The answer took three months. It doesn't make the loss smaller.
## What the report says The Nashville Medical Examiner's Office has disclosed how Tay Keith died, ABC News reported Thursday, September 17, with XXL confirming the details. Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, 29, died of a drug overdose involving "mitragynine, 7-hydroxy mitragynine, mitragynine pseudoindoxyl and ketamine toxicity." Mitragynine is the active compound in kratom, the Southeast Asian leaf sold in smoke shops and gas stations across the South as a pain and energy supplement. The manner of death is listed as accidental.
He was found June 18 in his Nashville apartment after his girlfriend asked police for a welfare check. Police said then that no foul play was suspected. Now the file is closed.
## Who he was If you've been in a club in the last eight years, you know the tag. "Tay Keith, f* these n*** up" runs through BlocBoy JB's "Look Alive," the record that took a Memphis kid from Whitehaven to a Grammy nomination before he was 22. The drums were the point: bounce that came from Memphis crunk and rattled speakers built for it. He produced for Travis Scott, Sexyy Red, and half of Atlanta, and he never left Memphis behind. He kept working with the city.
His family's statement in June asked for privacy and said his legacy would live through "the music he created, the opportunities he provided, and the lives he touched." Sexyy Red and BlocBoy JB were at the funeral in Memphis in July. There's also an open royalties lawsuit in which Sexyy Red has told a judge to remove her and make the label pay him, which is now a question of paying his estate.
## The bigger thing Kratom sits in a legal gray zone: federally unscheduled, banned in a handful of states, sold everywhere else with no dosing standard. 7-hydroxymitragynine, the compound in the report, is the potent one that concentrated products push. It shows up in medical examiner reports more every year, usually mixed with something else, and it almost never comes with a warning label that means anything. That's a public health story the culture hasn't had yet, and it just cost us one of the best drum programmers of his generation.
## The take Tay Keith is on more songs that made you move than most producers will ever be. Play "Look Alive" today. Then read the label on whatever the gas station is selling.
## Sources - Tay Keith's Cause of Death Revealed – Report — XXL, Sept. 17, 2026 - ABC News report on the Nashville Medical Examiner findings — ABC News, Sept. 17, 2026 - Tay Keith's Family Releases Statement After His Sudden Death — XXL, June 2026 - Tay Keith Laid to Rest in Memphis — XXL, July 2026