In terms of chronological, autobiographical narratives, albums don't get more focused than Tory Lanez's I Told You. The Toronto singer/rapper's commercial debut recounts pivotal events in his rise from a 16-year-old kicked out of his grandmother's home in 2008, to an Interscope-signed star, through both skits and song lyrics. The skits form the definite backbone of this narrative, laying every time period, setting, and mood out for the audience with great attention to detail (some have even joked that the album is an "80-minute skit" interrupted by songs), and as you can guess on a lengthy, major-label album, some tracks fail to carry their weight in the storyline. Singles "Say It" and "Luv" in particular, tacked on the end and seeming almost like afterthoughts, contain few details on the ups and downs of Lanez's life.
At times, though, songs on I Told You are audiobook-level achievements in storytelling, powerful snapshots that you know Lanez has been saving for the right moment. Whether he's recounting his initial grind, lowest moment, or big break, Lanez is detailed and impassioned in his construction of these songs-as-origin-stories. For this list, we're not judging songs on their quality, only for their importance to his overall narrative-- the more detailed, the better. He does manage to weave the more relationship-themed R&B song into the storyline quite skillfully, but these five are used as more than just means of convincing some doubter that he can make good music.
I Told You/Another One
After a skit of Tory's grandma lambasting him for pursuing music and eventually kicking him out of her house kicks off the album, we immediately launch into "I Told You," an origin story that doesn't hesitate to place us right in the scene:
"It's the year 2008, I'm getting kicked up out the crib
Steady contemplating where the fuck I'm 'bout to live
Mama died same year my sister had the kid
It was either feed the fam or get killed"
Lanez proceeds to put all four members of his family up under one roof, and to survive and pay the bills, he begins to sell weight. He goes "Kristi Yamaguchi with the dope," but also "stupid with the flow," balancing his main source of income with studio time and even some shows. Lanez's confidant tone only increases on the song's second half, "Another One," where he's hanging with "thugs, dealers, plugs, killers, and slugs." Mentions of him and his family getting evicted out of their Brampton residence, as well as his plug getting shot six times slightly weigh down his exuberance, but with survival as the one and only goal, he concludes the song on a more positive note than it began:
"Ten below on you hoes, getting dough on you folks
Getting dough on these fours, getting money and shows
These checks are looking silly, I'm getting funny on hoes
Funny how I'm stuntin' in somethin' flooded tin stones
Put them honeys on hold, put them runners on go
Secure the bag"
4 AM Flex
After "Guns & Roses" somewhat nonspecifically describes Lanez's relationship with the girl he was living with in 2009, "Flex" deals in stereotypical stunting, and "To D.R.E.A.M." informs us of the goals he still had yet to accomplish, I Told You's fifth song gets back to the nitty gritty. We kick off with an explanation to a girlfriend about Lanez's late-night pursuits, and how they lead him to link with her at an insanely late hour. This girl is with it in every way possible, knowing how "to read if the lick good," and even throwing "her own 4 in the mixture," the perfect partner-in-crime Tory needed at this dangerous point in his life.
After a brief interlude that sets the scene for the titular "flex," namely the robbery of a dude named Chino's house, we launch into live-action lick-hitting commentary reminiscent of Kendrick Lamar's "The Art Of Peer Pressure" and YG's "Meet The Flockers." Chino discovers Lanez and his companions when they're inside the house, and things go awry:
"The nigga that we just robbed popped one in his shoulder
It led to me pulling over, to checking and telling him dawg
Just take the passenger seat and I'll hit the road
Cause it's way too many police out here to feel like we low
My back windshield broke and the driver seat soaked
From the blood that was previously leaking from his coat"
As he rushes his injured friend to safety, he has to juggle police evasion and his own personal safety with his girl, who's suddenly not so chill. "My phone blingin' 'cause my girl at home clingin'," he raps, foreshadowing her annoyance with him during a phone conversation in the next skit. His bro opts to jump out of the car before the hospital, and his relationship is beginning to sound strained. At the end of "4 AM Flex," this chapter of Lanez's life doesn't seem long for this world.
