Before Tory Lanez would become one of the most successful artists to come out of Canada
Before he would have tracks with Meek (Mill), Lil Wayne, Rich The Kidd, Casanova, Chris
Brown, T-Pain, Trippie Redd, Bryson Tiller, Gunna, Bhad Babie, 69 and many more.
Before Tory would have more than 750k likes on Facebook, close to 2 million followers
on Twitter, over 2 million subscribers on YouTube and 4 million followers on Instagram
at the time of this recording And Before Tory would give himself the title
of best rapper alive challenging basically every rapper in the world to come at him,
and actually getting into lyrical warfare with the likes of Joyner Lucas and Don Q
In an old interview, Tory said: I never want to put that in my head, like
I’m this famous guy. I’m just like everybody else, and there’s nothing that separates
me except that I do something that might be different from your hobby or your passion.
But I’ve learned so much about calculation, management and making moves at the right time. I’m
patient.
And this past year, we’ve definitely seen just how calculated Tory Lanez really is.
If you’ve been online in the last year at all, then you’ve seen Tory Lanez trash talking
somebody. But the dude has backed up pretty much all of the talk he’s done. Tory is
the same guy who has said in interviews for the past 8 years that one day he wants to
be the biggest artist in the world. And in order to make that happen you need a lot of
self-belief, an insane amount of talent and you have to be able to beat the best. So Tory
has decided to treat the rap game like Mario, and is trying to level up with each battle
in hopes of one day reaching the bosses like J. Cole and Pusha T. And honestly, at this
point I’m starting to believe. And whatever you want to say about Tory, he had an absolutely
massive 2018, and.. forget soulja boy for a second, Tory’s hairline definitely did
have the biggest comeback of 2018.
So, Hey Jeremy… Uh, I know you filmed this video a few months ago and were really excited
about who Tory would battle next, but a couple months after you filmed this video… Tory
tweeted saying that he was done with all of the negativity and that he wasn’t really
in his best head space. So just letting you know. Also, cool beanie bro.. Was it cold
in there while you were filming? In the spring in LA? Yeah… That’s what I thought. But
I bet you were having one hecht of a day while filming right? Alright, I’m gonna go attend
to future business. I’ll see you guys later.
But before all of the rap battles and before all of the success, Tory was the son of a
preacher who lost his mother at 11 years old. The tragic event left Tory searching for answers
and using music as therapy. But his anger and frustration was taken out in other ways
also, getting suspended from school over 100 times and eventually ending up homeless in
the cold streets of downtown Toronto. He would work minimum wage jobs and hustle to try to
provide for himself before eventually, working on music full time and catching the attention
of some of the biggest names in the industry. But his journey was long, and since so much
has happened in the 2 years since we did our last video on a young Tory, he definitely
needed an update. What's going on good people in the comments?
Shout out to the people watching at home, at school on their lunch break, at work while
they should be doing other things, and anybody else out there. My name is Jeremy Hecht, documenting
the life of fellow Canadian, Tory Lanez prior to fame, here for you on Before They Were
Famous. And although I am a new host for this channel, I am not actually Michael biological
son regardless of what the comments will tell you. That’s just my non-biological brother.
We’ve done other bios on The Weeknd and Michael just did an incredible 20-minute-long
video on Drake that goes through his entire journey to the top of the game from 0 to 100.
You have to check that out after you finish watching this video! And let us know in the
comments down below who you want us to document next. But enough talking, let’s get into
it!
Daystar Peterson was born on July 27, 1992, in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. His mother [loo-EL-ah]
Luella immigrated from [CURE-a-sow] Curacao, and his father Sonstar came from thee Barbados.
Tory’s dad was a preacher but before spreading the good message of the lord, he was actually
a part of a traveling breakdancing crew. They even performed at the Juno awards, which is
basically the Canadian Grammys. In a 2011 interview with the standfordartsreview, Tory
said: My name, Daystarr, comes from when my mom
was in the hospital, she was pregnant with me, and my dad was praying and put his hand
on her stomach and said, ‘May God grant my son longevity and long life till the day
dawns and the day star rises,’ and he said God stopped him in his prayer and said, ‘That’s
his name, that’s your child’s name.’
He says the name means “a revolutionary light of progression for my generation.”
Damn, that’s high expectations for a baby. My last name is apparently just a type of
fish.
Daystar’s family moved when he was still young. He grew up in Montreal and was the
youngest of four brothers and two sisters. When he was only 7, his family flew to the
States and created a new life in sunny Miami Florida where Daystar began rapping around
the house at the age of 9. But, we have John Madden to thank for Tory’s rap success.
He started rapping for real because of a game of madden. Daystar was losing to an older
cousin in a heated game and since he was too small to fight his cousin, after the game,
he started writing diss rhymes in his garage to take out his anger.
