Khris Riddick-Tynes Is Building for Legacy

Khris Riddick-Tynes is one of the busiest names in entertainment. The multihyphenate co-wrote and co-produced SZA's "Snooze," the 2024 Grammy-winning Best R&B Song and one of the most-streamed R&B records of the decade, as well as Kehlani's "Folded," her biggest solo chart moment to date. Recently, he joined the ultra-popular Netflix series Forever as the Executive Music Producer for the upcoming second season.

Not only is Riddick-Tynes an acclaimed producer with a wealth of credits under his belt, ranging from Kehlani and SZA to Drake and Ariana Grande, but he also earned his J.D. while producing some of the biggest songs in the world and formerly working as an executive, as SVP and co-head of Arista Records.

For the two-time Grammy Award winner, great records begin with vision. Long before he became the executive producer of Kehlani’s self-titled 2026 album, and after years of helping shape her creative orbit, he already understood the kind of artist she could become. By the time the project arrived as her fifth studio album, that long-view approach had paid off: the album marked a major moment in her catalog and was widely framed as a statement release, with Riddick-Tynes helping guide its sound and direction from the inside out.

In conversation with Newsweek, the Grammy-winning hitmaker breaks down intention, mentorship, and what it takes to make R&B feel timeless.

“I think the first thing is, you know, intention, do we have the same intention, which is to make timeless music, right, and to make music that people feel, and also to win?” Riddick-Tynes says.

That balance between emotional depth and clear ambition sits at the center of how he talks about the album. For him, executive producing is not simply about assembling tracks. It is about helping an artist step fully into who they already are, then building a body of work sturdy enough to hold that truth.

The Vision Behind a Self-Titled Statement

Self-titled projects tend to signal clarity, identity, and arrival, and Kehlani fits that tradition. Released in April 2026 and executive produced by Riddick-Tynes, the project followed 2024’s Crash while carrying forward the momentum of “Folded,” the breakthrough record he co-wrote and co-produced with her and Leon Thomas.

Riddick-Tynes makes clear that this album did not come together through random chemistry or one-off studio luck.

“This is years of conversations between the two of us,” he says. “This isn’t just like, hey, come do an album, and let’s just make it happen.”

In his telling, the work was rooted in alignment: getting the artist and the executive on the same page, agreeing on the destination, and ensuring that every collaborator, writing choice, and production decision supported the bigger picture.

Building Cohesion in the Studio

The sense of cohesion comes up repeatedly in the way he describes the process. “It was all about cohesion,” he says, explaining that the team studied the greats and paid attention to the connective tissue that made classic albums endure.

In his view, the best R&B projects are not loose collections of good songs. They are worlds in and of themselves. They have emotional logic, sonic consistency, and a point of view that listeners can feel even before they can explain it.

Inside the studio, that meant doing homework and connecting with the greats of R&B, likening it to NBA players training with Hall of Famers.

“We set out to do was to get with the greats, get with our Hakeem Olajuwons, and sit and listen and study and figure out how to write these songs that felt that fed the soul,” he says, citing lessons pulled from conversations, close listening, and a deep respect for R&B’s architecture. Chord progressions, drum feel, vocal placement, lyrical specificity: none of it was accidental.

The goal was not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, but a contemporary album built with the same level of craft that defined the records they grew up on.

Riddick-Tynes is not solely a builder of soundscapes, but he’s also become quite the real estate developer, which explains why he talks about music like an architect. He sees songwriting, production, and executive work as different expressions of the same instinct: building something from nothing.

“It all starts with having a vision when there’s nothing,” he says. “I have to get up every day and create something that no one sees, no one hears, and no one believes, until it’s there.”

Whether he is designing a record or thinking through space and structure more broadly, the principle is the same: study what makes the great work great, then apply those lessons with precision and taste.

Mentorship, Strategy, and Staying Power

Riddick-Tynes cites Babyface as a foundational influence, especially in navigating the space between artist and executive.

“Always listen,” he says, summing up one of the biggest lessons he took from him. It sounds simple, but in practice, it means resisting ego, listening to what an artist is actually trying to say, and solving the right problem rather than imposing the loudest answer. For someone responsible for both songs and strategy, that skill is invaluable.

It also helps explain the unusual range of his career. Riddick-Tynes is as comfortable discussing publishing, ownership, and long-term positioning as he is discussing melody. He graduated in 2022 from LMU Loyola Law School’s JD Evening Program, a move that reflected how seriously he takes both the business and creative sides of music. He has also said that combining legal expertise with creative ideas makes him “unstoppable.”

According to Riddick-Tynes, law school sharpened his thinking about leverage, language, and ownership, while also reinforcing the discipline required to move between creative and corporate spaces. In his view, studying for his J.D. while building in music was part of the same larger mission: understanding how ideas become assets, how rights are protected, and how artists can be better positioned for the long term.

That experience gave him another layer of fluency-not just in making records, but in understanding the structures that determine what happens to them after they leave the studio.

Making Music That Lasts

For all of his technical language, though, he ultimately comes back to feeling.

“If it makes you feel something, and really feel something, and it’s not just a vibe, it’s going to stay,” he says. That distinction-between a record that sounds good in the moment and one that lives inside listeners for years-is the standard he keeps returning to.

The mantra of intentionality extends into everything else he is building, from mentoring younger writers and artists through No Chaser to expanding into television and his architectural efforts across California. But his comments on Kehlani make one thing especially clear: behind the charts, accolades, and credits is someone deeply invested in craft. For Riddick-Tynes, the point is not simply to be everywhere. It is to be intentional everywhere.

2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 2:00 PM.