Grammy winner Khris Riddick-Tynes on the difference between agency and acuity — and why “F the label” is a TikTok fantasy.
Any reasonable person who gets the opportunity to speak with the man who produced two of the most fire and pervasive songs of the past decade would expect to start the conversation talking about one of said songs. But that would only be a reasonable expectation if the producer was “just” a producer. Not a multi-hyphenate in the truest sense who’s been able to rack up wins in multiple industries. Not someone who was able to balance getting a law degree while writing hits between classes. Nor someone who took a break from being an in-demand producer/songwriter to head up A&R for one of music’s biggest labels. Or someone who designed and built the studio in which he oversaw the production of Kehlani’s recent self-titled album that featured the inescapable single “Folded.” of those aforementioned hits. In other words, it would only be a reasonable expectation if the producer wasn’t Khris Riddick-Tynes. So, it’s for that reason, that him and I start our conversation talking about the room he was seated in during our talk over Google Meet. It’s also why it became clear very quickly that dude is different.
That’s because Riddick-Tynes is (deep breath): Babyface’s protégé, the man who refused to let SZA‘s smash hit “Snooze” stay forgotten, a Grammy winner, a former SVP, and a real estate developer who builds houses the way he builds records, among other things. He has spent a career standing in the exact spot most people in music pretend doesn’t exist, the spot where the art and the money are not enemies and are not even really separate, where agency without acuity is just a word people yell on TikTok, where a song is a god-given gift and also a recoupable asset. He came up under one of the greatest living songwriters learning that the song comes first. Then he learned the second thing, the harder thing, which is that the song coming first does not pay for the room.
So, you see, you could talk to Riddick-Tynes about damn near anything. Though, the most interesting topic is probably discussing what’s more important: taste or strategy. Riddick-Tynes would tell you that both are needed, but that the only currency that matters is trust. And that you build it the same way whether you’re cutting a record or building and selling a house. If you want learn how a guy like Riddick-Tynes developed the sensibilities that lead to many creative greats trust him, keep reading.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Boardroom: You built this whole space yourself. What’s come out of it?
Khris Riddick-Tynes: I finished building it at the end of May, early June last year, so we did the whole Kehlani album here—everywhere. The whole thing. She actually just posted all the whiteboards and everything we were doing on Instagram.
Take me back to the moment that project started.
She called me when she was doing the “Crash Tour,” in 2024. She was like, “Yo, bro, I think I’m ready to step in and do my self-titled, and I want you to work with me on it.” And I’m always just like, “All right, cool. Let’s do it.” With Kehlani, you’ve got to catch her when you catch her, because she’s always moving around.
We’d had some success that year with her single “After Hours,” which was a big club record. But Crash was a different direction for her, and the response was mixed. People loved “After Hours,” but the album got mixed reviews, and she was soul-searching, trying to find her sound and what she wanted to do—find a grounding.
A couple of months went by, and I got a call from Lanre [Gaba], who was president [of Hip-Hop, R&B and Global Music] at Atlantic at the time. She said, “Hey, I’d really love for you to come take over this Kehlani thing. What do you think?” So Kehlani called me, super excited, like, “Let’s start tomorrow.” And I’m like, “All right, let’s do it.”
One of the first songs we did was a record called “Pocket”—but it didn’t have Cardi B on it at the time, it was just a rough record. The second one was “Cruise Control,” a totally different vibe, initially an Afrobeats vibe. And then “Folded” came along, and this one and that one, and the album just started coming together like Legos.
Which came first for you—the passion for music, or something else?
Problem-solving, honestly. I was always an inquisitive kid, trying to figure stuff out. The gift of music—being able to hear and have creativity—is something you’re born with. I don’t take credit for that; that’s a God-given talent. But I’ve always had a captain kind of personality, a leader’s personality. Music gave me a way to channel that. I played sports, did academic activities in high school and middle school, was vigilant about my grades. So being able to have a vision and execute it, and seeing that other people need help getting their vision through—I discovered that skill set pretty early.
When I started doing music, I saw the synergy between music and sports, and I thought, let me just become the best coach I can be. My mentors and production partners are immensely talented—I’d argue more talented than me on a musical scale. But I always figured out quickly where I fit in to bring them from one point to the next. Whether it’s me and Leon coming together, or being in a room with a legend like Babyface, trying to bring fresh ideas and push past the comfort zone to get a result that’s different than what we’ve gotten before.
When did you know you wanted to get your law degree?
I knew in junior high. When you’re a kid and you’re inquisitive, or you talk a lot, people always say, “You should be a lawyer.” But it really clicked in an AP history class—understanding how laws guide our future. Seeing how it affected everything from music to TV to intellectual property really struck my interest.
My grandmother was a songwriter, and she had publishing stolen from her. She’d always tell me, “Make sure your stuff is straight.” And I’d think, how could this happen? How can somebody just take something from you? Then you start understanding licensing and contracts and these deal structures. So I always wanted to know the business of music.
