Hip-hop & rap
Ty Dolla $ign
Ty Dolla $ign, born Tyrone Griffin Jr. (1982 in Los Angeles), is an American singer, rapper, multi-instrumentalist and producer, one of the most in-demand voices of 2010s R&B and hip-hop. Passing through the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 2016, he fell in love with the region, so much so that he filmed the video for his track “$” there soon after.
Ty Dolla $ign in Montreux
4 July 2016: at the Montreux Jazz Lab
On 4 July 2016, for the festival’s 50th edition, Ty Dolla $ign performed at the Montreux Jazz Lab. Backed by Dre Sinatra and Tee Lee 4800 Newman, he rolled out some twenty tracks, from “Paranoid” to “Blasé”, closing the night with “Campaign”, the title track of the mixtape he had just released.
“$”: a video shot in the region
Won over by Montreux, Ty Dolla $ign used his stay to film the video for “$”, from the mixtape “Campaign” (2016). The region takes the leading role: a boat ride in front of the Château de Chillon, an escape into the forest on the heights of Glion and Les Planches, a session on the roof of the Eurotel, now the Mona, and even a stop at Claude Nobs’s chalet at Caux, where the rapper posed with the festival founder’s two dogs.
The festival took an active part in the shoot’s logistics and is thanked in the video’s credits. As 20 minutes noted, it was “quite a publicity coup” for the whole eastern Vaud region.