Both his father and mother were missionary preachers so they would listen to gospel music
in the household. But their job also meant that they have to travel all over the country
for work to heal people. When Daystar was just 11, he was travelling along with his
parents. One day his mother, who was anemic, wasn’t
feeling well and went to the hospital before Daystar went to school. By the time he came
home from school that day, his mom tragically passed away. He says the passing of his mother
influenced him to create music more seriously and to properly put down some of his thoughts.
Confused and angry by the sudden loss of his mother, Daystar became a troublemaker with
no respect for authority. A year later his father remarried and moved
to Atlanta Georgia where Daystar was still getting into trouble. It was in Atlanta that
he met his friend Hakeem, who was working as a janitor at the time, and would give nicknames
to all of the kids in their ATL neighborhood. Hakeem gave Tory the nickname ‘Lanez’
since he was always running, skateboarding or rollerskating across the street, with no
regard for oncoming cars or, traffic lanes. His behavior kept getting him expelled from
school and Tory claims he has been suspended over 130 times in his school career. His teacher
Mrs. Thomas even told Tory that he would never make it, and that another girl in their class
would eventually be writing his checks.
But even though his behavior at school wasn’t top notch, music was always a consistent way
for him to take out some of his anger. He started writing punchlines down in a notebook
and one day he battled someone at the movies. He recalls the battle as a slaughter. Doesn’t
sound too different from how he describes his current battles on IG live…
But eventually his dad had enough, and Because of how much trouble Tory was getting into,
he was sent to live with family in Queens, New York. His NYC stint didn’t last very
long and shortly afterwards, he moved back to Toronto to live with his grandmother.
In high school, Daystar kept up his rapping and called himself Notorious, in reference
to one of his favorite rappers, Biggie.
One of the top comments on our last before they were famous video on Tory said that in
Florida Tory was a really popular guy and even performed “I Know I Can” by Nas at
their 5th grade talent show.
But when Tory moved back to Canada, no one liked him at school very much. He came off
as a cocky rapper who lived in America and who didn’t care about the people around
him. He later said in an interview that today, he only makes music with people who he would
have hung out with in high school. He was continuing to get into trouble and
became a little too much trouble for his grandmother to take care of. She kicked him out of the
house in the 10th grade and he dropped out of school.
When Tory was 14, he became homeless, and for a while, he was sleeping on park benches.
And I hope it wasn’t in the Winter, because if you have been to Toronto in January, it’s
coooold. I’m talking like, scraping ice off of your windshields every morning cold.
Tory moved to downtown Toronto and had to learn how to fend for himself, and quickly.
He was living with a few other guys he didn’t really know and was constantly fighting them.
He was only 14 but the dudes were 18, 21 and 24, so the fights were a little uneven. But
he said that having to fend for himself is what turned him into a man. He had to buy
his own groceries and pay for his own stuff, so to fund that, he started hustling and selling
drugs in the streets. This is documented on his debut album “I Told You” through all
of the skits. He was getting into trouble with the law, at one point facing four court
cases, all in the same week. He recalled a story in a 2013 interview where
he was so fed up with the court cases and thought he was about to get locked up, so
after walking out of court, he went straight to the mall and robbed a gold piece of jewelry,
in the middle of the mall. Him and his friend even robbed two other kids that same day after
school. But he told HipHopDX that he realized shortly
afterwards, that wasn’t the life for him. “This is not good. This isn’t what I want
to do. This doesn’t make me happy.” Yeah, I got change and I got money from people’s
pockets, but this isn’t what I want to do.
To escape from all of the hardships going on around him, he’d freestyle battle constantly
and started performing songs at local outdoor concerts. He started recording himself and
would sleep in his friend’s studio, selling his mixtapes in the local malls to try and
gain a buzz.
The security guards at the malls started to recognize
him because of how many times he would get kicked out of those malls for selling his
CD. Tory says that he EVEN sold model Winnie Harlow his first mixtape.
He was also mislabeled, whether it was intentional or not, as Drake’s little brother at one
point. There is even an old video of Tory betting 10k that Drake would like his music:
In terms of jobs, Tory worked at a lot of different places. He flipped burgers at McDonalds
and Burger King, he worked as a telemarketer, and:
Tory was working at Denny’s but when he was 16, he got fired from the restaurant after
sleeping on the job. And that was the last job he ever had. At that moment he really
decided that there was nothing else he was going to do with his life instead of music.
