Police recover TDE engineer's stolen hard drive containing $1 million in music
Derek “MixedByAli” Ali is reportedly “very, very happy.”
Hawthorne, Calif. police have recovered a hard drive stolen from the car of Derek “MixedByAli” Ali, the resident sound engineer of Top Dawg Entertainment. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the device contained more than $1 million worth of original music.
The site reports that, on December 7, two men broke into Ali’s BMW i8 outside the Equinox gym on Rosecrans Avenue. Detectives arrested Jonjairo Espinoza, 23, the next day upon finding his fingerprint on Ali’s car door. They had investigated two addresses linked to Espinoza and found his own white car in Hacienda Heights where they pulled him over and arrested him before driving away. The hard-drive was in Espinoza’s car.
Hawthorne police Lt. James Royer said, “I don’t think he knows what he had.”
He added about Ali, “He is very, very happy.”
Ali has previously won a Grammy for producing Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. He is currently nominated for two new awards next year: Album of the Year for Lamar’s DAMN. and Record of the Year for “HUMBLE.”