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Lucas Foster got his CashApp on smash.
Lost among the memes and magnetism and myopic nature of rap coverage is the fact that, at 17 years of age, Teejayxy6 entered the game a fully realized artist. He had no manager, no label, no promoter, no industry infrastructure that informed him or his approach, but those would probably only hindered an artist with such vision and talent. What he’s done this year deserves all the superlatives, and it’s not just because he’s got funny punchlines, or because he’s the hottest commodity in the industry, or because he is helping to lift a regional sound to national relevance (Metro Boomin is not the only superstar producer working on Detroit beats), it’s because Teejayx6 might be an out and out genius.
The most compelling new storyteller in rap has stretched the boundaries of the medium as a performance artist. When I saw him get “arrested” on stage last weekend by two US Marshals, most of the audience was at the very least confused, if not fooled, as were some of the opening acts. Continuing to sell the “fed case” as part of the mythos in the “Swipe Story” music video is brilliant, and the second you start to feel the fourth wall crumbling, you can scroll down to the comments where the videographer and uploader let’s us know that “teejayx6 still owes me money for dis video smh.”
Yet the “Swipe Story” video was not the most interesting thing Teejay dropped after being “released” from federal custody. On “Online Searching” Teejay is showing off a more refined flow, hardly ever off beat, and doing his thing on a Metro beat that is catered to him but certainly much more polished than the tinny, cheap sounding beats that he is used to spinning into paranoid masterpieces. Hunting for a decent darknet market is familiar territory for Teejay, but it’s certainly believable: the feds shut DreamMarket down a few months ago and there’s close to no trustworthy darknet markets online right now. This shouldn’t matter to Teejay much longer – he’s about to have everyone in the country banned from the dark web.
