Grammy-nominated producer Tay Keith dies at 29

Tay Keith, the GRAMMY-nominated producer born Brytavious Keith Chambers, died at 29, cutting short a career that helped define the sound of modern mainstream rap. From Memphis to Nashville, his work moved from local momentum to some of the genre’s biggest records, even as his name often sat behind the artists in the spotlight.

The Recording Academy described Tay Keith as a GRAMMY-nominated record producer from Memphis, Tennessee, and called him a hometown hero for shaping songs by Yo Gotti, Blac Youngsta and Moneybagg Yo. That Memphis foundation mattered: his early rise was tied to the city’s hard-edged, minimalist rap sound, a style that spread far beyond Tennessee as his credits grew.

Billboard profiled Tay Keith in 2018 as a rising Memphis producer while he was working on Drake’s Scorpion album and producing BlocBoy JB’s breakout tracks, including Look Alive and Nonstop. Those songs helped turn him from a regional name into a national force, with his production becoming identifiable for its blunt drums, tense pacing and stripped-down intensity.

By 2024, Billboard described him as Nashville-based, showing how his career had broadened while his reach stayed rooted in Southern rap. His best-known mainstream credit remained Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode, one of the era’s most recognizable hits, alongside his collaborations with Drake. The record showed how a producer could help define a cultural moment without standing at its center.

Tay Keith’s death leaves behind a body of work that maps the last several years of rap’s mainstream sound. His career traced a familiar but often overlooked pattern in music: the artists may carry the public face of a hit, but producers build the architecture that makes the song hit in the first place.