A Boogie and Lil Tjay are two artists from New York
who have similar styles.
Instead of teaming up and putting on for the city together,
they’ve been beefing for years and now it’s rumored
that A Boogie is linked to the shooter who almost killed Lil Tjay.
Let’s get right into it…
Lil Tjay grew up with his mom and two younger siblings
on 183rd Street in the Bronx.
He told Pitchfork he was the “problem child” of the family
and started getting into fights and pulling off petty robberies when he was in middle school.
Tjay was always in and out of juvie for a couple of months at a time,
but when he was 15 he got locked up for a year
in a youth detention center for a robbery!
Getting locked up ended up being the best thing for him.
Tjay told Rolling Stone “It was not fun.
It’s not nothing that I would want to do again,
but I learned a lot from it.
I feel like if I wasn’t to go to jail,
I probably wouldn’t be the person I am — I wouldn’t.
Cause I wouldn’t have sat down and wrote those songs
and I never would’ve been able to focus on what I want to accomplish.
So it’s like it was actually a good thing for me.
It made me open my eyes and stuff like that.”
He spent time in juvie before,
but getting hit with a year-long sentence
made Tjay realize he needed to change up how he moved.
He started writing lyrics while he sat down
and then hit the studio when he got out.
If he ain’t have music to focus on,
Tjay would have gone right back to the streets.
He told Pitchfork “I was trying to change,
but I was stuck in my old habits.”
But all that changed when he hopped in the booth
and recorded his breakout track Resume.
Before he went to an official studio
Tjay recorded tracks on his phone where he was just straight-up rapping,
but he decided to switch things up in the booth
and start singing his lyrics instead.
It turned out to be a great decision
because Resume blew up
and Tjay’s career started popping off after just one track.
He followed Resume up with a bunch of singles,
and in 2018 he won first place in the Coast 2 Coast LIVE All Ages Edition
which led to him signing with Columbia Records!
Later that same year he dropped his first mixtape
and was quickly becoming one of the hottest new artists in the city!
All the success made him realize
that music was his ticket to the top
and he didn’t want to go back to his old ways.
He told Rolling Stone
“When I had came out of jail
I saw a lot of my friends go into jail,
stuff like that.
Once I realized music was working,
I was getting money off of shows
and I figured that I could find success through music.
I realized it’s no reason to just be on the block,
doing illegal stuff.
I see a lot of motivation that come from [that],
a lot of people look at me like, ‘Damn, it’s a way out.'”
2019 was an even bigger year for Tjay!
He dropped his second mixtape and the track F.N.
became his first solo song to chart.
Then in October of that year
he released his debut album True 2 Myself
which peaked at number 5 on the Billboard 200 chart.
When 2020 rolled around Tjay was ready to take things to the next level,
but that’s also when his beef with A Boogie was heating up.
Fans compared Lil Tjay to A Boogie ever since Tjay came into the game,
and some people even called him a Boogie clone!
Tjay just brushed it off because he thought he had his own lane,
and there were never any real issues between the two of them
but that all changed in 2020.
Like Tjay, A Boogie also grew up in the Bronx.
He started rapping at a young age and had a book of rhymes he carried around
so he could spit for his friends.
Even though he had a passion for music early on,
it ain’t keep him out of trouble.
After a few run-ins with the law,
A Boogie’s parents sent him to Florida to try and keep him out of trouble.
While in Florida, A Boogie was on house arrest finishing school.
But just like Tjay,
being away helped him focus and go harder with music,
he turned his apartment into a studio and got to work!
After he finished school,
A Boogie moved back to New York
to try and make a real career out of rap.
He linked up with his homies Don Q, QP, and Bubba,
and together they started Highbridge the Label,
named after the Bronx neighborhood they grew up in.
His first tape dropped in 2016,
and it immediately put him on the map
and scored him a feature in Forbes list of up-and-coming rappers.
Later that year he dropped a collab project with Don Q,
and then opened for Drake and Future on three of their tour dates.
That summer he signed with Atlantic Records
and got featured in the BET hip hop awards cypher.
2016 was a busy year for A Boogie,
and in October he dropped his project The Bigger Artist
which Rolling Stone listed as one of the best rap albums of the year.
Within a year A Boogie went from being unknown
to being one of the hottest artists in the game,
and in 2017 he kept it pushing and was featured on XXL’s Freshman Class.
Then in September 2017
he dropped his debut album featuring huge artists like Chris Brown, 21 Savage, and Trey Songz.
His single Drowning with Kodak Black popped off
and ended up reaching number 38 on the billboard hot 100 chart.
A Boogie blew up by mixing auto tuned singing with gritty lyrics about the street life
he experienced growing up,
and Lil Tjay was doing the same thing.
