The Making of Rich Gang’s 'Tha Tour Vol. 1'

The first indication of what was to come appeared on the set of a Wiz Khalifa video. In early March 2014, Wiz filmed the video for "We Dem Boyz" on a cool, slightly cloudy day in Atlanta. The set featured a mix of burgeoning and established rap acts, from Ty Dolla Sign to Big K.R.I.T. Among the crowd was Rich Homie Quan —sporting a blue Burberry shirt—and a lanky Young Thug , decked out in a red shirt and skully. Speaking to ATL Night Spots , Quan revealed that he and Thug were working on a project together. “It might be an EP. Might not even give y’all no more free music,” he said, declaring it the “best collabo since OutKast.”

Hours later, Thug clarified with a tweet : “NOT A MIXTAPE, A RI5H TAPE OTW.”

At that time, Quan and Thug were two of Atlanta’s most promising new rappers, each utilizing melody in seemingly opposite ways. Quan, slightly more established at that point, employed a husky, bluesy style that gave him an underdog, blue-collar reputation. Thug, on the other hand, was electric and animated, combining alien-like lyrical dexterity with yelps and gang language so coded it seemed invented. Together, they were perfect; their relationship dated back to middle school, but they reconnected at Gucci Mane’s Brick Factory studio in 2013, with “I Got It” being their first collaboration.

A mixtape from these two would unite ascending stars in a way that’s rare in hip-hop. While Quan was more established—having officially beaten the “sounds like Future” allegations—Thug was also breaking through with hits like “Stoner” and “Danny Glover.” Events moved quickly. By summer, they released the celebratory classic "Lifestyle" with Birdman, a song and video that would dominate the summer.

And by September 29th, 2014 they released Rich Gang: Tha Tour Vol. 1, their only collaboration mixtape. It’s flatout one of the best albums of the decade, a piece of work that blends some of the most inventive rapping of the 2010s with understated but expensive-sounding production.

Even as there is no denying the quality and impact, there is an aura of confusion surrounding the Rich Gang era. Let’s start with the music: despite its revered status—and the fact there were over seven videos released—Tha Tour is not accessible on DSPs; the group’s most ubiquitous song, “Lifestyle,” isn’t on the tape; and DJ Swamp Izzo, one of the hosts of the mixtape, announced a tour with dates locked in, but that never manifested. Even the concept of Rich Gang itself is puzzling. The project was more the brainchild of Birdman, who released a compilation album with the same name a couple of years before. (There’s over 150 “rich gang” adlibs from Birdman on Tha Tour.) During this time Thug had a confusing label situation —attached to everyone from Gucci Mane to 300 to Cash Money—and it seemed likely that Birdman was setting up the next generation of Cash Money.

Of course we know better now. In fact, it’s stunning how brief the entire era was. The two stars famously fell out shortly after the release, with Quan seemingly wanting to distance himself from the group and Thug feeling bruised by comments he made during an interview. They took divergent paths in their careers: by 2016, Thug had fully distanced himself from Rich Gang, becoming a pop superstar, while Quan’s status had fallen due to a mix of music industry issues and personal struggles.

Tha Tour is littered with names who aren’t around to document their side of the story: In 2022, Young Thug and 27 others —including Lil Duke, who appears on the album—were arrested on RICO charges, which are still being litigated in court. Quan tragically passed away last month due to an overdose; Nipsey Hussle, who appears on a song, was tragically killed in 2019 ; and Peewee Longway was recently arrested in his own drug bust. Even DatPiff, which originally hosted the mixtape, is no longer around.

But with all the darkness we can’t ignore the fact that Tha Tour is one of the true classics of the 2010s and the story of the album’s making is worth documenting. It helped launch the career of one of rap’s great stars as well as producers like London on Da Track and Wheezy. And you can still hear the album’s influence—just press play on Gunna’s discography. For the 10-year anniversary, we spoke to many of the major players in the creation of one of the great rap tapes of the decade.

The Members

Alex Tumay (Engineer)

Dun Deal (Producer)

Isaac Flame (Producer)

ProducedByGoose (Producer)

Colourful Mula (Designer)

The Spot (DARP Studios)

Alex Tumay: I don’t remember exact dates. It was the summer 2014 for sure. Birdman just came into the studio one day looking to make this Rich Gang kind of thing happen and booked one day in the studio. We did one song and he had me call my studio manager at 4:00 AM and had her come down to the studio and negotiate renting all four rooms of the studio for the next 90 days.

