Top Dawg Entertainment has been relatively quiet lately, but they’re coming off a decade as the loudest, most creative team in rap. In the 2010s, the label — led by CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith and co-presidents Terrance Louis “Punch” Henderson and Dave Free — showcased the grit and togetherness of an independent company with the polish associated with major budgets. The Los Angeles-based crew spent years as an indie before inking a joint venture with Dr. Dre’s Interscope Records, and it paid off big time. Kendrick Lamar became the greatest rapper alive, with a track record that proved it: one classic album after another, streaming records, Grammy Awards, the leading name of the wildly successful soundtrack to Marvel’s Black Panther, and the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize. But the label’s success was built on more than K. Dot. The rest of its starting four — ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul, collectively known as Black Hippy — earned their own sales plaques and die-hard fan bases, with most of their music handled by TDE’s elite team of in-house producers. TDE later added other artists like SZA, whose confessional 2017 LP CTRL is one of the definitive R&B albums of the past 15 years.
But these days, the label is going through changes — and not just the pandemic-prompted audibles that plagued the entire industry. No one from its original lineup has released new music since before 2020, with more focus going toward building new acts like REASON and Lance Skiiiwalker from the ground up. Fan-favorite Isaiah Rashad released his third album The House Is Burning in 2021, but substance abuse caused a five-year gap between that and the Chatanooga, Tenn. rapper’s previous record. Dave Free left the label and started a multimedia company called pgLang with Kendrick Lamar, signing a new artist named Baby Keem and producing films. Lamar, the resident GOAT, announced that his next album will be his last with TDE.