Despite their similar styles and upbringing,
Tjay and A Boogie never linked up,
and in 2020 it became clear it would never happen.
While promoting his upcoming project State of Emergency,
Tjay took shots at A Boogie and 6ix9ine when he tweeted
“ALL THAT OTHER **** GOING ON RN IRRELEVANT.
ONLY THING I KNOW IS IM SHUTTING THE STREETS DOWN
FROM NOW ON IM THE KING OF NY !
ALL THAT OTHER NA NA NA ****
(A)ND SNITCH RAINBOW HAIR **** GOING ON IN MY CITY A DUBB!”
A Boogie’s homie Don Q clapped back and said
“Word to my mother, I’m not saving n****s no more.
Next time n****s see n****s, n****s getting stripped
out of everything, respectfully.
I’m telling you now.”
Tjay responded with
“Yo, you can suck my ******* ****, how ‘bout that, n****?
Yo, Don Q, suck my ****, n****.
Slap the **** out of you, n****.
You stupid, n****? You ******* dumb?
Y’all n****s real *****.”
Then A Boogie hopped into the beef
and tweeted “ight bet.
Keep on tryna sound like me without showing love
and ima start to sue ya.
Fr tho this **** is getting outta hand
I’m not tryna knock nobody hustle
I’m just getting sick of the craft ya bringing to the table.
Making this **** boring.”
Tjay ain’t back down and hit back with
“N****s be mad when it’s the next n**** turn to shine
lol move out the way Nd watch me win.”
Lil Tjay also posted a video showing off a High Bridge Label chain
which was allegedly snatched from one the members.
But according to A Boogie,
the chain got lost a while back
and Tjay was just clout chasing!
He wrote on Instagram
“One of the bro’s dropped/lost his chain a long ass time ago
while we dragged a n*** and that’s word to Melody.
N**** got the audacity to buy it off a random n****,
shoot a vid with it and front like he did something.
Lost all my respect for you smh.
Stay true to yourself.”
A video also surfaced of Don Q
allegedly pressing Tjay when they ran into each other at a studio.
It looked like the beef was going to keep escalating,
but then Tjay hopped on Instagram to apologize
for going after everyone and said
“Today’s a new day, man. I’m chilling, man. I ain’t tryna argue with nobody.
I ain’t gon lie… real **** tho, I swear.
I’m going back to the old Lil Tjay.
Not arguing. This is why I never like posting a lot because I can’t control myself,
start getting out of hand and ****.
My fault for getting out of composure, ya mean.
May 8th State of Emergency mixtape dropping.
Know what I'm saying like.
We posting the track list soon.
Know what I'm saying boy.
That's it man, it's all about the music man.
**** this beef ****, that's not good, I don’t encourage it.”
After that, the beef between Tjay and A Boogie
cooled off for a minute while they both focused on their careers.
It looked like everyone moved on and just let it be,
but recently Lil Tjay was the victim of a targeted shooting,
and it’s rumored that A Boogie might be involved!
On June 22nd,
Lil Tjay got shot multiple times in Edgewater, New jersey.
He was sitting in a Dodge Durango with his homies Jeffrey Valdez and Antoine Boyd
when a dude named Mohamed Konate walked up with a pistol and demanded their jewelry!
It’s unclear what exactly happened after that,
but Tjay ended up getting shot several times,
Boyd got hit once in the back, and Konate also got shot a few times.
According to witnesses, Konate was dragged into a BMW and driven off,
and surveillance cameras caught the BMW dropping him off at a local hospital a few minutes later.
Tjay was rushed to the hospital in critical condition
and looked like he wasn’t gonna make it,
but luckily sources close to him have reported that he’s stable and pulling through.
Konate was later arrested and charged with three counts of attempted murder,
robbery, and weapons charges.
Tjay’s homies got hit with possession of an unlawful weapon too, but they both got released.
When the news first broke,
police announced that they thought it was a targeted attack,
and now fans think they’ve found a connection between A Boogie and the shooting.
According to some sources,
Mohamed Konate has been featured in several of A Boogie’s music videos,
but it ain’t been confirmed if it’s actually the same guy.
But even if Konate is affiliated with A Boogie,
that don’t mean A Boogie was involved with the hit on Tjay.
Neither of them have sent shots at each other since 2020,
so it seems like a random time for A Boogie to try and take Lil Tjay out.
Luckily it seems like he’s on his way to recovering and will be back soon.
A Boogie hasn’t commented on the situation yet.
But even if he not involved,
him and Tjay don’t seem cool
so he probably wouldn’t be sending out support anyways.
This story is still developing so make sure ya’ll tap in for updates!