The bet I had with my mom was: if I didn’t make enough money to live on my own doing music by the time I graduated college, I’d go to law school. By the grace of God, I made enough money in college doing music, so I didn’t have to go right away. It was actually a conversation with Clive Davis that sparked it—he’s an attorney, and his son Doug Davis, who I was dealing with at the time, was an attorney. It showed me you can do both things: you can be creative and you can be about your business. A few years after college, I decided to go to Loyola. It was the only school I applied to. I got into the part-time program, and it was a great experience.
Producing music while managing a law school schedule might be your craziest flex. How did you connect with Babyface?
Through a friend from high school. We were doing tracks together, and one thing led to another to a meeting with Antonio Dixon, who was Babyface’s partner at the time. Antonio listened to some tracks and told us, “Yo, you guys need to go back and make some edits, because the tracks are hot but the songs are kind of ass.” And we were like, “All right, cool.”
I’m never going to be defeated, so I came back three or four months later, took all of Antonio’s advice, and played him the beats. Halfway through one of the songs, he stops the music and says, “I’m bringing somebody in the room.” We’re wide-eyed, bushy-tailed kids, thinking, who’s he bringing—an artist? Because everybody came through that studio. He brings in Kenny [“Babyface” Edmonds] and says, “Yo, play that record again.” We play it, and he’s like, “Man, do y’all have a place to work?” We said no. He said, “Y’all can work in this little closet over there, make tracks, and give them to me. I’ll write to them.” So we took him up on it. I was there from about 2010 to 2020, right before the pandemic.
What did he impart on you, beyond “the song comes first”?
For the first couple of years, he was like Yoda—hands-off, just vibing, looking at you and whispering his opinions to Tony. Tony was the hands-on guy in the room with us. Then at a certain point he started stepping in. He’s a man of very few words, which is crazy for the greatest songwriter of all time, but when he does speak, it’s profound.
The biggest thing I learned from him, besides the song coming first, is that you don’t know everything. No matter how successful you are, there’s always room to learn and grow. The fact that he’d sit in a room with someone like me and be open to ideas I had—even though he was writing songs before I was even a thought—that’s what gives him the legs. You see it with the artists we’ve worked with, whether it’s Kehlani or SZA. He’s always open to newness. Those are the legs I want to have in my career.
Babyface has a clear fingerprint on his music. Do you see yours? How would you describe it?
I think we both have a natural gift for working with women, with female artists. We were both very close to our moms, and that’s a gift that lets you translate their stories and unique experiences in a way that softens you. That’s the niche I’ve carved out. My whole catalog—besides Drake, Chris Brown, and a couple of other things—is heavily female-focused. Their stories are better to me. Their perspectives are better, their emotional depth is deeper. It lets you paint such a beautiful picture. So for me it’s not so much a sound as a perspective.
It really comes down to talking and listening and absorbing, asking questions: How does that make you feel? What does that mean to you? And then they’ll talk themselves into a hook, and it’s like—shit, half the work is done.
You won a Grammy for “Snooze,” one of the best songs of the past five years. Is there a story from working on it that’s stuck with you?
You just never want to give up on an idea if you believe in it. There’s a part I never really highlighted: It went dormant after we did it. It was initially intended for Babyface’s Girls Night Out album. We were trying to get SZA to finish it, but she was busy and running around. Her engineer and producer, Rob Bisel, was my neighbor at the time. Rob came over while we were cooking up, I pulled up the track, and we were like, “Man, she’s got to finish this. It’s too good to let go.”
At the time, no one knew that the songs Rob did were going to become half of the SOS album. Me just cultivating that relationship with him—being friends, “Yo man, let’s just make music”—is what got the song over the finish line. It takes a whole village, and unselfishness. He put it on loop for her before one of their sessions, and she walked in and said, “I forgot about this song.” Can you imagine? You forgot about the biggest record of your career. But artists are always moving around, always doing new things. So it was about having faith in the song to push for it and find new life a year later, when otherwise it would’ve gotten buried and never seen the light of day.
You spent a few years as SVP and co-head of A&R at Arista. What did you learn?
My mentor and the chairman of the label was David Massey—an amazing executive. He did everyone from the Jonas Brothers to Jessie Reyez to Demi Lovato. The biggest thing I learned is that leading an artist is different from leading an entire team. You can have an amazing creative relationship with somebody, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into the building, because you have to move everyone differently.
There’s also helping artists understand they need songs—a single is not going to carry a career. And it’s different coaching from an executive seat, because the artist doesn’t look at you the same as they do a producer or writer. In the studio, you’re peers. Out of the studio, you become the principal—and nobody really wants to be cool with the principal.
The day Massey retired and I left, that was when I got the call from Lanre to come over. That ended up being Kehlani. On the album, I was both executive producer and the executive A&R—I wore both hats. It’s a testament to trust being everything. For someone to trust your business acumen and your creative acumen is just as important. Arista was my training ground. That was my university to really understand the game.
How has that informed No Chaser?
