Lil Tjay

In just a few short years, Bronx-bred rapper Lil Tjay went from prison to the top of the charts as one of the prominent faces of the New York drill scene. Building an audience in the late 2010s with a pair of well-received EPs, he released his full-length debut, 2019's gold-certified Top Five set, True 2 Myself.

While in prison on robbery charges, Tjay (born Tione Jayden Merritt) found the motivation to get through his sentence by writing lyrics. Upon his release in 2017, Tjay, still just a teenager, began recording his songs and posting them online. Almost overnight, several tracks took off and were being streamed in the millions, gaining the rapper massive attention for his often-downcast songs that combined vocal hooks and rhymes about hardship written while he was in jail. "Resume" was his first completely solo song and it went viral quickly, ultimately being streamed over 14 million times in a little over a year. He followed with multiple one-off tracks over the course of 2018, with many of them selling/streaming by the millions. Self-released tracks like "Brothers," "Goat," and "Leaked" all gained serious traction and quickly drew the attention of major labels hoping to sign the rapper. He inked a deal with Columbia, which released the five-song EP No Comparison at the tail-end of 2018. A second EP, F.N, arrived in August of 2019 and included the singles "Ruthless" featuring Jay Critch and "Laneswitch." His first to chart on the Billboard 200, the short set was quickly followed months later by Tjay's official studio debut, True 2 Myself. Certified gold and peaking in the Top Five on the main album chart, True included his aforementioned hit singles, as well as the previously-unreleased "Hold On."

In May 2020, riding the success of his debut LP, Tjay issued his third EP, State of Emergency. A Top 40 hit, the short-player featured "Zoo York" with Fivio Foreign and the late Pop Smoke. ~ Fred Thomas