Before Lil Tecca would drop the video for Ransom directed by Cole Bennet.
The video already has over 13 million views in just a couple of weeks and the track also
has more than 10 million streams on soundcloud in just a few days!
Before “Molly Girl” would be the number one song on Soundcloud for three weeks straight
with more than 4.24 million streams.
Before he would have over 75k subscribers on YouTube and close to 350k followers on
Instagram at the time of this recording.
Before he would become friends with fellow young rapper Lil Mosey:
Lil Tecca has become the most recent in a string of teenage rappers blowing up to heights
that most of their older peers may never reach.
With NLE Choppa and Lil Mosey as some of the hottest out right now, the future of the game
may be in the hands of the youth.
And no exception is made with 16 year old Lil Tecca.
Tecca was able to use the internet and his personality to garner an online following
and with just a handful of tracks currently available online, have the kids waiting for
his next drop.
Most recently, the video for his song Ransom, shot by Cole Bennet is blowing up and we know
this is only the begging.
In this video, get to know the young rapper from New York and find out how he managed
to go from making diss tracks as a joke aimed towards his friends on Xbox live, to one of
the raps youngest stars.
But before all of that, Tecca actually had some beef with the city of Toronto…
We’ll get into all of that.
What’s going on guys, it’s your boy Michael McCrudden back at you with another Before
They Were Famous video and today we’ll be taking a look at Lil Tecca’s rise to fame.
This is the show where we tell you the story behind your favorite celebrities come up in
hopes to inspire you that you can follow your own dreams.
We’ve recently covered other artists like Lil Mosey and NLE Choppa so be sure to check
those out and let us know in the comments down below who we should cover next!
Also be sure to send this video to your friends who are fans of Lil Tecca.
I’ve also got a question for you now that we’ll answer at the end of the video:
“How does Tecca get the answers to his school tests now that he’s blown up?”
Lil Tecca was born was born to Jamaican parents who moved to New York before he was born.
Tecca’s father used to be a singer himself but Tecca has still never heard any of his
songs.
Tecca was born Tyler Sharpe on August 26, 2002 in Springfield Garden, Queens but he
moved to Nassau County, Long Island when he was in the 7th grade.
He played basketball growing up but once he realized that he wasn’t going to the league,
he gave up his NBA dreams in exchange for a microphone.
But his rapping career started as somewhat of a fluke.
At first, it wasn’t a mic on stage, it was an Xbox live mic.
And Tecca actually started rapping because of the gaming system:
At the time, he was 9 years old.
The first song he ever recorded was a diss track towards his friend on Xbox live.
Apparently his friend had a weird shaped head and he roasted him about it over a beat.
Tecca recorded the track on his sister’s laptop using the program Audacity.
Although it was all in good fun, he did put the song on soundcloud.
It has since been removed, but that was the start of his online music career.
Early on, he was listening to Eminem and Lil Wayne, before discovering Meek Mill, Chief
Keef and the Speaker Knockers.
He tweeted that he won’t be doing a single feature unless it’s on a Sosa song, so somebody
call up Chief Keef and tell him to send Tecca over a beat:
Now, he’s inspired by the guys who have been able to use melody to create a unique
sound for themselves.
He’s cited Uzi, A Boogie and Juice WRLD all as big inspirations.
He says that after hearing Juice Wrld freestyled all of his songs, Tecca started doing the
same and liked the way his new sounds came out.
After his original diss track, Tecca made a couple more songs that he now refers to
as trash.
The first song he cites as a song that he actually thought was good, is a song called
“No More.”
It was produced by his friend named Prod and it is the first song still available on his
soundcloud.
The song was uploaded a little over a year ago and currently has over 472k plays on the
site.
At first the streams were slow, but Tecca says that out of nowhere it caught some traction
and people started to ask for more music.
Tecca continued to upload songs onto soundcloud and Instagram where he would slowly grow a
small fan base.
We found an article posted onto Rap Trends.com describing Tecca as an artist to watch in
June of 2017.
At the time, they listed his stats as 33,000 soundcloud plays and 1,000 followers.
So he was still building pretty slowly and didn’t blow up right away.
Early on, Lil Tecca actually had some beef with the city of Toronto for a little bit.
And as a Toronto YouTube channel, we’ve got to go through how the whole thing happened.
The situation started after Tecca saw a video for a song called “No Time” from Toronto
artist LB.
The song is currently sitting at 2 million views on YouTube.
Tecca saw the song and was mesmerized by how many views the video had.
He claims to not have liked the song but also admits he would continually re-watch it.
In an interview with fellow Toronto YouTube channel “We Love Hip-Hop Network” that
was posted in October of last year, Tecca explained the story saying:
Fast forward and Tecca is looking for beats online with his friends one day.
They found a beat that sounded similar to LB’s song and recorded a track over it.
Then Tecca posted a snippet on Instagram to generally positive response.
Tecca made a video for the song and posted it online.
Then 6ix Buzz TV posted his video with LB’s song back to back and some people began coming
for Tecca for stealing the Toronto artists style.
So I guess when they say all exposure is good exposure, it might be right.
His followers kept going up and more Toronto rappers kept coming for Tecca.
But Tecca being the internet savy kid that he is, he kept trolling back and going on
Instagram live making jokes about the whole situation.
Some people even thought that Tecca was originally from Toronto because of the way he was using
Toronto slang to troll the rappers coming for him:
As of right now, we’re not exactly sure where he stands with the city of Toronto but
hopefully there is no more beef between Tecca and
the 6.
Some of the top rated comments on his early videos are actually still hate coming from
Toronto but it seems like things have settled down.
After gaining some more exposure through that, Tecca kept posting his videos online and looked
for more opportunities to grow his audience through the internet.
Everything changed when super director Cole Bennet from Lyrical Lemonade saw Lil Tecca’s
music online and reached out about working together.
The two flew to the Dominican Republic to shoot a music video for his song “Ransom”
and immediately after its release, the song blew up.
The mixture of unique edits, Tecca’s hilarious personality and of course the Dominican strippers
made the video an instant hit.
According to the end credits, the strippers asked if they could give Tecca a happy ending
to his massage but he politely declined.
Tecca is still in school and only does music on the weekends.
He told Complex:
“Right now I'm in a situation where I get my work from school and then I do it at home.
Before, I used to go to school and then just sleep.
But then I had online school after school.
So I never had time to do music until the weekends”
Although I think school is getting easier for him, because lately he’s been crowdsourcing
the answers for his tests:
There you have the answer to the question from the beginning of the video.
Not sure how his teachers would feel about that, but like Future says: “You do what
you want when you’re popping.”
His classmates weren’t very supportive at first and would make jokes about Tecca trying
to do music.
But now that he’s gotten some success he says they mostly remain quiet.
As for the future, he has 81 unreleased songs after going into the studio for 9 months straight.
Looks like he’s ready for a musical baby and the fans are ready too.
He told Complex:
“I don't really think anything's making me stand out.
I ain't trying to stand out.
I'm just doing me and people gravitate to it.
I have real people that support me.
It's not like no computers.
These are real people.
I don't know why people like me, just the same way that I don't know why people don't
like me.”
But as for the rest of the story?
We’ll have to wait and see because this is Before They Were Famous.
As always, I’m Michael McCrudden, be sure to subscriber to the channel and let us know
who to cover next in the comments down below!
I’ll see you in the next video.