Once [me and Young Thug] got into a groove and he started to trust me, which is before the Rich Gang stuff started, he would be like, “pull up some beats” and he wouldn't want to hear all the beats. He'd want to hear the ones I liked. So I would get 70, 80 beats a day and I would listen to them and I would pick my favorites and play those first. So I'd have 10 beats. I played first and usually before the end of the day, he'd rap on most of them and he would be like, “OK, that one.” And then start rapping. And that would be it. Literally that fast, literally pull up that beat and I would have my toolbox set up. So I knew what kind of delays he liked. I knew his workflow. He was extremely quick. There was no writing process. There's nothing. It's all a stream of consciousness; all off the top. It's all very abstract thought. It’s very free form. The way he treats words is very jazz, it's very funk. I feel like he is to lyricism what the original abstract artists were to the Renaissance period. The way that he moves words and plays with the wordplay, how it all flows and how it connects and all that is, it's just a tool for him.

ProducedByGoose: We would pull up like 5 or 6 PM. Quan and Thug not pulling up at that time; that's a little early. But, being a producer, we like to get there a little bit early; have your computer and everything set up. And we not leaving until 5 or 6 AM. That's every night. They might have shows on the weekend, so it might not be a studio session on the weekends. I remember being in the studio when [Lil] Boosie first got out with his first situation. I remember seeing him write a verse. He had a song with Thug. I remember being in there with Migos when Offset got out and they kind of was getting back on the scene. Peewee Longway and all these guys that was in Atlanta [were there].

One of the things I can always remember is when we headed to the studio and you turn that corner, you always see Birdman’s tour bus out there in front. So Stunna’s in the building, you make sure you come with the best music and make sure you get your vibe. It was never no pressure, though. We all felt like we was in our natural environment. We all from Atlanta, so everything just felt natural. One of my favorite memories was the night when we were dropping Tha Tour Pt. 1. I remember walking in the studio that night and Fareed ["Rip" Salamah] was like Birdman’s main engineer. And so it being just such a casual nonchalant night looking back, we just was standing around watching them upload one of the greatest rap projects of all time. So being there that night and then knowing how different music was then than it is now. It was the mixtape era. The process is different now.

Mula: They were just cranking out music. Alex is there engineering everything. Bird on the phone. Thug’s just in the studio knocking out verses and hooks. And Rich is doing the same thing. There was different rooms. So you have producers probably in one room, producers in there making beats, the producer just in the main area, and then you got the guys off to the side probably just rolling dice and just chilling, just kicking it and just having fun and watching movies and TVs.

It was all just crazy. It was towards the end when they put everything together trying to sequence the songs from top to bottom and finish up the cover and do the track list.

[We shot and designed the cover] in the studio while they were recording. Bird is right there behind me, putting in his input. “You put a big star right here.” And then he wanted, of course, to add his picture in there, so his picture was kind of last minute. So that's why it looked kind of awkward. We were trying to figure out how to blend all three of them in one.

I totally hate [when someone is behind me] but I'm used to it. I used to design flyers for a company in Orlando. So when I was in the office, he used to have the client sit behind me the whole time. So that's how I learned how to design fast and get people up away from me quick.

The Riches

“Givenchy” (Young Thug and Birdman)

Produced by Dun Deal

Dun Deal: I think the first song we ever did for Rich Gang was “Pull Up” and it was different, but then we started getting into these darker, moodier songs, and “Givenchy” was just like, it was quick. I started to get the vision for it and that was the route. Birdman had walked in the room when I was playing it for Thug and pointed at me like, “You did this?” I was like, “yeah.” He said, “Let me go ahead and jump on here and talk.”

Thug's always been unique, so it was no surprise to me that he was going to kill it. But it did feel epic when we started it. It definitely sounded like the first song of the tape. So when we were in there cooking and people walked in and was feeling the vibes, they were like, this feels like the start of something.

“War Ready” (Rich Homie Quan)

Produced by Isaac Flame

Isaac Flame: I made the beat at my mama's spot, in my bedroom. I knew I had a session with Thug and Quan later that night. So I made that beat in the morning and the whole song came about. We recorded that song on August 29th at 6:00 AM. We was coming back from a show or a club appearance, if I'm not mistaken. I think for some reason Thug wasn't around. He either wasn't around or he was sleeping in the other room. It was me, Goose—I'll never forget it. While he was recording and getting his thoughts together, I said, “How do girls that you used to go for back in high school act now that you are who you are?” And it was a line and “War Ready” where [Quan] say, “Bitches who didn't fuck with me, you should see how them bitches act now?” That all came about us just having collaborative conversation in the booth, just smoking and chilling after a late night of coming out and coming back to the studio.

