DELISA: The Bronx’s Lil Tjay has become one of the
most exciting new voices in hip-hop.
DELISA: Don’t let his use of autotune fool you,
the rapper is a student of the craft.
LIL TJAY: When I was younger, I always had a thing for music. Songs come on in the car, I learn the
lyrics, I’m tryna sing it in every key type shit.
PRINCE CHARLES: I've been playing music long
enough to know that this level of adhering to the chord is definitely not an accident.
DELISA: That’s Prince Charles Alexander, professor
at Berklee College of Music. He sat down with us to break down Lil Tjay’s use of melody
and musicianship.
PRINCE CHARLES: Now what's happening is artists like Lil Tjay are starting to flirt with
melody in the flow that gives the hip-hop artists a new type of connection to the musical
ear.
DELISA: Tjay looked to pop sensations like Usher and Justin Bieber as vocal inspirations for his
sound - even flipping the Bieb's 2010 hit, "Baby."
LIL TJAY: Growing up, Justin Bieber was lit, all the
girls was listening to Justin Bieber, know what I'm saying, so I was tuned in.
DELISA: That resemblance to pop music structure isn’t a bad thing - it allows a greater opportunity
for the music to land quicker and make a lasting impact.
PRINCE CHARLES: With Lil Tjay, I think the
simplicity that I'm hearing is you could take the eight away, kick drum away, you could
take the clap away, you could take the high hat away, and
just have somebody playing piano and Lil Tjay rhyming and singing... It would still make sense.
PRINCE CHARLES: Like, we're still covering Queen's,
(singing)
PRINCE CHARLES: That type of
simplicity, the same thing is going on with the simplicity of chord structure
so that you can understand really what the message is in the song.
DELISA: He applies that energy to one of his breakout
tracks, “F.N.”
PRINCE CHARLES: The way that modern rappers rap and the way that Lil Tjay is rapping
is connected to what I call the nursery rhyme. And that's not a diss.
And I know everybody's going
to rag me and think, "Did he just compare Lil Tjay to Mary Had a Little Lamb?" When you
really get into songwriting, there is something that we call the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid.
DELISA: He may keep it simple but he still creates moments for complexity.
That type of artistry is similar to those of tap dancers, whose range is more restrictive,
but they utilize the small space to create powerful moments.
PRINCE CHARLES: Even though it's a small range
of musicianship, using the flow within that small range of musicianship is still powerful.
It's like watching a dancer.
PRINCE CHARLES: If you've got two feet and you've got taps, and how much
can you actually do with two feet and taps? Well, we've seen tap dancers do a whole lot
PRINCE CHARLES: And I think the same thing
is happening here, the rhythmic flow, and the melodic choices, and every once in a while
you go to a higher note or a lower note, really opening up a conversation in hip-hop that
we've been flirting with for a while.
DELISA: On “Brothers,” Lil Tjay flexes his ability to beefen up the composition by adding moments
for melodies underneath the surface.
Layering production in this way likens to Public Enemy’s hype man, Flava Flav’s
background vocals but, similarly to current pop artists, Tjay is doing it for himself.
PRINCE CHARLES: The greatest hype-man
of all was Flavor Flav.
PRINCE CHARLES: In this case though, Lil Tjay
is doing in a melodic way and it's the same thing that Ariana Grande does, and Camila
Cabello does, and Shawn Mendez and Ed Sheeran, is to have that front facing
voice that is giving you the main topic. And then there's a voice behind that's giving
you... Well, we call it the hype vocal.
DELISA: Polo G and Lil Tjay’s hit, “Pop Out”
isn’t just a club banger, it’s also a technical feat for the young artists, proving
their musical chops.
Polo G's highest note is B-flat 3, his lowest note is E-flat 3, so that's like the one and
the five of E-flat. Lil Tjay's is G-flat 3, which is the third, and D-flat 7, which is
the seventh. So if you put the one and the five, and the three and a seven together,
you get an E-flat minor chord. Somebody's got to be doing this on purpose. This is not
a mistake.
PRINCE CHARLES: If you would take both of their voices and put them together,
you would hear them actually doing the melody in harmony.
DELISA: Following the release of Pop Smoke’s posthumous
album ‘Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon,’ the Tjay-accompanied “Mood Swings” became
a standout single on TikTok and across the airwaves.
The melodies and harmonies on the track are reminiscent of the symphonic sounds of Jazz
saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.
PRINCE CHARLES: Cannonball Adderley on alto, and he had John Coltrane on tenor.
PRINCE CHARLES: I feel like that's who Lil
Tjay is, he's that alto, he's cutting, but it's not kind of like that bright trumpet
cut, it's that nice, pretty, sweet alto cut.
PRINCE CHARLES: We've bumped into something
to me that's as elemental as John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. Pop Smoke and Lil
Tjay sound like the perfect compliment.
DELISA: The rapper’s drive to establish himself as a well-rounded talent is evident in his
work and even though he’s young in his career, it’s clear that Lil Tjay is paving his way
for a solid career as an artist.
PRINCE CHARLES: What we're hearing in Lil Tjay is, we're at the beginning of seeing rappers
who have been called musicians for a long time, but we're actually starting to see the
musicianship play itself out in the music, we're starting to see things unfold. And if
they keep on this path, I don't know where we're going to head, it's going to be pretty amazing.
LIL TJAY: I’m with everything. I wanna do everything to help better myself as an artist.
DELISA I’m Delisa With Genius News bringing you
the meaning and the knowledge behind the music.