” the tortured, irresistible “ Paranoid” (which featured B.o.B) and “ Or Nah,” slinking and conspiratorial. The original Beach House mixtape (co-hosted by a pre-stardom DJ Mustard) showed Ty-and D.R.U.G.S., the production collective of which he was a key part-had a knack for radio-ready, delightfully sleazy R&B. Since he emerged in 2012, Ty’s been churning out would-be hits with dizzying ease. The South Central-bred singer and producer is not an artist on R&B’s fringes sneering at the pop stars. So it’s not surprising when “Famous” turns a bit caustic: “They don’t wanna work all day/They wanna make it overnight.”
You know: “All the important things.” It’s a curious meditation for Ty-a man whose career can be measured by its proximity to serious stardom, but has lacked the type of massive breakout he has sometimes helped to orchestrate for others. “They wanna sign autographs,” he sings slyly.
Ty Dolla $ign’s Beach House 3 opens with “Famous,” an acoustic number that mulls over people’s desires to see their names spelled out in capital letters on Sunset Strip marquees, to watch their likenesses pop up two-dimensionally on flatscreen TVs.