Did you know Ty Dolla Sign used to work with 1990s R&B group Immature? It’s true.
Most people will associate the Los Angeles-based boyband with members Marques “Batman” Houston, Jerome “Romeo” Jones, and Kelton “LDB” Kessee; however, Immature had a lot more star power than initially suspected. In a 2014 cover story for the Fader, it was revealed that Ty’s first-ever gig was playing keyboards for the young group, which was also known as IMX. Several years after that fun fact was published, Houston shed more light on Ty’s involvement during a recent interview on Beats 1 Radio.
“Ty Dolla $ign was in Immature’s band when we first started,” Houston said. “(Famed producer) Chris Stokes discovered Ty back in the day […] I was like, 9 years old and he was in the band. He had to be eight? Seven or eight. He’s like a year younger than me. It was cool. It was like, he’s the homie. We were like brothers. A lot of people used to say him and Romeo from IMX/Immature that they kind of look like brothers, so they would call them brothers.”
Houston spoke about Ty’s family and how they were all “musically driven.” Ty’s father, Tyrone William Griffin, Sr., was a member of the funk band Lakeside and also provided instrumentals for Death Row Records.
“Ty was actually really, really musically inclined back then, because he would kind of help do some of the programming and stuff like that back then, when he was like real young,” Houston said. “We were all impressed with his musical skill, being that young. He was the only one who actually was playing a real instrument. I think he was playing the keyboards and everybody else was like… you know, they were singers.”
If you’re finding this hard to believe, we’ve included video footage of Immature’s 1993 performance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Ty can be seen doing his thing behind the keyboards.
Crazy, right? But Ty wasn’t the only star who assisted Immature.
“Brandy and Ray J actually were our backup singers back then, too,” Houston revealed. “We were all like a little stage show. It looked like a little circus because we had these big hats and it was crazy. Brandy was our background singer, and Ray J was background singer slash bass player, and that was the band back then.”
