Ty Dolla $ign's New EP Is For the Girls
The six-track ‘girl music vol. 1’ hears the musician step back into his old sonic ways, with help from all eras of R&B: Leon Thomas, Brandy, and Ronald Isley.
Ty Dolla $ign didn’t even wait until midnight to drop his newest longform studio endeavor. With TYCOON still in the recent rearview, the musician, by no means at all, had to rush this release, but his excitement surrounding the drop of the six-song girl music vol. 1 EP speaks to the caliber of the project, which the musician created specifically with the girls in mind.
“girl music started as a conversation at dinner in NYC,” Ty said in a press release. “The DJ at the restaurant was playing all the right music, and it got us thinking about the music that girls really want to hear.”
To say the 17-minute-long listen is easy on the ears would be underplaying its luster, which hears the musician harken back to his roots in R&B. Ty refers to the album as “some of [his] favorite music [he's] made in a long time.” Production is sleek and polished, but nothing too crazy; rather, where girl music shines is in its simplicity.
“Everything about this project has been organic and natural. From the name of the project to the song selection and sequence to the collaborators. It all just fell into place. This project was a natural return to my musical sound, back to performing with a live band; my real R&B vibes.”
Half of the six-tracker is solo, with features coming from a perfect curation of artists from all eras of R&B. Ronald Isley of The Isley Brothers contributes to the opening cut “nobody has to know,” riffing the group’s “Baby Hold On,” with Brandy hopping on track four, “intention.” None other than his own signee and leading face of R&B’s new guard, Leon Thomas, levels up lead single “miss u 2,” a promising encapsulation of the future of the genre.
Yet still it bleeds a palpable nostalgia, an aspect of the record’s world that the musician has emphasized since he first cleared his Instagram feed three weeks ago to begin the rollout, which began with just a series of captionless portraits of iconic women tinted with a Y2K-esque photo filter and the album’s icon stamped in the middle of the frame. Faces range from Tyla and Zendaya, to Mariah Carey and Marge Simpson. Following the face sheet, which didn’t take long to prompt questions in the comments, wondering what this could mean, came the vintage “miss u 2” visual, which really set the stage for the EP’s early-aughts-inspired visual world.
1. nobody has to know (with Ronald Isley)
2. 3 billion
3. bad bitch alert
4. intention (with Brandy)
5. miss u 2 (with Leon Thomas)
6. good to me
He closed his statement on the EP with some more good news, writing “This is only volume one….”
Give girl music vol. 1 a spin on all streaming platforms now.