“I Know It” (Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan)

Produced by Isaac Flame

Isaac Flame: I was like, “Man, I'm going to make some funky ass groovy shit.” That's what I was feeling. That's the whole mindset with that beat. [Thug] and Quan was so malleable that damn any beat I threw at them, they can make art out of it. It's like any canvas I gave them, if I told them you put a painting on the wall, they can make the Sistine Chapel. It didn't matter what canvas I gave them, they knocked it out the park.

I [wanted] to throw that Zaytoven…organ roll in there. And I just want to hit em with a bounce that ain't never been heard in music. I love Bangladesh; he's like one of my mentors. I put the little “A Milli” snare [in the beat]. I wanted to throw a whole lot of different cultures in there,knowing that we around Birdman and I'm seeing Birdman every night, I just thought that was a good little head nod.

"Beat It Up" (Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug)

Produced By ProducedByGoose

ProducedByGoose: [“Beat It Up"] was one of the beats that I worked on at the house, but I really didn't have it fully done. And so one day we was at the studio before Quan and Thug pulled up. I'd be in there with the engineers. It was a couple different engineers. So I would just be playing beats or what I'm getting ready to play that night. And so one of my engineer homies was like, “It's done. You don't need to add nothing else to it.” So it was just one of the beats that I had that wasn't done and I finished it up at the studio one of those nights before they got in there and it was one of the special ones.

I was there that night when they did "Beat It Up." Me and Quan did most of our stuff in person, especially back in those days. So it was definitely one of the ones that I brought to the studio and he did it in person. One of the things about Quan, not just for “"Beat It Up," but for every song we did, me and him had so much love because we came in the game together. Whenever I played him beats, he wouldn't ever let the beat get past two or three seconds before. He's just like, “Man, just go and load it up.” Sometimes he wouldn't even want me to play the beat. He trusted me so much with his music and trusted what I was bringing. So it kind of brought a different dynamic when I knew Quan is going to do whatever I play basically. So it's really up to me—what type of vibe I want to set. So "Beat It Up" was one of the ones using that same process.

“Flava” (Young Thug, Birdman, Rich Homie Quan)

Produced by Isaac Flame

Isaac Flame: I remember Thug asking for some rockstar beat. We was in the B room, so I played the “Flava” beat. It was just a loop though. It's not finished. [Thug] was fucking with it. He was like, “Hell yeah, y'all go to the C room, finish that.” I told my boy Goose, add a lead onto it or add something to it. Thug did his part first and then Quan did his part. Birdman did his part later on. After they all did their part, I got a call and they said, “We want to make this a family thing, send the files over so London can do a breakdown on it.” Boom. Send that over. London [on Da Track] did [the breakdown]. When I came back in camp, when I heard London’s part, I was like, “Oh yeah.”

"Tell Em (Lies)”

Produced By: London on Da Track

Dun Deal: Again, when Quan comes on a song, he's got the understanding of what the song is going to be from the Jump. So when he came in with that “ooh,” it felt like it was in the midst of another Rich Gang “Lifestyle” type thing. And then when the drop comes again energy, the energy was unmatched for those songs. It was one of my favorites.

Alex Tumay: “Tell Em” and “Freestyle” were the two of them in the booth at the same time, handing back and forth a pair of headphones and jumping back. They would hear the person rap and they would jump in and immediately they were passing headphones back and forth. So their lines were recorded like that, in order, on the spot.

"Milk Marie" (Rich Homie Quan)

Produced By: Wheezy

Dun Deal: Quan is a very professional. He got the whole song in his head before he goes in there. There’s a difference. Thug is finding the song as he goes; Quan has the song down pat. When he did “Milk Marie,” it was like what he said on the hook is what he went in the booth and did in the first take.

Alex Tumay: I remember [Quan] coming in to play it for us and everybody being like, “Fuck, that's an incredible fucking song.”

