The Rapper Who Lied His Way To Stardom (Lil Tecca)

how does a habitual liar secure a spot in a genre where realness is everything lka is an exception to the rule when it comes to how being exposed as a fraud can quite literally end your career given that he's openly admitted to lying in songs about topics like girls guns and fancy cars I don't do like multiple girls you feel me like I rather just like one I don't have no straps for nobody I don't even drive you'd expect that the hip-hop Community would give him the same treatment that they gave to rappers like C J tekashi 69 or even slim Jesus back in 2015 however considering that his latest project outsold notable figures such as quo and lo yotti lka clearly discovered a successful formula that his predecessors were unable to do it's your boy Lea and today we're going to be investigating how Lil tekka became Hip Hop's most successful hypocrite but before we get there let's take a look at his come up and as you'll see he lived a life that was completely different than what he would eventually start to rap about B born Tyler Justin Anthony sharp in Queens New York Tekk may have been born in one of Hip Hop's hotpots but eventually he moved to the comfort of Long Island by the seventh grade as a result he didn't make a name for himself rhyming in a cipher or on the street corner like many other New York rappers instead much like other famous cap rap specialist WB and namir his first experience as a rapper came over a gaming headset how'd you get into actually making music it was on some Xbox [ __ ] we was um like roasting each other and then I was like I don't want to roast you on Xbox no more I'm going to roast you on Soundcloud after that he started spinning in real life and got himself taken to the principal's office in the process after that I um started dissing people in school and then my guidance counselor found out and then I deleted all the diss tracks although he was initially rapping just to poke fun at his friends making diss tracks helped Tekk understand the power of punchline and also the importance of exaggerating to get a response out of an audience nonetheless Tek knew that from the very moment he started rapping that he wanted to make a living off it I just felt like I had to go crazy like I felt like I a I ain't had no space to leave nothing on the table like had to take that opportunity for real for real despite the fact that he was barely a teenager techko was laser focused on achieving his goals and just didn't realize how fast he would be ushered onto the world stage as a young kid I already knew what I wanted to do so I was 14 feeling like all the people at the top are 20 whatever in 10 years I'm going to be 24 they're going to be something out the door I definitely didn't see it happening the exact way it happened after steadily building a name for himself in Long Island everything would change when he dropped a little Track by the name of Ransom in a song where he expressed how he had twin Glocks for his Ops this track catapulted Tekk to overnight stardom however it was lyrics like these that would also cause him some trouble down the road but at first nobody except himself believed that the song would actually become a hit it was one of my favorite songs when I made it as soon as I made it I was telling everyone in the studio this is this is the one but everyone was saying did it again was going one that day I'm saying Ransom at just 16 years old Tekk already knew when he had a hit on his hands and when Ransom dropped it instantly put him on everyone's radar after Cole Bennett took a chance on the unsigned artist the track became the fourth most successful song in the history of the lyrical lemonade Channel up there with the likes of Eminem and juiceworld and as of June 2022 it has since garnered over a billion streams on Spotify as well even crazier it peaked at number four on the charts which took Tekk from being an absolute nobody into a territory that even rappers who've been doing this for decades can only imagine no one including Tekk and his manager expected it was going to blow up like that or even land him a record deal the week after we dropped Ransom I just got a random call like hello who's this and I was like this is Alex from billboard magazine I was calling to get information about little tekka because we have charting here with Ransom I think I found out in the morning and my mom told me have there been label interests for a fact a bidding war broke out and just a really hectic 48 72 hours when the time was right time suddenly Tekk had the world's attention with his smooth flow and evident talent for Melody the only problem that he had was that as far as lyrical content went there was nothing authentic about them as rappers often do when they come out the gate lka insisted that his music was 100% him in an interview with DJ booth saying doing me is just how it should be if it's not like that then there's something wrong however it became clear that tekk's interpretation of doing him was different from the typical definition in the rap game instead of rapping what his real life was like on Long Island tekk's attempt at doing him came from emulating the lyrical content of his influences Chief Keef is like M rapping look cool to me like it was it was so different it was like the first of that type of [ __ ] like I don't give a [ __ ] we just doing this [ __ ] on the internet basically Tekk was cosplaying as a thug in his bars while living a completely different lifestyle outside of the studio soon this would complicate