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Bryson Tiller performs onstage as a special guest of Drake during day one of Wireless Festival 2025 at Finsbury Park on July 11, 2025 in London, England.
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Key Takeaways
- Tiller admits he’s willing and ready to leave music if game design or another endeavor can support his family.
- He’s studied game development for five years and is building one called Brutal Industry.
- The game draws from his personal experiences in the music industry, blending anime, voice acting, and storytelling.
Bryson Tiller loves his fans, but he’s willing to give up life as an artist for the next best thing. Whether that be penning hits for his peers or launching a career in video game design, he is serious about making an exit plan. The vocalist is currently on the road with Chris Brown for the “Breezy Bowl XX Tour” and prepping his next album, the double feature Solace & The Vices, for release some time in the near future.
But in his sit-down for the Aug. 21 episode of the “Rory & Mal” podcast, he candidly spoke about not quite wanting to be in the spotlight. “I really only do it to feed my family and take care of people,” he began. “Like, being an artist right now — and it took me a long time to really get my money right and figure s**t out, and now I’m straight, and my family [is] straight — but for a minute, I was, like, really struggling there, like, trying to get it back and figure out what the hell I was going to do,” Tiller explained.
The Louisville, Kentucky, native catapulted to superstardom with the hit single “Don’t” from his 2015 LP T R A P S O U L. Since then, he has been a music chart mainstay with songs like Brown’s “It Depends,” “Wild Thoughts” with DJ Khaled and Rihanna, and Drake’s “Outta Time,” to name a few.
He told the hosts, “If Drake called me tomorrow and said, ‘Aye bro, like, just write for me’ … whatever, whoever, Chris… all these people, like, I would stop being an artist right away.” But his decision to hang up the mic could also look like a huge pivot into the tech space, too.
“I’m working on a game right now — I’ve been studying game design for, like, five years,” revealed the three-time Grammy nominee. He continued, “Granted, I’m not doing it really for the money, but like the moment I have some success and something else that can feed my family the same way I’m feeding my family right now… I’m done being an artist… Every time I release some stuff, it eats away at me, like it’s a huge energy pull, no matter if it’s received well… I just don’t like being talked about, to be honest… I don’t like being in the public… even if it’s good.”
Inside Brutal Industry, Bryson’s game confronting the music industry
Tiller’s deep dive into gaming isn’t just a hobby for him. It’s a project where he gets to unleash unfiltered thoughts and feelings about his trials and tribulations in music. “You [the player] are the protagonist in the game, and you get to experience the things [that] you will experience in the music industry,” he said, adding, “I put a lot of my real pain and suffering into it… I kind of just f**k with the player a little bit. So, I’m really excited about it. I’m doing a lot of voice acting in it… It’s anime… there’s music attached to it. I got a lot of dope plans.”
As Solace & The Vices nears release and Brutal Industry takes shape, fans are witnessing an artist in full evolution.
