5 Reasons You Should Buy Free TC

Anteneh Gebre
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Ty Dolla $ign (born Tyrone Griffin Jr.) is on a near impossible quest right now: trying to get people to buy an album in 2015. Fortunately for the California rapper/singer/inadvertent preacher to male 20 somethings, I’m here to tell you that in this day and age of torrents and streaming services, sometimes there is a good reason to pay for art.

5. He Wrote Chris (Bhris) Brown’s “Loyal”

You’ve all heard this song a million times and most of you have heard a million versions of it (remixes, covers, and this awesome vine included). Little known fact: Bishop Ty$ wrote it. In an interview with Hot 97, he humbly acknowledged that it would be bigger if Chris recorded it and did what was best for the song. That type of unselfish pass is exactly why the Golden State Warriors are 22–0 as I write this. Ty knows his role and plays it well and that is definitely respected in the grand scheme. Salute to the man who wrote the savage anthem of 2014.

4. He’s given us so much great material for free

Even though Free T.C. is his debut album, it’s definitely not Ty$’s first time releasing a body of work. As with about 99% of rappers, Ty made his name off of several free mixtapes dating back as far as 2011, including the fan favorites Beach House 1 & 2, the Wiz Khalifa-collab EP Talk About It In The Morning, and my personal favorite $ign Language. All of the above feature songs so great that I and several other fans were tweeting every day about how we wanted more and how the album couldn’t arrive soon enough.

Ty$ was aware of his fans clamoring for more and gave us Airplane Mode, a collection of songs and snippets released a month before the album just to hold us over and to no surprise, EVEN THE SNIPPETS WERE FIRE. If you are someone who enjoyed these 5 projects as much as I do, I’d say we each owe Ty$ about $37.964838293 dollars, but I’m sure he’d be happy if we just bought Free TC.

3. Atlantic Records

Those of you who have only heard of Ty$ or are casual fans probably know him from hits like “Paranoid” or “Or Nah”. “Paranoid” was released in September 2013 and “Or Nah” in January 2014. The album didn’t come immediately after these singles so we, the congregation of the church of latter day $igns, waited patiently.

Then comes “Stand For” in November of 2014, followed by “Drop That Kitty” this past February. At this point, something’s fishy. “Kitty” is obvious radio bait, featuring Tinashe & Charlie XCX (which helped the song draw many comparisons to “Fancy”, for better or worse). Most Dolla $ign fans weren’t crazy about the song but hey, whatever speeds up this album release, we’ll accept.

THE ALBUM DIDN’T DROP TIL FUCKING NOVEMBER. As if that wasn’t enough, the album comes out after half of it is released as singles in an awful attempt to get the ball rolling, on November 13th. The same day Justin Bieber aka Da Biebz aka Bieberveli made his triumphant return. Atlantic took what felt like forever to release the album and still managed to drop it on the 2nd worst day of the year to release music (1st would be to drop same day as Adele of course). When all was said and done, the album peaked at number 14 on the Billboard 200 charts, selling approximately 20k copies. Now this might all actually be Ty$’s fault but he doesn’t strike me as the type to put this much into the music only to botch the release but who knows. If I’m wrong, a thousand apologies to Craig Kallman & co.

2. It’s a really good album

Free TC clocks in at about an hour and 12 minutes with 16 songs ranging from obvious pop chart grabs, acoustic jams, blood bangers, & more. What’s amazing about it is Ty$ never seems out of pocket; walking the tightrope of staying true to the sound his fans expect and shameless pandering perfectly. So often do we see artists step out of their comfort zone only to have us begging them to step back in. Judging from all the tweets I’ve seen about the album, there are no complaints about Ty$’s EDM audition “Bring It Out Of Me” or Prince impression “Whenever”. He seems just as comfortable there as he does on songs with the homies YG, Joe Moses, & Teecee4800 on “Only Right” and “Straight Up” featuring Jagged Edge, which are his bread & butter.

1. Free TC

The real reason I’m begging you all to buy this album is because of its namesake. TC (born Gabriel Griffin) is Ty’s younger brother who is currently serving 67 years to life in prison for a 2004 murder that Ty swears he did not commit. According to this Billboard feature on Ty, a man was murdered for allegedly cooperating with police and a witness said TC did it. Again, Ty insists that TC didn’t do it; often saying in interviews “the whole hood knows he didn’t do it.”

Throughout the album, conversations between Ty$ and TC serve as interludes, with subjects ranging from TC explaining the rough conditions of prison to Ty’s daughter making fun of his dreads. At one point French Montana walks into the studio and Ty introduces him to his brother, the laughs they share will bring you more joy than any conversation you have with your family this holiday season.

The most important part of all of this is that proceeds from the album will go towards TC’s appeal. According to Ty$ (Esq.), you have to win 3 jury cases to beat a murder charge in the state of California. Unfortunately, TC only beat the first. And appeals are not cheap; Ty$ says the first cost his mother about $100k. I’m not gonna sit here and act like I know for a fact that TC didn’t commit that murder just because I think him and his brother are great singers however if there’s even a doubt that he didn’t do it, this case needs to be looked at again. A MINIMUM SENTENCE OF 67 YEARS WHEN WE’RE NOT EVEN SURE HE DID IT? WHAT TYPE OF SHIT IS THIS? So in this age of downloading music for free and making random gofundme donations, just act like this is a gofundme for TC that happens to come with mp3 files.

A commendable footnote of this album is that Ty$ is genuinely trying to get people to look at the U.S. prison system for what it really is. He’s specifically angered by the amount of people like his brother who are imprisoned for things they didn’t do (as we all should be). He’s spoken at juvenile halls, group homes, and has plans for documentaries that will raise awareness about problems with the system as well.

There you have it: Ty Dolla $ign is a great artist who has given us great music for free who has been dealt a shitty hand by the music industry and the federal prison system and he really needs your help. Please do not steal or stream Free TC, but buy it and perhaps this can lead to changing the way the system deals with long sentences. But for now we have one mission: free TC.

(Originally published on Austeremag.com on December 8, 2015)

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Anteneh Gebre
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