YG enlisted a number of guests to help tell his story on his critically acclaimed debut My Krazy Life. And while Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jeezy and Schoolboy Q likely laid their verses from comfortable recording studios, TC, who sings on “Thank God,” recorded his take while locked in prison.
“The person you hear on the song first is Big TC, he’s in the penitentiary facing life. So him and his homeys be recording songs on their phones and uploading it to YouTube,” YG explained to “RapFix Live” when breaking down tracks from his newly released album.
Big TC is the younger brother of hip-hop singer, producer and songwriter Ty Dolla $ign. TC has already been featured on a number of Ty’s tracks and the “Paranoid” singer says he plans to dedicate his major-label debut (tentatively titled Free TC) to his brother, who he says is innocent following a murder charge.
On YG’s “Thank God,” TC sings a bluesy penitent tale and praises his higher power. “We was on YouTube one day and [DJ Mustard] was playing it for me and I was like, ‘That’s hard, make a beat to that.’ So we got it off of YouTube, turned it to an MP3 file, he pulled it up [and] made a beat to it,” YG explained of how he was able to obtain TC’s vocals.
The track is labeled an interlude on My Krazy Life‘s track list, but it’s an important part of the story that the Young Gangsta tells throughout his LP. After he is arrested on “1 AM,” YG’s Pu$haz Ink labelmate RJ makes a plea to the star rapper’s mother for bail money. The song is so conceptual, that YG himself never appears.
“I couldn’t call her, she didn’t want to hear nothing I had to say,” YG says of his musical story that actually mirrors his real-life trials and tribulations. “So I had the homey do a verse talking to my mama, let her know what’s going on. That’s RJ, that’s why I wasn’t on the song.”
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