Lil Tecca

After getting into rap at age nine and trading freestyle insults with friends while playing Xbox, Queens rapper Lil Tecca developed an Auto-Tuned flow that looked to Chief Keef as a primary influence. He released a few tracks online in 2018 and broke through to a wider audience with “Did It Again” and the standout charting single “Ransom,” which also appeared on his 2019 mixtape We Love You Tecca. That mixtape, his 2020 debut studio album, Virgo World, and its 2021 follow-up, We Love You Tecca 2, all cracked the Top Ten of the Billboard charts.
Lil Tecca was born Tyler Sharpe in Queens, New York in 2002. By his early teens he had transitioned from having a passing interest in rap to posting collaborative songs with friend Lil Gummybear online. In late 2017 and early 2018, he began to build an audience around his trappy tracks, with early singles like “My Time” streaming in the millions. A minor beef with Canadian rapper LB earned more publicity for Lil Tecca, and by the beginning of 2019, his songs and videos were regularly reaching millions of fans. His single “Ransom” proved to be a big hit, streaming in the tens of millions just weeks after its release and entering the Billboard charts. It was included on the rapper’s 2019 mixtape We Love You Tecca, which hit number four on the Billboard 200. Still just 16 at the time, Lil Tecca only worked on his music career during the weekends — his weekdays were still occupied with trying to finish high school. After a handful of non-album singles like “IDK” and “All Star” featuring Lil Tjay, he released his debut full-length, Virgo World, in September 2020. It reached number ten on the pop charts. In 2021, after releasing a few non-album singles including “Jetski” featuring Lil Mosey and Internet Money, Tecca released his second studio album, We Love You Tecca 2. Coming out in August of that year, the album included guest spots from Iann Dior, Trippie Redd, Nav, Lil Yachty, and others, and debuted again in the number ten position on the Billboard 200 chart. “Fallin” and “Faster” both appeared in 2022. ~ Fred Thomas