"Everything I Got" (Rich Homie Quan)

Produced By: ProducedByGoose

ProducedByGoose: Sometimes when [Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan] used to go out and go to the club we went. But sometimes we would stay back with the engineers making sure the music flow was going on. You got to pre-plan when you're dealing with artists. So it was one of them nights we stayed back, but they went out. [When they got back] “Everything I Got” was the first beat I played for Quan. And I can remember I was in the booth with him. We was in the booth at DARP Studio. They was tired. I remember Quan fell asleep while recording, And I was kind of half asleep too. I remember waking him up like, “Yo, we still recording.” And so he woke up and instantly got on the next bar. He just woke up and was like, “Hey, run that back to the end.” That last bar and just kept going. And he knocked out that record that night. It was one of them records that sounds so good, but he knocked it out at the end of the night. Pulling out the last little energy and melody; you can hear it's a little bit raspy. That's 4 or 5 AM. So seeing him fall asleep and just waking him up and him just snapping right back into it and didn't miss a beat. That showed his greatness.

"Bullet" (Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug)

Produced By: ProducedByGoose

ProducedByGoose: That was one of them times when it was me, Quan, Thug, Isaac—the whole studio. I think it was like a Friday night, and it was one of those beats where they recorded right there in front. Quan kind of went in and did his thing. Thug, I think he did the beginning, the intro part. It was like they both did it at the same time. So it was just cool to see that and vibe out after the song was done, Birdman was in there and just seeing the energy of the studio after hearing them knock that record out. This one of my favorite beats. I love that beat to this day. So that was definitely my favorite on the project.

"Freestyle" (Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug)

Produced by Dun Deal

Dun Deal: I would say [the beat for “Freestyle”] was done probably the same day [as “Givenchy”]. I was just in a mode when I was working. I had that dark, gritty vibe to the beats I was doing at the time. So I was like, this is a good time. Keep it going. I recorded that song. I was always in the studio making sure we were recording the song the right way. And when Rich Homie jumped on there, I was like, “Yeah, this is going to be one of those ones.”

Alex Tumay: Everything was just going with the flow and they rented the room, so it's like, might as well make as much music as possible. But they were hopping in the booth together. They were each starting a song on their own or starting it together. And they went back and forth on the song. They actually were passing the mic back and forth. “Freestyle,” literally, it's like, and “I'm going to hand it off to my brother Thug,” and that's when Thug walked into the studio. It was literally what it sounds like is what it was. I've made thousands of songs. That's the only time I've ever seen it.

"Lifestyle" (Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan)

Producer By: London on Da Track

Dun Deal: I heard it when Thug and Quan got back from Miami and we went to a movie premiere that night altogether and Thug was like, “Hey, you should pull up to [to the Studio]. That's where I'm about to be recording.” And the first thing we did was listen to a few songs they had and “Lifestyle” just hit. Everybody was in there like, “Whoa, that's crazy.” It was an immediate release. It was like they did it, I think it was a week before it got released. It was a single. [They were thinking] we can push this on radio and it'll blow up overnight.

Alex Tumay: I remember hearing it. I think they shot the video and they played the video in the studio and I watched it and I was like, “OK, this is it.” But everything felt like hit. Even the songs that weren't hits felt like hits to me. “Lifestyle” is definitely the song from that era out of all of them. I feel like obviously there's so many music videos for that mixtape, but “Lifestyle” is just a pop smash.

"Pull Up" (Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug)

Produced By: ProducedByGoose, Isaac Flame and Dun Deal

Isaac Flame: “Pull Up” was my first placement. “Pull Up” was the first day, it was December 23, 2013. I think we were only supposed to have a studio with only Young Thug that day. And he ended up pulling up with him and Quan and that’s how that came about. He was like, “Make some beats.” I do the melody, I do some of the percussion, Dun Deal do the drums and the breakdown, and then boom, while I'm playing the beat as I'm working on the beat. The beat wasn't exported out, the beat wasn't done yet. The beat was still in FL Studio, like I'm still working on it, stopping and starting it and with rap, what they can rap and if I stop it or something. It was dope. They was really in on the process. They put the beat in Pro Tools, Dun recorded it. I'm saying we did this at this studio out in Scottsdale, Georgia. It's a drive. It's a drive from Atlanta, but it was worth it. I'll never forget that. That was before Birdman came into play. This is before Rich Gang.

The Birdman

Alex Tumay: He came in a lot and was part of the songs. If he liked the song, he’d run It back 50 times. He'd come in and we'd be working and he'd let us work and then he would hear something shaking. He'd be like, “Run that back, alright, run that back again.” He hopped on some songs. He did his ad-libs on a lot of 'em and had verses on some. He saw the vision. I mean, like I said, it wasn't very, none of us felt very intimidated. We were all just like, let's show what we can do.

ProducedByGoose: For, six, seven months straight, it was Quan, Thug and Birdman in the studio almost every night. He was either in the room with Thug, either in the room with Quan. The studio was just one big workshop. Birdman was there all the time.

