Beach House 3, released almost exactly two years after Free TC, is a superbly refined collection of songs, carefully crafted and smartly cast. It doesn’t have the longer thematic crescendos of TC, but is even more ruthlessly listenable, stacking hooks on top of hooks and flitting between an array different, pop-viable aesthetic frameworks. The five different interludes with “Famous” in the title could have served as the scaffolding for a career-making hit for a young artist from Toronto or Miami, but instead exist here as tossed-off asides. This is in step with the rest of the record, where songs revel in low stakes and stay within themselves. To wit: a duet with Jeremih, “Dawsin’s Breek,” feels decidedly minor next to other cuts on the album, and yet its hook—“I’ve got a brand new coupe”—is impossible to dislodge from your brain.
Though he adapts to almost any collaborator, Ty is at his best when he’s with his long-time cohorts. “Ex,” which reunites Ty with YG, is breezy and propulsive, and features a superb turn from the Compton rapper (“I’m on jet skis with naked bitches”). “Don’t Judge Me” nearly reunites the team from “Blasé”—sans Slim Jxmmi—and repurposes Future’s flow from “Relationships” into a motivational anthem of sorts. (At the end, Future even breaks into his Big Rube impression.) And when Ty and Wiz Khalifa trade verses over Pharrell’s beat on “Stare,” each sounds rejuvenated.
For all the bids at Billboard, Beach House 3’s finest song is its last, the tranquil, metronomic “Message in a Bottle,” where a flat circle of house parties and Hennessy lead him, inevitably, to make FaceTime calls to exes. It would be a one-note idea in most other hands, but Ty’s talents as a musician are leveraged too well: his gravelly voice, his preternatural attention to detail, his willingness to kill his ego and let the worries about his liver creep in. It’s exactly what makes Ty Dolla $ign’s music so rewarding: the crevices in between hits are filled with angst and world-wearied regret. There’s the party, and then the hangover.
| A1 | Famous |
| A2 | Famous Lies |
| A3 | Love U Better |
| A4 | Ex |
| B1 | Famous Excuses |
| B2 | Droptop In The Rain |
| B3 | Don't Judge Me |
| B4 | Dawsin's Breek |
| B5 | Don't Sleep On Me |
| B6 | Stare |
| C1 | Famous Friends |
| C2 | So Am I |
| C3 | Lil Favorite |
| C4 | In Your Phone |
| C5 | All The Time |
| C6 | Famous Amy |
| C7 | Side Effects |
| D1 | Famous Last Words |
| D2 | Message In A Bottle |
| D3 | Nate Howard Intro |
