Producer & DJ · Brooklyn, New York
TYGAPAW
Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based producer TYGAPAW built Fake Accent as a platform for Black queer nightlife, then landed a 2026 album on Tresor.
TYGAPAW does not talk about techno the way most producers do. Ask about influences and the answer is not a list of tracks, it is a claim about ownership: "Once you find out that techno is created by Black artists, it's like: that's why it calls to me... It literally is our own music." That sentence explains more about the 2026 album on Tresor than any press release could, and it is worth understanding where it comes from before getting to the record itself.
From Kingston to a Post-9/11 Student Visa
TYGAPAW, who uses they/them pronouns, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in the slower, more conservative town of Mandeville. In 2002, at 18, they moved to New York on one of a sharply limited number of Jamaican student visas issued that year, in the aftermath of September 11, to study communication design at Parsons. They earned a BFA in 2006, but the years around it were harder than the degree suggests: undocumented status, bar shifts running 6pm to 4am for $40 a night, and, by their own account, "dark years" with no real room left over for making art.
Ballroom, Not a Genre Chart
The creative turn came through ballroom culture, not a record collection. Hearing Zebra Katz's "Ima Read" was, in TYGAPAW's own words, "game over." Through Andre Singleton and Justin Fulton of The Very Black Project, they started attending Kiki balls and found the producers, MikeQ, LSDXOXO, Byrell The Great, DJ Delish, who reshaped how they thought about rhythm. Before any of that, there had been other projects: My M.O., a synth-pop band with Erika "Enki" Buestami and Katy Walker that released the album Bonfire in 2011, and Kowabunga Tyga, an "attitudinal electro rap" duo with Enki. Enki also taught TYGAPAW to DJ, on Serato controllers, in the mid-2010s.
Building Fake Accent
TYGAPAW founded Fake Accent in 2014 as a monthly club night and creative collective in New York, built specifically for Black and queer nightlife, and later grew it into a label. They went on to co-found Shottas, a platform for queer Caribbean artists, with Chris Udemezue in 2016, and No Badmind alongside it. The recorded output followed a clear arc: Love Thyself EP (2017), Handle With Care EP (2019), and Ode to Black Trans Lives (June 2020), three tracks made with scholar D-L Stewart in direct response to witnessing a Black Lives Matter march and a Black Trans Lives Matter march unfold blocks apart in Brooklyn on the same day. Get Free, the debut album, arrived that November on the Mexico City label N.A.A.F.I., its cover shot by TYGAPAW's then-partner Avion Pearce, with spoken word from Mandy Harris Williams woven through three tracks. Kevin Saunderson later sought TYGAPAW out directly for a remix of E-Dancer's "Banjo."
A Slow Build Toward Tresor
The relationship with Tresor did not start with the 2026 album. TYGAPAW contributed the track "Diffusus" to Tresor's 30th-anniversary compilation in 2021, alongside Juan Atkins, Robert Hood, and Joey Beltram, and followed it with the IMMIGRANT EP in September 2025. Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide, the third studio album, arrived on Tresor on May 8, 2026, ten tracks built during the first years of TYGAPAW's gender transition, a period that also cost them industry bookings. "When you're known professionally to be really excellent at what you do... but then all of a sudden that just gets fucking cut," they told The Quietus. "It's not your ability, it's your 'marketability.'" The title is a self-referential acronym, spelling itself out across the album's ten tracks, which feature Precious Okoyomon, Ms. Carrie Stacks, Juliana Huxtable, SUUTOO, and Khanyisile Mbongwa. Of the label's role, TYGAPAW said: "There's no sanitising of what I want, and that's very ballsy and powerful for a label to empower their artist like that."
FAQ
Who is TYGAPAW?
TYGAPAW is Dion McKenzie, a Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based producer and DJ who uses they/them pronouns. They founded the Fake Accent club night and label in 2014 and released their third studio album, Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide, on Tresor in May 2026.
What is Fake Accent?
Fake Accent is a queer, Black-centered club night and record label TYGAPAW founded in New York in 2014, built as a platform for nightlife communities that mainstream club culture often excludes.
What is TYGAPAW's connection to Tresor?
TYGAPAW's relationship with the Berlin label began with the track "Diffusus" on Tresor's 30th-anniversary compilation in 2021, continued with the IMMIGRANT EP in 2025, and led to their third album, Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide, released on Tresor in May 2026.
What themes does TYGAPAW's music explore?
TYGAPAW's work centers Black queer and trans identity, ballroom and nightlife culture, and techno's Black origins. The 2026 Tresor album was written during the first years of their gender transition and addresses the professional fallout that came with it.
What was TYGAPAW's debut album?
Get Free, released in November 2020 on the Mexico City label N.A.A.F.I., was TYGAPAW's debut full-length, following the Love Thyself, Handle With Care, and Ode to Black Trans Lives EPs.