Lil TJay – Leaked (mp3 download)
Lil TJay dropped a new song called Leaked. Born Tione Merritt, Lil Tjay has always called 183rd Street in the Bronx home. That’s not too far from the birthplace of hip-hop, though Tjay’s relationship with the genre’s history is minimal. Tjay and his two younger siblings were raised by his mother in a roomy apartment, and he describes himself as the problem child of the family. In middle school, he began to get into fights and pull off petty robberies. His mother was shocked. “In the house, I would never curse,” he says, “but then I would go outside and be like, ‘What’s up my nigga?’ and smoke a blunt.”
In 2016, when Tjay was 15, he was sentenced to a year in a youth detention center for a robbery. (He declined to talk about the robbery in detail, and since he was a juvenile when it occurred, under New York State law, his court records are sealed.) Going back to his days in middle school, Tjay had become accustomed to two- and three-month bids, but the year sentencing was a reality check. While incarcerated, Tjay began to write lyrics and think on a new direction for himself.
Tjay dropped his first EP, No Comparison, on SoundCloud. But that’s not enough. Unlike many of his peers, who move from video to video, loosie to loosie, with a freewheeling quickness, Tjay is obsessed with longevity. “I won’t drop an album until it’s perfect,” he says. “A lot of albums got two or three singles but the rest is caca. I want every song on it to be a hit. My whole life I wanted something more—I didn’t get here just to be broke at 28. I have plans: vocal lessons, dance lessons, on some Usher shit.”
Check out his new song Leaked.