the discussion about his position in hip-hop and whether he even deserved a spot in the first place to the extent that he contemplated quitting before fully establishing himself thankfully that never happened and soon after he did an interview on genius's YouTube channel where TKO would do something that would alter the entire trajectory of his career however unlike our videos on CJ and slim Jesus this interview seemed to do more good than it did bad taking one look at Tekk back then complete with braces glasses and his General energy it was probably easy to tell that he wasn't doing dirt in the streets like he said in his lyrics in fact even as Ransom took off this was one of the main criticisms that he faced when the video dropped on lyrical lemonade such as this comment that got 30,000 likes saying why Teka looked like an uncomfortable 13-year-old who went to a party with his older brother and is scared to ask to leave most rappers Lamborghinis and Grill L Tekk braces and golf carts people always have their opinions but people were first alerted to Tekk lying in a major way when he hopped on genius to discuss Ransom in June of 2019 now most artists appear on genius to give the deeper meaning behind their lyrics while simultaneously hoping to reach a broader audience but for Tekk he literally went on there to reveal that he never even held a firearm despite all the gun toing talk on his records I got two twin GL turn into a dance I don't have no straps for nobody I don't got no straps this small but hilarious clip went viral leading to the interview becoming one of the most viewed videos on the genius channel so when he returned to the platform to discuss his song did it again he went even further and completely revealed the truth to his audience in a way that's not often seen on genius I got a pack H him and do it again [ __ ] I'm [ __ ] a friend I have a girlfriend I don't have no young ladies don't DM me l i a took one again crash Ferrari so I ho in the band I don't even try Drive I don't even know how to drive that's dead talking about fashion and firearms that he never even touched Tekk was unsurprisingly trolled for all the capping with people struggling to believe just how blatant he was about it as news of Tekk admitting his own lyrics were fake began to circulate some fans started viewing him as a representation of what's wrong with rap hey don't let that little T [ __ ] convince y'all that it's cool to cap in your raps the world needs more genuine [ __ ] we got enough cap on the charts hip hop has just turned into who can cap the most Lil Tekk was talking about driving foreign cars when he ain't even have a license but in tekk's defense he wasn't just doing this one minute then backtracking the next to try and save face instead he leaned into it and tried to make his audience feel stupid for being bothered by what he was doing having a gun don't make anyone gangster so rapping about guns don't make you want to be gangster you just rapping about guns like I rap about [ __ ] [ __ ] and I have a whole girl I ain't [ __ ] none of these [ __ ] period if you don't like what I'm talking about go listen to someone else it's that simple and another interview Tekk claimed that he can do the things he's rapping about he just chooses not to do them and that he just wants to rap and make the music he likes even with his expose on himself tekk's 2019 I love you mixtape was massively successful and landed at number four on the Billboards even with no features other than juice World hopping on the remix to Ransom but as he was experiencing the greatest success of his life at the age of 17 Tekk felt the pressure to the point where he almost gave up he hinted that he might quit just 3 months after the song's relase and a tweet where he wrote I love y'all [ __ ] won't be continuing as long as y'all thought there's like 30 other rappers that sound just like me y'all will be good suddenly faced with adjusting to fame before he was even 18 as well as being trolled by critics who felt that him living a lie in his music meant that it was invalid Tekk clearly found out the hard way of what it's like dealing with too much success at such a young age but when it came to deceiving his audience he really shouldn't have worried because while previous generations would have found that to be offensive the sales and the support before he got online showed that his fans didn't really care in fact they found it refreshing for instance in a readit post discussing how Lil tekka admitted to capping on every song Some users claim that this was the main reason they like Tekk specifically for how he doesn't give a [ __ ] this was backed by another comment reading Tekk is the realest rapper he straight admits he never shot anyone and he just says stuff that sounds good on tracks I don't see how that makes him fake could he rap about stuff that he actually does yes but who wants to hear about a 16y old playing GTA shooting hoops and doing homework all day as Tekk continued to drop music and featured on tracks from internet money among others he had been so successful that he chose to reject being on the double XL freshman list in 2020 because he already outpaced it now you may think that tekka was being a bit too fool of himself here and that these type of results would either stagnate or drop off eventually however if we compare how his music has aged in comparison to his peers like low pump smoke per or ybn nir you'll see that Tekk is miles ahead of them Tekk released two albums in 2019 and while they performed similarly and kept his