When I was at Arista—I got there in 2020, got my VP role in 2021—that time was extremely data-driven. You sign what’s hot. It was a race to sign, like chasing the stock market. Get in, and it’s either going to the moon or it’s going to crash. The problem is you’re chasing a rocket that’s already taken off, and you aren’t allowed the time to properly assess its sustainability. How much gas is in the tank? All you see is that it’s going up—and it can come down just as fast if the components aren’t there.
So the whole motto with No Chaser is this: I’ve had massive, life-changing records—”Snooze,” “Folded”—for the artist, for myself, for everybody involved. And these are Black-ass R&B records. These are not popcorn, McDonald’s records. These are records your auntie will listen to, your kids will listen to, your grandma will listen to. They’re not “supposed” to win. Everybody said R&B was dead, a lost art, not viable, not sustainable. And these found massive pop success. I wasn’t chasing it.
The model is that you can do it by being true to what you believe in. If you love it and it touches you, it’s going to touch somebody else. I want my writers to write from their hearts—write things that feel good to them—and not chase success or placements or big artists. I made my career working with the underdogs, the kids in the little rooms. I look at it like getting the best players out of college that nobody knows about and making them superstars, rather than chasing the bandwagon and giving somebody a super-massive contract. It doesn’t work as well, and it doesn’t last as long.
There’s a big conversation right now about independence and artists having agency. A lot of artists want it but don’t have the tools or knowledge. What would you say to young songwriters about maximizing their work and protecting their catalogs?
Two things there—let me talk about agency first. I hear it all the time on TikTok: “F the label.” Look, we’re in the business of music. Agency doesn’t equal acuity. Just because you have free will doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. Most people can’t even do their own taxes, and that’s people working a W-2 job. Once you add 1099s and independent contracting, it becomes a cluster of trying to figure it out. So you go to a professional.
Running an artist business, there are so many things outside making music that go into making you a star. COVID jacked up a lot of perspective, because it was, “I made this in my room, I went viral, I don’t need to study.” It’s like Allen Iverson—”Who needs practice?” But for longevity, you need a team. You need somebody handling the money, somebody handling the marketing, somebody A&R’ing and directing the records to make sure there’s consistency and continuity. LeBron has to focus on playing basketball. KD has to focus on playing basketball. That’s why managers and GMs are important—they’re not just looking at the star player’s interest, they’re looking at the franchise’s interest. And you, as an artist, are a franchise. Who’s looking down from the treetops with an aerial view of what you can’t see?
There are horror stories, and it isn’t fair what’s been taken from people. But the music industry is the only place where I can get a million-dollar advance, and if it flops, who cares? It gets written off. If I’m unhappy, I get dropped, maybe with a little override, and I go on to the next deal. Go get a home loan and they’ll put a microscope so far up you just to get $300,000. But you can get a million-dollar loan off potential. So the investment comes with a cost of ownership, and that’s okay, because you’re using it to get ahead.
Publishing’s a little different, because it runs with your life as a writer, so you want to be cognizant of where you sign. The best thing I tell young writers: don’t rely on the publisher to get you in the rooms. There are very few publishers with the pull to actually call artists and influence people—my publisher at Reservoir is great at it, Ryan Press is great at it, Big John of course—but it’s a handful of folks. So build your community. Look to your left, look to your right. The cream of the crop will all find each other, work with each other, keep building those relationships, starting with the rookies and the people getting overlooked who are talented.
And the pub deals aren’t predatorial like they used to be. They’re term-based—four years, whatever. You fulfill your term, you’re out, and once you recoup, you get your stuff back. Those are fair deals. There’s also no shame in working a 9-to-5. If you’ve got to go work at Chick-fil-A for a few hours, do it. Once you get into motion, you’ll be good. I always say diversify your portfolio. If you’re in the creative industry and you’re not a W-2 employee, you need other stuff going on—not just relying on the next record.
That leads to my last question. You’ve developed properties, including a house you built yourself. How did you get into that, and is there a connection to your work in music?
It’s all vision and creativity. I’m a maniac—I obsessively study things I’m interested in. What got me into it was financial: how do I make money when I’m not making money? This industry is fickle; you’re hot at one time and not at another. I was fortunate enough early on to invest in multi-units—one unit paid my mortgage, another put money in my pocket—and I started accumulating a few around the city and understanding that game.
But it wasn’t until I met one of my mentors, Stuart Liner, a partner at DLA Piper and a massive real estate investor, that it really clicked. We had a conversation about bullish development: find the worst house in the best neighborhood, knock it down, create your value, look at your price per square foot, and push the limit of what you can sell it for by condensing your building costs. If I buy it for a million and put a million in, I want to sell it for four. That’s a numbers game.
But to me it’s all project management and production, because what separates you is your taste. Same as music—if people trust your taste, they’ll listen to your songs, they’ll cut your songs, even if they don’t fully get it, because they trust what you do. Same thing with homes. When your design is cutting-edge, that’s what gets you the big numbers. Let me create this thing that doesn’t exist into something that does—something I love, that I’d live in, that I’d sing, that I’d listen to. That’s the intersection.
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