When the CEO of Instagram banned Tory Lanez and his “Quarantine Radio” for becoming too inappropriate for the platform, Tory Lanez became mainstream. When 200 million people are tuned in to watch you scream and dance, you are mainstream. Upon his triumphant return to Instagram, he dropped “New Toronto 3”, the third in a series of mixtapes spanning back to 2015. There is plenty of reflection of his poverty-stricken youth; images of him eating “white rice with the ketchup on it,” growing up around guns, drugs, and gangs. We’ve heard this before from Tory. We have also heard about how he will take your girl, your friends’ girl, their girl, their friends’ friends’ sisters’ girl and make them his girl. [Keep your girl close, apparently] Tory loves rapping about guns and girls and diamonds. New Toronto 3 merges these topics in a jaded yet brilliant way.
In perhaps the most quintessential line of the album, Tory asks, “Who needs love when I have these VVS’s all on my neck?” He has diamonds, why does he need real love? The irony comes from the five other songs in which he references past lovers, exes, and future flings. It is hard to take Tory Lanez for face value. Each song is a new take on women; we know he loves females, but in which way? Twerking or Romanticizing?
Club songs overtook the five-minute verses we were used to on 2017’s New Toronto 2 and the heartfelt, melodic confessions on 2018’s Memories Don’t Die. If you ask Tory Lanez who is the man, he’d say “Tory Lanez.” That is his style. He is far less subtle in this than rappers like Drake or Jay Z, but we must let him grow up. Regardless, the club anthems on this album give it immense strength. “Do The Most,” “Broke In A Minute,” and “Stupid Again” (with helpful production from hit-maker Supah Mario) are certified bangers that should be played at every party post quarantine. The other songs within the album are top notch. They feature production and vocals from collaborators such as Mansa (10 F*cks) and Play Picasso. Musically, this album slaps. Still, there remains something confusing about its construction and release.
Tory Lanez has a consistency problem. Not that he isn’t a consistently top of the line singer, rapper, and songwriter; but rather that he is sporadic with both his emotions and album placements. Due to his propensity to release series of albums spanning many years with different sounds, there lacks a constant development of his voice. Tory Is evolving, just not album by album as we observe from other artists. Their personal development is what keeps us invested in lives of artists beyond the music, and what makes us believe their music: as they grow musically, they grow and change emotionally. Tory implements the addition of sounds and melodies heard on his past albums such as “Memories Don’t Die,” “Love Me Now?” and the past two “New Toronto” mixtapes. But rather than synthesizing sounds and developing a new updated craft, it seems as if he is split between four sounds, four emotions, and four Tory Lanez. On the New Toronto 2, listeners heard six-minute verses full of punchlines, double tracks with two beats- an unleashed rapper Tory. (Ironically, Tory flips the most popular New Toronto 1 song “Machiavelli” for “Back in Business” on this most recent album). On Memories Don’t Die, we discarded the club bangers and some of the nose-scrunching bars in exchange for a sincere, transparent, and honest Tory. The monologue songs on New Toronto 3 felt angry in their melodies; not therapy sessions like on past albums, but Tory gritting his teeth at his life, hiding behind a façade of diamonds and asses. As opposed to an artist like Drake, we don’t learn about Tory as we do Drake as a person. Even in New Toronto 3’s outro, (which sounds identical to an OVO40 pitched-up slowed-vocals outro beat for Drake), Tory is too arrogant and cocky to show his vulnerability currently, not just about his past. Artists like Drake introduce regular people to the real trials and tribulations of fame, rather than just how it is different from poverty. While Drake’s albums are sonically similar sounding, or at least carry the same tone, Tory sprinkles a bit of each of him selves onto the album, creating a jumbled mess of great songs without relation. On an album so full of memorable songs, it felt difficult to differentiate whether Tory was paying homage to other flows or simply copying them. “Dope Boy Diary,” for example, produced with longtime collaborator for the New Toronto series Don Cannon, uses the exact same flow as Lil Baby’s infamous Fire in the Booth freestyle with Charlie Sloth in London. Tory spits hard lines, like how he “takes more bodies than the corona virus,” but hearing it along with Charlie Sloths ad-libs and infamous “PERFECT” sound effects sounds identical to Lil Baby’s freestyle, and reduces Tory’s sincerity.
New Toronto 3 marks Tory Lanez independence as an artist, and it will be interesting which of his paths he follows: the sultry singer, the never-forgiving lover, the punchline rapper, or the ex-trapper. Either way, Tory Lanez is here to stay.