It’s almost how you imagine him on TV and how his persona is when you're in the studio with him. He's not really telling them and making them do this. He recognizes one of his strong points is recognizing talent and being able to cultivate talent. So he knows Thug knows how to rock, how he rocks, he knows Quan rocks out how he does. So he lets them do their thing, but just kind of he'll come in, give a little bit of game. Birdman is just a OG. He always made sure to try to guide them to be as big as they could be. Make them bigger than life. I feel like that's always his end goal.

Quan

Isaac Deal: [We would talk about] life bro. Just so much, bro. He was so funny, bro. Just so funny and cool. Quan could just meet you,and he'll tell you that he loves you. He was that honest and genuine love wasn't cringey to him. If he cared for you, if you around and he fuck with you [he would tell you] “I love you, bro. Be safe.” You feel me? Even if he just met you, bro.He always kept his pops involved. He kept his mother involved. He was involved in his family. Every time we spoke, he was always talking about his kids.

Mula: He was just always chill, man. He would just chill while all this chaos was going on. He was probably just the most chill in the room.

Alex Tumay: He's just a really good spirit. He came in[to the studio] the first time smiling, played some songs he was working on. We worked on some stuff. He met Justin, started working on stuff with Justin. Everybody clicked immediately. It was very fluid. I can't even remember exactly meeting him as much as just him walking in and it always felt like we immediately just got to it. There was not a lot of downtime. We played pool sometimes in between songs, but there was not a lot of downtime. We were just like, “Alright, next.” I think how he seems is definitely how he was. He's definitely a very uplifting presence.

Dun Deal: [Quan and Thug] were like brothers. Every time you saw them it was always laughing and being excited about any music that was coming on or anything that they were starting to do. They felt it was feeling good. So that's what I always saw when they were in the studio. Everything just felt good. Him and Thug were feeding off each other a lot and helping each other grow as artists at the time. So it was really cool to watch Thug take certain things from Quan and Quan take certain things from Thug because Quan wasn't really too singy at the time, but he started getting more of melodic off of Thug.

ProducedByGoose: It’s almost just like two friends when you go to school every day with your homeboy, you know what I'm saying? You see your main guy at school, y'all link up what's going on, what the hell you got going, what you had going on today. And it was like a natural friendship.

Isaac Flame: Quan and Thug had a real brotherhood. Thug was roasting Quan's engineer. One day he was like, Hey man, don't tell him about my engineer like that, bro. “Hey bro, don't talk about my engineer like that.” I’ll never forget that day.”

The Legacy

Alex Tumay: Still to this day, I'm so proud of all the work I've done, especially in the beginning. I definitely always want to keep making more music and keep making great music and work for the rest of my life on great music. And I'll forever be excited about the next project and the project after that.. But also, I'm not silly. I know how important that era was for a lot of people, myself included. I was doing Days Before Rodeo literally in the same studio. So those two projects are so fundamental to my career and my life, and I'm so grateful to Metro [Boomin] for putting me in touch with both Thug and Travis [Scott]. Without Metro, I don't have a fucking career. So Metro, Thug, Travis. It’s really their co-sign and they're the ones after that went on to be the biggest fucking acts on the fucking planet. Biggest producer in the world, biggest rappers in the world.

Isaac Flame: You got two of the biggest emerging artists in Atlanta that brought along the biggest black-owned record label, Cash Money—bringing Baby along. No egos. That was monumental in itself. I'm feeling disbelief still taking it all in. I'm still grieving about it. It really hasn't hit me yet. You always have hope [for a reunion]. So realizing that it'll never happen, that right there really hit home. I could picture it now. If we were to have the reunion, oh my God, all of us in the same room again, that would've been epic. That would've been viral. Everybody was a part of that in the same room would've been viral. It’s bittersweet. It's like, “Damn, we did that.” But it's like, “Oh man, my boy gone.” No rekindling, no, none of that. The fire is actually out.

Dun Deal: [Tha Tour Pt. 1] was a chance to do something different. Before that Atlanta had a distinct sound. This was our chance to change it. And I think everybody had that same energy and same mindset from the people that would walk in the sessions and be amazed because I remember before that, it was like “Stoner.” It was a good song but it wasn't like Rich Gang.. And the same thing with “Danny Glover.” “Danny Glover,” was a hard song, but it was still Atlanta and I feel like the Rich Game sound was bigger than Atlanta. It really took over the sound of music and I just remember it being special. I remember seeing how people reacted to it and knowing that we were doing something that's going to change music forever.