For Ty Dolla $ign, Music Is A Family Business

VICE released a new episode of their Autobiographies documentary show featuring West Coast singing sensation Ty Dolla $ign. It clocks in at just under nine minutes and focuses on Dolla’s early days and motivations for being a musician. He talked about his father’s career in music that stretched back to Ty’s earliest days as a child.

“My pops was in this group called Lakeside. He played in many bands, but that was his main band. They’re definitely one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live. He plays horns and he plays keys and he sings. He plays every instrument, just like I do.  And I learned from him definitely. He had instruments in the house. I would just pick up the instruments and figure it out.”

He talks about how musically inclined his father was and it’s clear that music runs in the family. His father was in a band, he’s a musician, his brother sings on Free TC, and his little sister sings as well. AngelGold, his actual blood relative, released “No, No, No” in January. The song features Ty, his brother, and their little cousin, TeeCee4800.

While music ran in the family, his mother was less supportive of his music career. “She was always like, ‘turn that sh*t off. Put on headphones,'” he said. His grandmother, on the other hand, had a back room in her house dedicated for any and all of Ty’s indulgences.

“My grandmother believed in me and she let me take a room in her house. My grandmother, she definitely let me do my thing in that back room. Whether it was smoking weed, bringing girls through, doing music, and that’s how I found myself.”

No Ty Dolla $ign documentary would be complete without him speaking on his brother TC, who provided the inspiration for his album title, Free TC. TC’s in jail for a murder that Dolla says he did not commit. Ty naming his album after TC isn’t the only thing he’s done to keep his brother’s name alive. He released a bonus version of Free TC after the original dropped to extend its shelf-life and shot a 13-minute documentary “tearing apart the case” against TC.

Ty’s heart is definitely in the right place. During the documentary he gets somber as he speaks about the trial and how the verdict caught him off guard.

“Everybody thought he was probably going to win. Everybody wasn’t coming to court, including myself. I got a call, you know, on that last day, and he was going in. And then when I heard his sentence I was like ‘goddamn.’ Just looked back like f*ck. It’s not only him in that situation, it’s people all over the world that get put up in f*cked up situations.”

The pain is written all over his face when he talks of his hope for getting his brother out of jail. He says he’s raising money and awareness, but it’s definitely affecting his ability to enjoy his newfound success. “All this fun sh*t for me. These nice cards and nice homes,” he begins. “all this sh*t. But my brother is not with me so, I’m not really having as much fun as some of these other artists.”

On the music front, Ty announced yesterday that he’s working on two new projects. One of those tapes will be the third entry into his Beach House series and the other project is titled Campaign. He told Hot 97 that Campaign will “be the soundtrack for summer ’16.”

Watch the full episode of Autobiographies here.

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