“Ty mama died, I was there, my nephew died, he was there
He in my house more than I be there, more than Bey there”
IN 2018, WHEN music’s power couple, The Carters (Jay-Z and Beyoncé), released the song ‘FRIENDS’ as part of their joint album EVERYTHING IS LOVE, it served as a massive shout-out to their friends who had been there for them through thick and thin. Tyran ‘Ty Ty’ Smith had a special place in the song.
Ty Ty has known Jay-Z since the age of 14 and played a crucial role in the billionaire rapper’s life and career. Ty-Ty, who co-founded the entertainment firm Roc Nation in 2008 with Jay-Z, has also been instrumental in cultivating many of today’s top artists, like DJ Khaled, J Balvin, J. Cole, Rihanna, and Shakira. Now, he is scouting talent among brown communities worldwide, and taking them to international fame.
To achieve this, he has initiated a new genre of music and a label, Desi Trill, along with Shabz Naqvi, an Indo-British artist and repertoire (A&R) executive at Roc Nation and a member of the hip-hop collective So Solid Crew. The duo promises that all songs released under Desi Trill will combine elements of hip-hop, R&B (rhythm and blues), and South Asian music from different regions.
Naqvi was born and raised in the culturally diverse backdrop of south London. His parents were born in Uttar Pradesh and moved to London in the 1960s. His musical journey began at 16 when he discovered his passion for producing music on his elder brother’s equipment. This love for music production eventually led him to join forces with childhood friends to create So Solid Crew.
The initial idea behind Desi Trill came to him about five years ago. “Back then, I realised that my nephews and nieces growing up in the UK had no real representation,” he told THE WEEK. “I approached Ty Ty, saying, ‘Ty, I need your guidance, man. I want to do something in the music business to bring light to the Indian diaspora globally and their love of music and hip-hop.’ Instantly, Ty Ty responded, ‘No, I’m not going to guide you. I want to do this with you.’ And that was the birth of Desi Trill.”
Ty Ty said: “I have known Shabz for over 20 years. It is not like we met a couple of years ago and decided to do this; we have been very close friends for a long time. I have been around his family and friends from India. When he came to me with his idea, the first thing I thought was, ‘Man, that makes sense.’”
Ty Ty told THE WEEK that his thought process revolved around Naqvi’s daughter, Noah, whom he considers his niece. “Like, who’s Noah’s Taylor Swift? Who’s Noah’s Beyoncé? Who’s her Rihanna? I was like, how is it possible that I do not know of a big South Asian artist that can walk in a room anywhere in America, anywhere in the world, and everyone knows who that is?”
And, an antithesis to these questions in the minds of both Ty Ty and Naqvi emerged in the form of the slogan “Brown’s Everywhere”. “We are going to go hard, and we are going to break this thing and we are going to break it globally,” said Ty Ty. “You know, that is why our slogan is Brown is Everywhere.” He said the one demand he had was that the artists being signed under the label “have to sing in their mother tongue, they have to be true to who they are”.
“I told Shabz that whoever we sign as an artist has to sing the way I hear you speak with your friends and family,” he said. “There aren’t any rules with music. I said, ‘There is a lot of gatekeepers that are not going to understand what is happening, but the fans, once you get to them, they are going to be the ones that dictate what is happening.’”
The result was evident in May, when Desi Trill released its EP (extended play), Brown is Everywhere―every track had a musicality that resembled a conversation. The EP featured Yung Sammy, Subhi, Natania, Shalmali Kholgade, Naisha and DJ Lyan, Juss Nandhra, Khushi K. and Mumzy Stranger.
Naqvi, who grew up in a household that loved Indian musical legends from Muhammad Rafi to A.R. Rahman, noticed that Indian music is rich in melodies. He said he has always taken creative inspiration for melodies from Indian rhythmic sounds and has brought them to hip-hop. Naqvi adds that the Desi Trill team also aims to use its expertise in augmenting the process of a consolidated hip-hop culture and a music industry in South Asia. Ty Ty said that, above all, the label’s efforts aim to inspire young people from even remote areas to be dreamers and to help them become world-renowned artists.
Both Jay-Z and Ty Ty grew up in Marcy Houses, the 28-acre public housing development in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood. Developed in 1949 by the New York City Housing Authority to house the city’s low-income residents, Marcy was in a dangerous state of disrepair when Jay-Z and Ty Ty were growing up there. “I grew up listening to R&B and a lot of different music, but when I first heard hip-hop as a kid, it just hit me,” said Ty Ty. “Jay-Z started rapping because we knew another guy who was rapping and even had a music video on TV. We were amazed. Jay-Z kept rapping, and I was a huge fan. I believed in him. We followed through with our dreams; no one could tell us it was not going to happen.”
Ty Ty was road manager to Jay-Z, before he co-created Carter Faculty―a joint label deal with Def Jam Recordings, and later became senior vice president of A&R at The Island Def Jam Music Group. Though he said he had been the “worst road manager ever”, his passion and the belief he had in Jay-Z’s music is evident.
“All I ever wanted was for other people to hear what I was hearing when Jay would rhyme,” he said. “Because I would talk about it all, I mean, I would just be like, ‘You gotta hear his raps, you know?’ And we followed it through, and, you know, it was a lot of, it was a fight, right? People did not believe it and all that stuff, but we just kept going. So, you know, and I’m bringing that same energy here with Desi Trill.”