Recently I got to meet up with one of our homegrown artists, Tory Lanez, when he stopped in Montreal for Osheaga weekend. The rapper has been laying low in terms of press and media since delivering his debut album a year ago, I Told You. While you probably haven't seen the Toronto-born but Miami-based rapper in an interview lately, he has been keeping his fans' appetites whet by delivering more of his classic freestyles takes, not to mention spoon-feeding tidbits about his second studio album directly to the fans through social media.
The weekend following Osheaga, Tory had an even more exciting weekend (sorry Montreal), when he shared the stage with Drake at Toronto's OVO Fest. It's safe to say the pieces are quickly falling in place, to build up even more anticipation for a sophomore album roll out.
During our Montreal meet-up, Tory Lanez and I broached a number of industry-related topics, but the primary one amongst fans is probably sophomore album talk. We're rolling out a short piece from that today, with the full 40-minute sit-down arriving at the top of next week.
Tory recently teased on twitter that his second album will contain zero samples, but will contain features. This is in stark contrast to his debut, and thus already sets our expectations for a different direction-- different doesn't necessarily equate to better, but Tory clearly says that his sophomore will be better than his debut during our interview.
When reflecting on his debut, and any takeaways he gained with the perspective of the past year behind him, Tory tells us,
"It was cool, my problem with it...I wouldn't even say my problem with it, because I love that album, I still will always call it classic because of what it is, my thing with I Told You when I listened back to it, it was nothing to really dance to, and when I say dance I don't mean necessarily get up and pop-lock, I mean it was nothing that made you like...Like I'll play this at a party, it was only the two singles that came out."
"But now, for the second album, I'm glad I did that [on I Told You], cause there's so many different things I can do this time."
Will there be more rappin' Tory, in that case? "There's a lot of bars on this, for sure...It's definitely not I Told You." Elsewhere he draws an interesting comparison of his sophomore to one of his mixtapes, and a fan-favorite one at that, Conflicts of My Soul.
"This album will be something different for you to love in a different way [than I Told You]."
Are you excited for the direction of Tory's sophomore effort, based off what we know so far? Check back with us next week for the full interview, where we discuss Tory's new son, Kai, industry politics, and more sophomore album details.
Shot by: @DJDeleon
Interview by: @roselilahhshit
Edited by: @loagaze