On Thursday (Sept.4), Billboard held its annual R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players event. Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith, the CEO and founder of Top Dawg Entertainment, was crowned as the ‘Executive Of The Year.’
Tiffith founded the independent record label in 2004 in Carson, California. TDE has helped launch the careers of industry heavyweights like Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and most recently, Doechii. He took to the Billboard stage with TDE executive Terrence “Punch” Henderson, along with his son, TDE president Anthony “Moosa” Tiffith Jr, by his side before giving a moving speech.
“I like to stay behind the scenes,” he began. “Billboard pulled me out tonight, I got a couple words for y’all. I want to thank Billboard for honoring me with this award, Executive of the Year. I feel like I should’ve won this three, four, five times.” Top continued: “I am low-key, not promoting myself and letting my artists shine, they don’t recognize that. But tonight is that night, this is the MVP trophy of the music industry.”
Top Dawg Entertainment has been on quite a run the past year. Back in June, Kendrick and SZA’s Grand National Tour became the highest-grossing reported co-headline tour ever, according to Billboard’s Boxscore. At the time, they were only halfway through, and the pair had already grossed nearly $256.4 million and sold over 1.1 million tickets.
In February, the label’s newest star, Doechii, won the Grammy for Best Rap Album for her mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal. Released in August 2024, the 19-track project earned critical acclaim and peaked at No.10 on the US Billboard 200. Alligator Bites Never Heal has now been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
During the Grammys ceremony, she gave a moving speech that went viral after a clip of it circulated online: “Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, to tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark, or that you’re not smart enough, or that you’re too dramatic or you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be to be right where you are, and I am a testimony right now.”