Free TC album opener "LA" has existed in one form or another for nearly three years, and Ty has been tinkering with it ever since. It leaked last year in a different, faster version, what sounded like an album-closing victory lap à la good kid, m.A.A.d city's "Compton". Now in its final edition, "LA" features not just Kendrick but Brandy and Ty's fellow singing-songwriter hired gun James Fauntleroy. Kendrick's verse remains a good kid-era gem. -=-=-=-

The song's been slowed to a place-setting epic, an album opener replete with a Dre-referencing slam poetry intro, soaring strings, and overwhelming attention to detail—the vocoders, synthesizers, and multi-tracked vocals revealing themselves in ornate layers. In the popular imagination, Ty Dolla $ign is known for his louche, self-conscious "ignorant" songs where everyone's cheating in a blanket of druggy sedation. On "LA", Ty the perfectionist studio rat takes precedence, the lothario taking the backseat to experience his native city in all its grandeur.