Inside The Credits 002: D’Mile
D’Mile’s Audiomatic Universe of R&B Reinvention
I first became aware of D’Mile in preparation for an interview with San Diego native Joyce Wrice preceding the release of her debut studio album Overgrown in 2021, which he executive produced. Of all the albums I’ve been lucky enough to hear before release, this one is still in the top five. There was familiarity to the production and the vocal delivery that brought me back directly to the moments I started to consciously appreciate the Pop/R&B that was dropping in the early 2000s, yet it simultaneously pulled my ear forward. Journalists, pundits, and fans alike love to throw around the word timeless. This sound however, was time traveling. My dive into D’Mile’s catalog would confirm this to be his superpower: taking R&B which came before, filtering it through a distinctive vocal perspective, and guiding it into a reinvention.
D’Mile has done this with more artists than anyone could ever realize. As a student of Rodney Jerkins (whom he started working with after securing a credit on Rihanna’s debut Music of the Sun), his professional lift off was guided by an arbiter of the 90s-2010s R&B sound. I’d deduce that he was guided not only by what Jerkins was making, but also what he was pulling from and how he was redefining it (it must be noted that D’Mile’s father was also a producer who introduced him to Jazz and his mother was an R&B & Rock singer).
Yet, it would take a decade from Rihanna for D’Mile to help someone truly find catharsis through an R&B reimagining. In the meantime he would work with many artists with solidified sounds, expanding within them but never refocusing them (Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Lopez, Céline Dion, Usher, and more).
D’Mile’s work with Ty Dolla $ign traces back to 2014. At the time, D’Mile was one producer of a group working with Ty, with DJ Mustard at the helm. As a crew they orchestrated his rise via his Beach House series of projects. The sound of a song like “Paranoid” was current, and a California blend of North and South/Hip Hop and R&B. The first time Ty stepped away from this radio friendly sound, according to the credits, seems to be inextricably linked to D’Mile.
Ty’s initial music is linked to a Pop/Hip Hop throughline in R&B in the mid 2010s. However, one less analyzed element of his popularity is the contrasting vocal deliveries you are reminded of when you listen to him. When he is really singing, rather than his often delivered half-rapped half-sung delivery, Ty reminds me of some of the guttural R&B of the 90s. It wouldn’t be absurd to say by tone alone Ty links ears to Jodeci or Dru Hill or Charlie Wilson. While some could argue his technical proficiency doesn’t match up to those voices, his timbre lives within a very mirroring pocket.
D’Mile’s presence on the beginning of Free TC, Ty’s first full length studio album in 2015, suggests that he may have seen the potential to bring some of that influence into his contemporary sound. On a track like the Babyface guitar led “Solid,” Ty is able to use minimalist 90s sonics to lean into his inner Donell Jones. On the two tracks “Credit” and “Miracle/Wherever,” Ty gets to use the gospel influence that lives inherently in 90s R&B and rework it to live within where his present-led delivery would organically sit. D’Mile has production credits on each of these tracks and this project to many ears, mine included, would solidify the capability of Ty’s range.
It would appear that this discovery propelled D’Mile into his purpose. He would go on to form a web of R&B singers whose sounds he would either reconfigure or develop into worlds where only they could sit. A deep dive into them all would be quite tedious, so I’ve decided to write sentence long descriptions of the musical worlds D’Mile has created with each of them (click on names for song examples):
Victoria Monet - A smooth discotech where they’re filming a Ciara ‘04 music video, have a house band draped in leopard print playing tight Funk/Soul rhythms, and have tasteful burlesque dancers serving drinks.
India Shawn - A neo-soul studio space with an adjacent meditation room that on certain days transforms into a whiskey lounge.
Lucky Daye - A candy forest specializing in dark chocolate caramels surrounding a 90s paint studio complex where all the painters are influenced by 70s psychedelic canvases.
Silk Sonic - A cocaine cosmic 70s home studio space lined with women and band members where the only one sober is the engineer and the recordings are being channeled to backyard speakers for a dance party.
H.E.R - A small acoustic show in a converted coffee shop to bar at night where there’s a blend of love grappling guitar ballads and socially conscious anthems performed sleekly.
Chiiild - An outdoor festival ground where Alt R&B and Alt Rock collide equally in unison as if to form a new genre that has electro undertones to an audience of philosophical weed smokers.
Joyce Wrice - A lustrous, sensual, and self healing low tide sunset with 2000s Pop R&B playing out of a bedazzled portable speaker.
Ty Dolla $ign - Church reverberating braggadocio fused in an acoustic drum circle by a fire pit.
There’s an organic cohesion to projects from these artists when D’Mile touches or arranges them. He dips in and out of the mainstream, seemingly only drawn, at this point, to projects that feel within the confines of where he can create a world that makes sense to him. With a few of these artists, they have other producers D’Mile works in tandem with. Yet, with others he takes on full projects as the main orchestrator.
D’Mile is an essential architectural team member of musical world building. While this could give some producers an ego, he never seems to put himself at the center of these spheres. Thus, why a bunch of planets he’s helped construct have all become a part of his R&B solar system. His “Audiomatic Universe.”
Inside The Credits 002: D’Mile- The Playlists