On his latest, Ty asserts his mastery over 25 lush, intricate tracks. With a wide-ranging guest roster including serpentwithfeet and Thundercat, Featuring is a capital-A Album, designed to be consumed in an hour-long gulp.
In the time since Ty Dolla $ign’s last solo album, his gritty vibrato has been everywhere. The summer Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music dropped five albums, Ty was a staple in their credits. There he was on Scorpion, his falsetto undulating beside Drake’s. He warbled over a tepid Chainsmokers beat, resuscitated a limp Post Malone track, released a gleaming, absurdly horny album of duets with Jeremih, found his way onto the chorus of “Hot Girl Summer” and, most recently, harnessed energy from crystals to croon the hook on SZA’s return single. His range is obvious and impressive; he likes to remind us of it. “You really doing them a favor, blessing them with your talent,” his brother Big TC says in the new album’s opening seconds, recorded from the prison where TC is serving a life sentence for a murder Ty has said he didn’t commit. “You can sing, rap, write, produce, engineer, mix, and master.” It’s a callback to the skit at the start of “Bring it Out of Me,” a thumping electro-flecked standout from Ty’s debut album. “You know how to do everything,” Big TC said then, his voice crackling through the phone.
Featuring asserts that mastery over 25 lush, intricate tracks. Every synth and guest verse and snarl of bass glides into place. This is a capital-A Album, designed to be consumed in an hour-long gulp. Some of its most salient moments come in the transitions between songs—the woozy drums in “Temptations” collapse into serpentwithfeet’s elegiac interlude; the screeched adlibs in “Dr. Sebi” drift into the shimmering Gunna collab “Powder Blue.” There are myriad moving parts here: lilting interludes, more guitar than Ty has ever used in a record, an array of high-profile features (including two tracks with Kanye). Ty is less of a curator than a conductor. These songs are intentionally, achingly stitched together, and even the weaker singles shine when played in context.
That’s part of the mystery, and the sheen, of Ty’s craft: moments that objectively should not work somehow do. “Damn, that pussy fuego!” he yelps on “Time Will Tell,” but the gentle thrum of guitar and the gooey harmonies wash away that line’s inanity. “I can’t lie, it’s obvious/ Ain’t nobody sexing good as us,” he murmurs in his honeyed flow on “Slow It Down,” and the statement sounds tender amid an immaculate sweep of strings. The more lackluster of these tracks are still slickly competent, with wobbling hooks primed for TikTok dances; the best are spectral and stunning. “Track 6” is particularly elegant, a panoramic swirl that melds Thundercat’s wriggling, ricocheting bass with Anderson .Paak’s best feature in years. Ty has said that he knows, instinctively, who would pair best with him on a beat as soon as he hears it. That intuition has mesmerizing results. Drill rapper Lil Durk writhes over “Double R”’s pulsing drum pattern. Kehlani’s plush harmonies are a perfect complement to Ty’s rasp on “Universe.” “Lift Me Up” turns Future’s burbles about “codeine in a Hi-C” and Young Thug’s wish for an IV filled with molly into a disarmingly lovely prayer.
“Your Turn” is the most stirring of these collaborations, a mesh of Musiq Soulchild and Tish Hyman’s velvet vocals and a soft 6LACK verse. It’s the longest track by far, with what Ty has said are his favorite lyrics on the album. They anchor the record in a delicate, nuanced hope. “Nobody’s truly yours,” Tish belts in the chorus, not sounding despondent but genuinely awed at the discovery. “I fell in love at sixteen, in love at 20, fell in love at 22,” Soulchild wails. “Now what the hell does it all mean?” In Ty’s previous albums, this prodding may have led him to get drunk and FaceTime his exes; here, he wishes them well and sounds at peace.
The bar for maturity may be pretty low for a guy who’s referred to women as “horses in the stable” and cobbled a breakout hit out of cramming them into a cabana. After a slew of slinky hits about juggling multiple lovers, though, “Temptations” seems like a meditation on fidelity—a sequel to Ty’s club anthem “Paranoid” that sounds actually distressed. “So it’s fuck your feelings, girl, I’m single for the night,” Ty cries, then walks it back later: “My love for you won’t go anywhere,” he breathes, his voice mingling with Kid Cudi’s haunted drone. It’s a more convincing display than the sunny “By Yourself,” a Jhené Aiko-assisted ode to single mothers. Ty’s at his best when he’s wrestling with growth, not proclaiming it.
“Many people have said that when you see a song that says, ‘featuring Ty Dolla $ign,’ you know it’s going to be fire,” Ty wrote on Instagram to announce the album. The title is both joking and not, and the weight of what Ty wants to prove hangs over the record. “I told Ye to run for president,” he raps on “Status.” “He said, ‘Dolla, you too good to put your voice on that generic shit.’” It’s both a flex and a condemnation, a sign that Ty is maybe embarrassed of how he’s spent the last few years. Featuring cements his legacy as a singular, eminent artist — a point he has made again and again and again, but he still sounds so good proving it.
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