<p>For our latest <em>tmrw</em> digital cover, we spotlight &amp;TEAM's NICHOLAS – known for his sharp stage presence, his connection to the group's werewolf concept, and now, officially, a creative director</p>

NICHOLAS of &TEAM - Why Not?

<p>There's something different about Bebe Rexha right now. It's hard to name at first. She's back-to-back on interviews when we speak, 13 music videos deep into a three-day shoot, running all over LA</p>

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<p>tripleS have never been a small proposition, but ASSEMBLE26 pushes that further than anything before. Twenty-four members, four cities, a two-part comeback – and the most hopeful record they've made to date</p>

tripleS, Fully Assembled

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      <h2>Tycoon State of Mind</h2>
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        <h3><span>by Walter Robert</span></h3>
        <p class="credit">Editor-in-Chief, tmrw Magazine</p>
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              The first time we step into Ty Dolla $ign’s studio, it’s alive, and it's lit!.
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      <p>
        Music blaring. Cameras up. Energy spilling out of every room. Ty’s already live on Twitch, streaming in real
        time, chopping it up with fans, moving between beats, bars, and off-screen banter without missing a step.
        Shoreline Mafia is posted nearby. DJ Discolines is deep in conversation. Tommy Revenge, who appears on the
        Tycoon track “December 31st,” is also in the mix, part of the moment, the kind of presence that doesn’t need to
        announce itself to be felt.
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        The room hums like a hive, but at the center of it all, Ty moves like someone completely at home. The studio
        itself is a fortress of sound. Vintage keyboards lean like artifacts against the wall. A full drum set sits in
        the corner like it’s been there since day one. Racks, records, real hardware.
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              It’s a creative compound, custom-built from the ground up, designed to capture whatever he’s hearing in
              his head before it gets away.
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      <p>
        He’s not staging a rebrand. He’s doing what few in his position ever get the timing right on. Transitioning
        from cultural figure to cultural architect. From artist to institution. From feature king to full-on founder.
        Tycoon is the album title. But it is also It’s a shift in posture, a redefinition of success, and a reclamation
        of self. A Repositioning.
      </p>
      <p>
        Ty Dolla $ign is no longer riding the wave; he built the wave machine, and now he’s just letting it run.
      </p>
      <p>
        So when I finally sit down with him, I want to know what that word, Tycoon, really means to him. What does
        stepping into that identity look like right now?
      </p>
      <p>
        "As an artist in 2024," he begins, "I feel like I reached the highest levels. Stadiums. Number one records.
        Arena tours. All of that. But then... Shawn Barron and I started EZMNY. We signed Leon Thomas. He went number
        one on the radio, Top 10 on the Hot 100. I bought a building in Hollywood, built my dream studio slash record
        company. A few more buildings. Got into real estate. Launched a champagne called Le Bon Argent and a whiskey
        line called Good Money Whiskey. All the dreams I had as a kid, knocked them out in the last two, three years."
        He says it with the ease of someone who knows exactly how far they’ve come, but also how much further there is
        to go. "That’s when I felt like I stepped into tycoon mode. It just felt right."
      </p>
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      <p>
        I ask what he had to leave behind to become this version of himself.
      </p>
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        "The white noise," he says. "People I was working with. People I was dealing with. All the extra stuff." Even
        his home carries echoes of past chapters, boxes of old gear, tour relics, gifts from
      </p>
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        fans, and cities long gone. "It’s crazy," he says. "All the stuff I’ve come across, all the things we’ve had to
        put in, and how much you forget along the way."
      </p>
      <p>
        I pivot the conversation toward something unexpected: Twitch. Ty’s been streaming regularly, letting people in.
        So what pulled him into that world?
      </p>
      <p>
        "At first I was calling my DJ corny for doing it," he laughs. "I’m like, I don’t have to do podcasts. I don’t
        have to do Twitch. I’m an artist. I’m going to do this the old school way." But he watched as his DJ built an
        audience, a real following. The money was real.
