The Twilite Tone

The Twilite Tone serves as the main performing identity for Anthony Khan, a Chicago native born in 1971 who has earned Grammy nominations as a producer, musician, vocalist, and DJ. Deeply embedded in the city’s hip-hop and house communities since the late 1980s, Khan maintained a long-term creative partnership with Common that encompassed extensive production work throughout the 1990s; later collaborations extended to Kanye West, John Legend, Gorillaz, and My Brightest Diamond. His first full-length solo project arrived in 2020 with the album The Clearing, which fuses synth-funk, instrumental hip-hop, fractured house, and science-fiction motifs.

Jazz bassist Richard Davis is Khan’s cousin, while his uncle Hassan Khan was briefly married to Chaka Khan in the early 1970s. During grade school Khan studied trumpet and percussion; in high school he served as drum leader of the band. Toward the close of the 1980s he teamed with producer Ernest Dion Wilson, later known as No I.D., and rapper Lonnie Rashid Lynn, later known as Common, to form the hip-hop trio C.D.R. Khan and Wilson additionally issued house music under the name 1015.

Under the Twilite Tone moniker Khan handled production on nearly every track of Common’s 1992 debut album Can I Borrow a Dollar?, issued while the rapper performed as Common Sense. Khan’s initial recorded vocal performance appeared on Common’s 1993 B-side “Can-I-Bust.” He continued contributing to Common’s follow-up releases Resurrection (1994) and One Day It’ll All Make Sense (1997), using the alias Ynot. In 1999 he produced the rap track “Get the Doe Theme,” and he sustained an active DJ career that included mixing a promotional CD for The Fader Magazine in 2002.

Following his move to New York, Khan supplied two tracks for Wu-Tang Clan member U-God’s 2009 album Dopium. He issued several dance singles under the name Great Weekend, then delivered the left-field house EP Mean Machine—credited to Great Weekend Presents the Twilite Tone—through UNO in late 2011. Khan co-produced and co-wrote material for Kanye West’s 2012 GOOD Music compilation Cruel Summer, among them the Grammy-nominated, double platinum-certified single “Mercy,” as well as Big Sean’s 2013 album Hall of Fame and John Legend’s Grammy-nominated full-length Love in the Future. He also contributed to “Nosetalgia,” the Pusha T track featuring Kendrick Lamar that appears on My Name Is My Name.

In 2015 the Twilite Tone created “Put the Guns Down,” an anti-violence recording that includes verses from multiple Chicago rappers such as Common, Noname, Saba, and G Herbo. That same year he released the Ubiquity single “Special High,” a tribute to the 1980s funk studio project Twilight. The Twilite Tone’s 12-inch single “Taxi Cab Confessions” followed in 2016. Khan co-produced every song on Gorillaz’s 2017 album Humanz, including the Grammy-nominated single “Andromeda” featuring DRAM. He likewise co-produced My Brightest Diamond’s 2018 album A Million and One. In 2020 the Twilite Tone joined the Stones Throw roster and issued his genre-blurring debut solo album The Clearing.