Dirty Money
After patching things up with his girl over the course of "Friends With Benefits," "Cold Hard Love," and "High," Tory's informed that in retaliation for the robbery at Chino's house, some dudes shot one of his little homies. Enter "Dirty Money," the revenge anthem. "The wolves come out at night," he announces, after learning of the irreparable strain this cash has left on the lives of him and his friends. What follows is one part promise that the money will never change him ("Touchin' millions ain't gon' change where we came from"), one part threat to rivals ("Got this 30 and my young n*gga 'bout it"), and one part mo money, mo problems realization ("When you start to get commas, that's when they want to fuck with you").
"Dirty Money" is more than just a retaliation to the specific incident of Lanez's friend getting shot, it's an ode to the ups and downs of getting money the wrong way, from wearing Fendi and Chanel to seeing your friend Speedy get arrested right after a video shoot. That being said, it closes out with a skit that gets us back to the narrative at hand, with Tory and two friends shooting up their rivals. Afterwards, the friends are unrepentant and even gleeful about what they've just done, while Lanez feels "some type of way about this shit." He concludes with an update on his overall well-being:
"I know I was in too deep, things was just getting out of control. My lifestyle... it was creating a conflict between my girl and my music. At that point I had to let some things go and learn to love from a distance."
Question Is
In an interview with Power 106 earlier this year, Lanez described "Question Is" as the "deepest" track on his forthcoming debut, and now that it's here, that description holds up. It doesn't get more personal than the opening line, "My shorty had an abortion for me like 3 times," which kicks off a verse in which 23-year-old Lanez wonders if he'll ever actually have kids. Giving life is paired with taking it away, which he says "ain't the way of life," echoing his unease in the previous skit and informing a personal transformation that's the emotional climax of the album.
After asking his girl for forgiveness on the hook, he addresses his absentee father in the second verse:
"Hopped off the phone with my dad, niggas barely do speak
But I'm sending Western Union wires every two weeks
I got a brand new brother and sister that I never do see
He might call to send me a blessing and tell me do me
But shit, I been doin' me since 14"
Lanez drops out of school, has a falling out with one of his closest friends, and has to continue hustling. By the time we get to the interlude, his girl is so fed up with his behavior that she ignores his pleas and walks "away from the situation." He's left with "less than a dollar and a dream," but then...
Loners Blvd.
Concluding the three-song run that contains the bulk of I Told You's narrative, "Loners Blvd." begins as depressing as its title sounds, but then provides the first non-romantic glimmer at the end of the tunnel for Lanez's struggle. We find him tossed off a high school sports team and spending his last buck on a Dollar Menu bite to eat at the song's start, but then something changes when he meets N-RIMES, a rapper and producer who put him on a few years back. He's then in the studio, getting a ride with his aunt to his first show, and dreaming bigger than ever, his ambition the clear key to his success.
By verse two, he's a few mixtapes deep, but nothing's hitting until he meets his current manager, who's also the founder of SXSW's legendary Illmore party:
"Then I meet a guy named Sascha , he tells me he's thinkin' 'bout takin' up management
Say he got a million dollar empire on his mind, he just need an artist to plan it with
He also say he throw shows out in Texas and maybe I should open up for one
Then I say 'Cool man' he books me the next flight out like I'm showin' up for somethin'"
That's not the end of it though, as Lanez says his first out-of-town show was a complete disaster:
"I lay down Houston around nine, warehouse live
It was my worst show ever
Niggas damn near got booed off stage
I performed like my first show ever
Women in the crowd wouldn't scream for a nigga
Nigga's in the crowd they were kotched up down
Bad enough niggas let Bun B watch
But I felt like I let Sascha down, this shit was live on stage dog
That night felt like a nigga had the whole world on my shoulders
Twenty years old tryna find a warm spot in this world gettin' colder
Then he came to me like, "Dog, I could put money on this, bet a hundred on this"
Gives me a few tips for the next night
Setlist and says, "Dog you gonna run on this" and it all works out"
This verse is one of the most detailed come-up tales we've heard recently, and really puts us in Tory's shoes to give us a taste of a struggling artist's life. Interscope soon comes calling, but it's telling that he grants his come-up with Sascha an entire verse, and only an interlude to his major label deal, which seems to have yielded the less narrative-driven part of I Told You.