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              The connection was deeper. Ty tried it once, then started streaming from his studio. his "back Twitch," as
              he calls it.
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      <p>
        "People started coming in every day. Then I launched a Ty Dolla $ign Twitch, worked with their team... and it’s
        booming. 35,000 followers in nine weeks. Seven thousand people on a stream at a time, and now it's been booming
        bro.”
      </p>
      <p>
        He surpassed 35,000 followers just in nine weeks, and had, 7000 people at a time, sometimes, sometimes 3000,
        sometimes 76. Doesn't matter the number, just wants to have a great community. “Somebody put it to me like this.
        Some people have come to the club, to the concerts, and have spent their money on merch and on the actual
        concert, and just that whole live vibe. And then certain people don't want to leave the crib, and they just want
        to chill, but they still want to spend money, and they still want to support what they like. That's the Twitch
        world, just to support. Just to show love. It’s like Spotify for the music industry. Like Netflix. Streaming is
        streaming. Everyone has a chance to do anything now."
      </p>
      <h3>
        From there, we talk ownership. When did that become the mission?
      </h3>
      <p>
        "I’ve known the game for a long time. I saw Death Row. Cash Money. No Limit. Babyface. I always wanted to do
        that. I had production companies before EZMNY. Signed producers. Writers. Tried everything. But with Leon? This
        time it clicked."
      </p>
      <p>
        Speaking of EZMNY again. The thought came up of where that name comes from? So I asked.
      </p>
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        "Yeah, easy money was the same thing that my grandfather would always say every time he did anything ". He came
        from Memphis to L.A. in the '50s with $1,000. Started a clothing line with my grandma. Flipped it. Bought real
        estate. He always said: 'It’s all there. You just gotta grab it.' Most people talk. He did. So when we had our
        chance to name a new company. He was in mind, and that's what I named it.”
      </p>
      <p>
        We shift to his champagne line. Why that space?
      </p>
      <p>
        "It was already moving when they brought it to me," he says. "I thought of Ross. Puff. I studied what they did
        right, what they did wrong, and said: Let me do it better."
      </p>
      <p>
        As we got deeper into the conversation. I wanted to understand as a businessman. What are his core values? I
        believe most successful empires have them.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Passion. That’s everything. After the pandemic, a lot of people just wanted fast money. But I only work with
        people who love what they do and love the process. Leon(Thomas), for instance, it's like, not only does he
        actually like to do music, you know, he doesn't just try to find the easy way out, he's actually sitting and
        practicing every day, practicing guitar, doing beats, singing. Like, when you go into the dressing room before
        he goes out to perform, he's running the vocal warm-up tape. He's like, in meetings, coming out with PowerPoint
        demonstrations about how he wants the whole project to look. Yeah, I'm saying, like, that's the only kind of
        people that I want to work with, bro.
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              And that's not only on artistry, on anything like, whatever you're doing, whatever business I'm doing,"
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      <p>
        When asking about how he keeps everything intact, how he stays grounded, mentally, physically, spiritually,
        because he is such a hard worker. He simply says. “ I love what I do.” So it just makes me want to keep on going
        and keep on pushing the envelope and trying to do something new, trying to discover new sounds, trying to
        discover new ways of doing things all the way around. Spiritually, I'm in the mosque as much as I possibly can.
        I'm constantly praying, constantly reading
      </p>
      <p>
        Last year, Ty was really sick. So immediately, he switched it up. “I stopped drinking. Changed my diet, worked
        out all the time, and fortunately, lost a lot of weight. I just noticed that, you know, life is short, so like,
        let's just enjoy every single day. Try to be happy and, you know, put the right things in my body, and now he is
        better, he stated, and is just enjoying life each day.
      </p>
      <p>
        Which brings us to Free TC. The 10th anniversary. He’s planning to speak to the youth at a juvenile hall. I ask
        what that means to him now.
      </p>
      <p>
        For Ty, it’s not about checking a box. It’s a responsibility. “Look, I feel like for those of us who made it