name in the conversation they didn't have the same impact as his debut project this could have easily been perceived as a fallof or that he wasn't as good as he once was because historically child stars don't really stick around rappers like low pump popped off at 17 and by the end of 2020 he was pretty much already irrelevant plus Tekk had that reputation as a liar hanging over him but while someone like Lil pump had fallen off because people got sick of him Tekk did the smart thing and took a step along the way he leveled up his mindset and found out how to turn his weakness into strengths after his project we love you Tekk 2 dropped in August of 2021 the Long Island rapper kept a pretty low profile aside from an occasional feature here and there not much was known about his next move that is until almost out of nowhere he proved that all that time away hadn't been wasted when he dropped the song titled 500 lb and this song went pretty hard gaining nearly 13 million views in Just 4 months a pretty impressive stat for a non-mainstream rapper and straight away his fans were happy to welcome him back the first track to drop from his new project Tech the Press Run for the album stressed that while other rappers from his class stay static or refus to evolv he actively took time to hone in on his skill set when you practice and care about your craft you get better over time even if I thought I was good a year ago looking back now I'm way better now I'm way better at speaking about what I'm going through and actually translating it in a way to where it's inviting people into my world instead of just blurting information at people like yo I'm sad right now yo I'm happy I just bought a Gucci bag although he may have been a frequent liar his delivery showed a clear awareness of his exaggeration making it difficult for many people to become upset about it while other rappers of his era have plummeted out of the world's view Tekk made a strong comeback and a lot of that comes down down to how he's emphasized growth can't be on the same [ __ ] that I've been on since a young kid like so definitely expect some some growth on there definitely expect some more talking about the topic not talking around the topic like a lot of confidence on there for sure judging by the fact that he still amassed over 1 billion streams in 2023 alone Tekk is seemingly going nowhere and is content with his position in the game he's no longer fixated on spinning the block toing Glocks in his music videos or that he wants people to test his gangster like many other rappers we discussed recently instead he explicitly states that his sole focus is on work while other rappers boast about being outside Tekk is content in door in fact his childhood stardom has accelerated his maturity Beyond his years every time I be getting invited outside like a party or something like that I'm like bro I'm going to be blessed when I'm 35 and chilling on my yacht just thinking about all the time I sacrificed when I was 20 I don't really care to be party with I don't like them anyway I've been introduced to a lot of [ __ ] that a lot of people are excited by in their 30s when I was a young so right now I look at all that [ __ ] and I'm like bro that's boring I don't want to go to the club and spend a bunch of money on bottles that's boring let's do some other [ __ ] let's make some money you trying to spend money with the tech album out selling projects from huge rappers like quo and loow yotti with 41,000 units the 21-year-old has proven that gaining success Beyond Your Wildest Dreams at a young age isn't a death sentence and even today he's still openly capping in his raps I don't think nobody know nobody with 500 lb if you got 500 lb I I don't know if I trust you that's a lot of stuff 500 rounds I don't know if I trust you either Against All Odds Tekk hasn't just survived but he's thrived to the point that young listeners today actually see him as an inspiration because of his maturity and how he's outlasted other rappers in his position I just love watching Tekk interviews and the way he expresses himself I learned a lot from him Tekk seems so comfortable as he's grown as an artist happy for him and love the album thrown into the spotlight at the age of 16 Tekk had to grow up fast so it's it's not surprising that he ventured down a risky path one that he might have not escaped unscathed in earlier Generations but whether you love him or hate him Tekk is ultimately past caring what people think and through that kind of self-belief there is the freedom to do anything it's okay for people to not understand who I am and not care to understand who I am at that everybody don't like chicken everybody don't like bacon egg and cheese everybody don't like what you like and I also understand that about myself too and even if I try to explain myself to the world there it going to be someone like I don't care if you understand me it is what it is and that's that like if somebody says I'm 5'2 on Twitter or something I'm not going to be like in the reply like bro there's my ID I'm not going to care I'm going scroll pass and like go order some food I don't care done making apologies or trying to prove himself to anyone tekk's career prospects are looking incredibly healthy so whether you want him to win or you'd rather that the years he spent capping came back to haunt him it looks like he's not disappearing anytime soon

Channel: Louaista

Views: 152,780

Keywords: hip hop, canvas, canvas man, louaista

Id: ZetcuO4mfAM

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024