Hip-hop lost one of its most recognizable beat-makers this week. Tay Keith, the producer whose pounding 808s drove Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” was found dead in his Nashville apartment on Thursday afternoon. He was 29.
If you’ve turned on a radio or scrolled through a club playlist in the last eight years, you’ve heard his work. He didn’t rap a single bar on most of those songs, but his name became a hook all its own. For a producer that young to leave behind a catalog this big is almost hard to wrap your head around.
What Police Said Happened
The details are still thin, and police haven’t said much. Officers with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department went to his Martin Street apartment to perform a welfare check on Thursday and found him unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
In a statement, police said “no foul play is suspected” in the death of Brytavious Chambers, 29, the man the music world knew as Tay Keith. They added that his death is “unclassified pending autopsy results.” That’s the whole official picture for now. No cause of death has been released, and the case remains open while the autopsy is completed.
Before the news was even confirmed, his longtime friend and collaborator BlocBoy JB posted what looked like a goodbye. Over a photo of the two of them, he wrote, “Damn Cuz You Just Hurt Me Bad.” Producer ATL Jacob followed with a Rest in Peace post on X. The word spread fast, the way it always does now.
From Memphis to the Top of the Charts
Tay Keith was born September 20, 1996, in Memphis, and he started making beats when he was just 14. He grew up on the city’s own sound, taking cues from Southern legends like Three 6 Mafia and 8Ball & MJG. You can hear all of that in his work, the heavy bass and the menace and the bounce.
His big break came through another Memphis kid, rapper BlocBoy JB. The two linked up on tracks like “Shoot,” and the buzz started spilling out of Memphis. Then Drake noticed. In 2018, when Keith was just 21, he produced “Look Alive” for Drake and BlocBoy JB, his first real hit. The song even name-drops Memphis, with a line about “901 Shelby Drive.” The 901 is the city’s area code. He never tried to hide where he came from.
For the city, his rise meant something. He was one of those rare success stories that local kids could point to. A producer from the Memphis streets who ended up on Grammy stages, working with the biggest names in the business. People back home took real pride in that.
The Beat Behind “Sicko Mode”
The same year “Look Alive” hit, Keith co-produced the song that would define his career. Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” came out in 2018, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and turned into one of the most played rap songs of the decade. It earned him his first Grammy nomination, for Best Rap Song.
That track had three different beat switches packed into one song, and Keith’s section was the part that made people lose their minds in the car. It still gets played at sporting events and on TikTok years later. For a 22-year-old, putting your stamp on a song that big is the kind of thing most producers chase their whole lives and never get.
After that, the floodgates opened. He produced Drake’s “Nonstop,” worked on Eminem’s “Not Alike” for the 2018 album Kamikaze, and even landed a track with Beyonce. He co-produced “Before I Let Go,” a bonus cut on her Homecoming live album. When Beyonce calls, you’ve made it.
Four No. 1 Hits and Two Grammy Nods
The numbers behind his career are genuinely wild for someone so young. He racked up four No. 1 records on the Billboard Hot 100 and 11 top 10 hits total. That puts him among the most commercially successful producers of his entire generation.
Beyond “Sicko Mode,” his chart-toppers included Drake’s 2023 hit “First Person Shooter.” He picked up his second Grammy nomination in 2024 for Best Rap Song, this time for “Rich Flex” by Drake and 21 Savage. Two nominations, both in the same category, five years apart. That’s staying power.
And he never slowed down. His recent credits read like a who’s who of current rap. He produced Jack Harlow’s 2025 track “Just Us” featuring Doja Cat, Travis Scott’s single “4×4,” and “Broke His Heart” from Megan Thee Stallion’s 2024 album Megan. He also stepped into the executive producer chair for Sexyy Red’s 2024 album Sexyy We Trust, including her breakout songs “Pound Town” and “SkeeYee.” On top of all that, he ran his own record label, Drumatized.
The Industry Reacts
The tributes poured in from every corner of the music business, from street-level Memphis producers to platinum hitmakers. That range said a lot about how many people he actually touched along the way.
Producer Hitkidd, who’d been working with him since the beginning, wrote, “I ain’t even got the words, we been doing this since 2010 @taykeith.” That’s more than a decade of grinding together before either of them was famous. Producer BanBwoi posted maybe the most gutting message of all: “Idk how to feel bro. Closest death ever even been to me. I love you and thank you for everything. Thank you for being my first big brother. You brought me places nobody asked you to bring me bro. Idk where I’d be without you deadass man. Not figuratively but literally.”
Producer BNYX added his own note: “Long Live Tay Keith, you inspired many including me. You will be greatly missed. I’m so glad I got to meet you.” Those tributes from fellow producers kept rolling in for hours after the news broke.
Fans got in on it too. One person commented under his last Instagram post, “Why you leave us like this man?? Hearing Tay Keith [expletive] these up will not hit the same.” Another wrote, “A true GOAT. Rest in peace.”
More Than Beats
One thing that kept coming up in the fan tributes was his college degree. People remembered how proud he was when he earned it. One fan wrote, “I’ll never forget how happy you were when you got your degree. So talented, your legacy will forever live on.” He balanced school and a blockbuster music career at the same time, which is not exactly the typical path for a 21-year-old with a No. 1 song.
He talked openly about where he came from and what he wanted to do with his success. “I had to overcome a lot of adversity growing up and I made it a mission to be able to show the youth that it’s possible,” he once told a reporter. He partnered with the National Museum of African-American Music to give young people gifts, food, a seminar, and free admission, saying “music was my outlet for my success.”
He also made a habit of mentoring younger producers coming up behind him, the same way Drake once gave him a shot. He said he “never hesitate[s] to talk to them.” For a lot of kids trying to make beats in their bedrooms, knowing a Memphis guy did it first was the proof they needed.
That Producer Tag Hits Different Now
If you’ve listened to enough trap music, you know the sound. The verbal drop at the start of his beats became one of the most recognizable tags in all of hip-hop, right up there with the most famous ones in the business. It was a calling card. Hear it, and you knew the next 90 seconds were going to knock.
That same tag carries a heavier weight now. His brand of pummeling 808s became a sonic fingerprint for an entire era of rap, the through-line connecting the Memphis underground to the top of the global pop charts. From BlocBoy JB cuts to Beyonce, he had a hand in all of it.
Keith built a catalog most producers couldn’t match in twice the time, and he did it before turning 30. The autopsy results are still pending, and police haven’t released anything more. For now, the people who knew him and the millions who only knew his beats are left with the same thing: a stack of songs that defined a decade, and a tag that’s going to land a little differently every time it plays from here on out.