        out, who got to travel and really see the world—it’s our duty to go back and tell the kids the truth. "They
        don’t give you a book on this sh*t," he says. "Growing up in the hood, you think gang life is everything. But if
        you go to Dubai, London, or France, they don't even know what that is.
      </p>
      <p>
        Ty’s brother, TC, is in prison, serving a life sentence. He told Ty that he gave his life to something fake.
        “The people he looked up to? A lot of them are bums now. Broke. Still locked up. And the wildest part, some of
        them were snitching the whole time, doing exactly what they told everyone else not to do. It was all bullshit,
        and now he’s sitting in there, 20 years deep, realizing the whole thing was a scam.
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      <p>
        “I just want to get in front of these kids and tell them: Yo. You’re being lied to. All that gang shit, It’s
        dumb. It leads nowhere. It wastes your time. It wastes your family’s time. You’ve got a chance to do something
        different. The only reason I think the way I do is because my grandfather showed me there was another way. He
        owned apartment buildings. He showed me that it was possible to build. A lot of people just don’t know, because
        no one ever told them it was even possible."
      </p>
      <p>
        That truth, as raw as it is, leads us right back to the music. I ask what it was like making Tycoon and what
        inspired the current sonic direction.
      </p>
      <p>
        "The taste came from everything that’s happening in music right now. What I was listening to, what the world
        was feeling. I was coming off the last project, and I was taking all that energy, the lessons, the sounds, the
        shifts in the culture, and folding it into this one.
      </p>
      <p>
        "But I like a lot of this album. I Wish is my favorite, because of the R&amp;B factor. That’s where I’m going
        next. I’m going fully R&amp;B. Full instruments. Real vocals. I’ve done a lot of turned-up music over the years,
        and I’ll always make hits, but I feel like finally the landscape is shifting back to talent, like Leon. Back to
        who can really play, who can really sing. It’s going back to soul, and I’m ready. That’s where I started, and
        now I’m going back to myself."
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      <p>
        When I ask Ty what he still wants his story to be, after all the features, the hits, the highs, he doesn’t
        hesitate.
      </p>
      <p>
        "I just want to do something different. Change the game again. Like we did with 'Toot It and Boot It.' Back
        then, the last West Coast artist who really had a run like that was The Game. He held it down solo after Death
        Row. When we came in, people were doing jerk music; we respected it, but we weren’t trying to copy it. We took
        that movement and added real music back to it. Then, suddenly, the whole world was using our sound. Not just
        L.A., not just the West. Everybody. That wave lasted years. And now? It’s time to do that again. That’s what
        excites me. Flipping the narrative. Showing people a new way. Putting the next puzzle together. That’s the story
        I want to write."
      </p>
      <p>
        So I ask what drives that kind of vision. What fuels that level of ambition?
      </p>
      <p>
        "I think it’s just in me," he says. "I’ve always had ambition. Like, real ambition. Not just to make it, but to
        expand. To build. To create things that last. That’s why I’m still here. Because I never stop thinking about
        what's next. How to evolve. How to bring people with me. I don’t want to just live off hits. I want to live off
        impact."
      </p>
      <p>
        I ask if he’s still hungry.
      </p>
      <p>
        "Always. When I was 16, 19, 21, I made beats all day. I’m trying to get back to that. Just joy. Sampling. No
        pressure. I built my dream studio. Every keyboard. Every guitar. Full drum sets. Multiple rooms. You’ll see it
        all on Twitch.
      </p>
      <p>
        So I ask him the question we close every tmwr cover story with:
      </p>
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        <h3>
          What does tmrw mean to you?
        </h3>
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          "Make your next move your best move."
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        <p>
          He says it like someone who already has.
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<p>Stepping into Ty Dolla $ign’s studio is electric—music blasting, cameras rolling, and energy everywhere. Ty streams live on Twitch, bouncing between beats, bars, and fan banter, while Shoreline Mafia, DJ Discolines, and Tommy Revenge vibe in the mix, creating a moment that’s felt, not announced&nbsp;</p>

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