How Top Dawg Entertainment President Anthony ‘Moosa’ Tiffith Helped Guide Doechii to Global Fame

In the middle of his Grammy Award-­winning 2024 “Not Like Us” music video, Kendrick Lamar posts up with OG executives and artists from his former label, Top Dawg Entertainment, on the patchy lawn outside of the Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. “That moment for me was strong and powerful because here we are, still laughing, joking, like when we were these 16-, 17-year-old kids back in the day,” TDE president Anthony “Moosa” Tiffith recalls. “It feels good when you and all your brothers set out to do something, and then you see everybody succeed at exactly what we set out to do. We all come from one frat, and that’s TDE.”

Moosa, now 37, was introduced to not only this brotherhood but also the broader music business by watching rappers and other creatives including Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, Derek “MixedByAli” Ali and Sounwave pull up to the recording studio, dubbed House of Pain, that his father, TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, built in the backyard of their Carson, Calif., home in 1997. “Music has always been around my family,” he says, citing his great-uncle Michael Concepcion, who managed R&B singer Rome and produced the West Coast Rap All-Stars’ 1990 Grammy-nominated single “We’re All in the Same Gang.” Moosa clicked with ScHoolboy Q and became his road manager in 2011, then eventually “fell into” being his overall manager.

Through the years, he stepped up at the label and his responsibilities increased. “Sometimes you’re getting prepped for something that’s much bigger than you,” he says. In 2022, Moosa was elevated to co-president alongside Terrence “Punch” Henderson and tasked with overseeing TDE’s day-to-day operations on top of managing some of its artists, such as Doechii, ScHoolboy Q, Zacari, Alemeda and in-house producer Kal Banx. “Sometimes I’m in my A&R bag, and then sometimes I’m in a creative bag where I’m overseeing a rollout,” he says.

TDE, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024, remains committed to its artists’ long-term growth and creative autonomy — fostering groundbreaking output that’s often well worth the wait. In March 2024, ScHoolboy Q released Blue Lips, his first studio album in five years, to critical acclaim. And the following August, Doechii released her third mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, which earned the fast-rising star a best new artist Grammy nod and her first Grammy trophy, for best rap album, while yielding two Billboard Hot 100 hits: “Denial Is a River” (which peaked at No. 21) and “Nissan Altima” (No. 73). When Doechii released the mixtape’s extended edition in March, she included “Anxiety,” which hit No. 10, becoming her highest-peaking entry on the chart.

Those achievements represent just some of the widespread recognition Doechii has quickly garnered, from being named Woman of the Year at Billboard Women in Music to winning outstanding music artist at the GLAAD Media Awards. And Moosa played a crucial role in the rise of TDE’s latest star: “This is a project I personally signed, curated, put producers around, put directors around. It feels that much more personal to me with her winning that Grammy,” he reflects. “I knew all the accolades would come, just not the timing of them.”

Moosa has been steadily developing Doechii for the last five years, since one of his young employees sent him a list of artists to check out that included her. He listened to Doechii’s dynamic, autobiographical single “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” and found himself going down a “big rabbit hole” online that included discovering a video of her “doing choreo with two dancers next to her with probably 10 people in the club,” he remembers. “It let me know how serious she took herself. She had a vision right there, probably with no money.” While Doechii’s vision now occasionally demands the big bucks — like her high-concept 2025 Grammy performance — Moosa believes she’s worth banking on: “I got this little saying between me and my general manager, Keaton [Smith]: ‘She hasn’t missed yet.’ ”

Moosa and Doechii have a “super-collaborative and intentional working process,” he explains. He has also been inspired by the relationship between Henderson and SZA, who this year has already topped the Billboard 200 (when SOS’ deluxe LANA edition reinstated it at the top of the chart) and Hot 100 (with Lamar collaboration “Luther,” which she and the rapper performed at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show) and starred in her first feature film, the acclaimed buddy comedy One of Them Days. “These are the things that I want to build with me and Doechii, [putting] her in positions to have that same sort of impact,” he adds.

And even as TDE celebrates the successes of SZA and Doechii, Moosa remains dedicated to maintaining the storied label’s cultural impact and building up its burgeoning, boundary-pushing acts. Rapper Ray Vaughn released his debut mixtape, The Good the Bad the Dollar Menu, in April, and Alemeda’s 2024 debut EP, FK IT, showcased her indie/alt-pop sound, a departure from the label’s rap and R&B bedrock. “When you look across our roster, I try not to sign anybody that’s extremely similar to each other. I’m always looking beyond one or two genres,” Moosa says, adding that he also looks for “authenticity, discipline, work ethic and family dynamics” in new signees. “Every artist that we get, we treat them like family. It’s going to be a close-knit type of thing because that’s how we all came up.”

This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.