Then when he was 17, Tory learned how to sing, without any training, and experimented with
different music styles. He would practice by singing “Each Day Gets Better” By John
Legend while riding on the city bus. He released his first mixtape in 2009 called
T.L 2 T.O and started posting self-directed music videos and freestyles onto his YouTube
channel. He came up with th e term Swavey to describe
his sound, which doesn’t box in his music into one particular genre. He says that Swavey
describes his music, which can sound like straight bars one day and a Jamaican rhythm
the next. But it was in February of 2010 that Tory would
get his first big break. The Take You There and Beautiful Girls singer Sean Kingston was
on YouTube one day looking for a video from Akon when he stumbled on Tory’s freestyle
over Lloyd Bank’s “Beemer Benz or Bentley”… and he was impressed. Sean asked Tory to meet
with him on the Toronto stop of his tour with Justin Bieber, and even got him to perform
live. And apparently Justin Bieber is even the reason
that Tory got verified on Twitter? He signed with Kingston’s label Time Is
Money when he was turning 18 years old. At the time, he would post his music to HotNewHipHop
and release videos through WorldStar to help gain some buzz. He released several more mix
tapes including Mr. One Verse Killer and Mr. Peterson, and after 3 years he went independent.
The first time I heard of Tory was his Mr. Peterson mixtape and was actually blown away,
I’m surprised it took him so long to get to the top of the rap game.
While he was signed to Sean he was actually banned from the states for 6 months though
because of visa issues. Trust me, I know all about visa issues being in the states and
coming from Canada. It’s no joke. In a 2014 interview with Timeout.com he says
of the time: All of my networks were in America. I lost
a lot of relationships because I was only able to be in Canada before I got a visa at
the time. I couldn’t do anything, and I remember after a while, all that stuff started
dying out. People didn’t really answer calls.
After falling out with his label, he began to grind on his own. And on the song Loners
Blvd Tory documents the story of how he met his manager Sasha, who later brought him out
to a showcase in Texas for a big performance opportunity. But Tory says he almost got booed
off stage and it was his worst show ever. Even Bun B was in the crowd, and Tory was
talking to him before the show. Sasha gave him some tips on how to structure
his set and how to perform, and the next night, he performed better.
Since then, Tory has been one of the best live performers in the game.
He kept dropping mixtapes and like he says on Loners BLVD “and another mixtape and
another mixtape” until people finally caught on. His manager helped him get a major label
deal with Interscope and Tory would finally get the push that he needed with his first
single from his debut album. The song went platinum and the video ended up getting more
than 220 million views on YouTube at the time of this recording.
His three label albums have all been very successful as well with “I Told You” now
being certified Gold, 2015’s “Memories Never Die” selling 54,000 first week and
“Love Me Now” selling the same amount first week and landing at the number one spot
on Billboard’s hip-hop/R&B charts. Recently, Tory almost died in a plane crash
as he was on a Jet heading to HOT 97’s Summer Jam
A couple of years ago, his dad moved to Kenya and had two children so Tory has a new little
brother and sister who get to witness their older brother’s massive global success.
Tory also recently had a child himself and says:
But in terms of beef, Tory is no stranger to conflict. Him and Travis Scott almost got
into a physical altercation backstage. At one point him and Drake were trading shots
on records, But the two have since become cool, taking
some pictures, and Tory is even going out on the road with Drizzy for the European leg
of his Scorpion tour. But it was 2018 that we really saw a new side
of Tory. It was a war ready Tory who wanted smoke with basically any rapper who was willing
to throw shots his way. After calling out every rapper in the game
and being so confident in his skills that he said he can outrap ANYONE, Joyner Lucus’s
name got thrown into the mix and the two went back and forth on record with Tory ultimately
becoming the self-declared winner. Although it’s still up for debate.
Next was New York rapper Don Q who took shots at Tory on the records “I’m Not Joyner”
with Tory responding on “Don Queen.” Don replied again but just like the Joyner battle,
Tory felt no need to reply, or at least not at the time of this recording. Rapper Dream
Doll got thrown into the mix after she caught a stray bullet on Tory’s Don Q diss and
letting loose some of their private information on a diss track of her own called “On Your
Head.” Other rappers including Mysonne, Merkules,
JR Writer and Dax have all come for Tory with no reply. But Tory must have been somewhat
offended by fellow Canadian Dax’s rhymes or the way he handles things online, because
Tory pulled up on him in person Tory’s real goal is to get to J.Cole though
and he said that he is willing to take on the whole Dreamville crew to get there. Dreamville
artist J.I.D. isn’t having it replying on Twitter, but we’ll have to wait and see
what happens. Uh, hey, me again… Um, from the future.
Yeah, like I said, Tory says he’s done with the Negativity… so nothing else really happened
here. Love you though As for the future? Tory is planning on dropping
a Spanish album at some point in time but as for the rest of the story? Well you know
the story because this, is before they were famous. But that’s it for this video. My
name is Jeremy Hecht and as always, let us know who is up next in the comments down below.
Hit me up on Insta @jeremy_hecht, subscribe to this channel, Dream Good, Live Better,
and I’ll see you in the next video!