Hip-Hop Wired Presents: Beatmakers – Ty Dolla $ign

Name: Ty Dolla $ign

Age: 28

Born: L.A.

Credits: Y.G., Pac Div, Problem, Kid Ink, Joe Moses

Social Stats: Twitter,  Facebook, Website

Ty Dolla $ign kicks off Hip-Hop Wired’s bi-monthly “Beatmakers” series showcasing producers on the come up and bubbling over. Ty –who built a buzz from his feature on Y.G.’s “Toot It and Boot It,” and earned a Grammy nomination last year for Wiz Khalifa’s “Young Wild and Free” — is  steadily harnessing his own lane as a solo artist.

Standouts likes “My Cabana” off  his first Beach House mixtape added momentum to this year’s Beach House 2 follow-up, featuring guest spots from Khalifa, Chris Brown, Juicy J, Young Jeezy and others, snatched up over  90,000 downloads since May. Even more popular is the 28-year-old’s “Paranoid” single with more than 700,000 YouTube views (you can check out the official music video here).

We caught up with the laid back West Coaster for a quick talk on his solo career, producers he looks up to, and healthy competition.

Get into our interview below.

—

Photo: The Fader/ Facebook

Hip-Hop Wired: How has it been transitioning from behind the scenes to a solo artist?

Ty Dolla $ign: I’ve always been an artist. I was an artist on “Toot It and Boot It” I sang the hook, so it’s always been playing instruments, singing, producing, and everything at the same time  so it wasn’t hard for me to transition. Maybe it made it easier because I get to meet everybody while I was writing, then be like ‘Yo I got this song, why don’t you get on it?’ [Laughs]

Hip-Hop Wired: What gives you creative inspiration?

Ty Dolla $ign: Let’s say if we’re thinking about a club record, what inspires me is going to the club, hearing one song everybody goes crazy to and then trying to top that. Or if it’s just kicking it with a fine ass chick, she really loves this one song and she wants to have sex to it…then I try and top that.

 Hip-Hop Wired: DJ Mustard produced your “Paranoid” record, do you compete with other producers?

Ty Dolla $ign: No. I actually showed Mustard how to do beats. He’ll tease me sometimes, one day he pulled up on me ..after he did ‘Rack City’…and he was like, ‘I’m ’bout to pass you up!’ as far as placements and all that sh-t. So, it’s cool, we always joke with each other.

Hip-Hop Wired: What’s next for you?

Ty Dolla $ign: I have a new project that I’m working on. I’m not going to give out the name or anything yet, I’m still getting all the music together. I like to have the body of work done first. I’m just shooting videos to the songs I like and doing more songs. I’ve been producing and doing hooks [for] a-list artists…I’ll mention one because he tweeted about it, Lupe Fiasco. I just dropped a song with Game and Nipsey’s on Game’s [mix]tape, which is going to be a single called ‘Same Hoes.’

Hip-Hop Wired: How was it being on tour with Wiz?

Ty Dolla $ign: I had a great time on there, I got to perform some days my own set, some days on Wiz’s set, some days with my own set and sometimes with my homeboy Berner. We used to be in big amphitheaters so that would be like in the beginning of the [show] a little people would be in there, like 3,000, and then coming out with Wiz when there’s like 20,000 and how the difference is to rock that little crowd and rocking that big ass crowd. So it was definitely an experience.

Hip-Hop Wired: What producers do you look up to?

Ty Dolla $ign: Definitely, I like what [Noah “40” Shebib’s] doing, he’s incredible. I like Boi-1da’s sh-t, the way his drums sound. His mixes are incredible. If we’re gonna talk about some older sh-t, Meshell Ndegeocello, I like how her sh-t sounds, I like Babyface, all of his sh-t. I can go on for days…Dr. Dre of course.  Of course, [J]Dilla’s like the best. Timbaland is one of the best of all time because every time he comes out he comes with a new sound and it’s just like ‘wow, fa real?’

Hip-Hop Wired: Interesting that you said Meshell Ndegeocello.

Ty Dolla $ign: Yeah, she’s one of my favorite artists, I play her all the time. I definitely prefer the slow sh-t, I smoke weed all day. [Laughs.]