Written By: Mike Double G
Grade = 70.00% or 3.5 ⭐️
Destined 2 Win
Born 2 Be Great ✅
Calling My Phone (Lil Tjay & 6LACK) ⭐️
What You Wanna Do ⭐️
Hood Rich ⭐️
Oh Well ✅
Headshot (Lil Tjay, Polo G, & Fivio Foreign) ⭐️
Gang Gang ❌
Go Crazy ✅
Irregular Love ❌
Move (Lil Tjay & Tyga Feat. Saweetie) ⭐️
Slow Down ❌
Love Hurts (Feat. Toosii) ✅
Run It Up (Feat. Offset & Moneybagg Yo) ⭐️
Part of the Plan ⭐️
No Cap ❌
Life Changed ✅
Nuf Said ❌
Losses (Bonus Track) ❌
Move On (Bonus Track) ✅
None of Your Love (Bonus Track) ✅
If it’s your first time listening to Lil Tjay it is easy to get him confused with A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. Both rappers are from the Bronx and have that same melodic sound. Tjay himself may look at that as an insult but in reality it makes sense that he would go that route. Lil Tecca and JI are also artist from New York who have went the melodic route. A Boogie is still considered a young artist at 25 but Lil Tjay is actually a lot younger. He’s still only 19 years old. When A Boogie dropped his first big project Arist in February of 2016, Lil Tjay was only 14 years old. A age when you usually decide your favorite king of music. At this time A Boogie was the hottest new artist in the city and he came from the Bronx like Tjay.
In 2019 Lil Tjay was featured on Polo G’s song Pop Out. A song with more of a drill vibe that peaked at #11 on the billboard hot 100. At that point that was that was Lil Tjay high charting song. When he released his first LP True 2 Myself later in the year I think fans were looking for that same kind of sound but instead got a project that was mostly in that melodic lane.
In the beginning of 2020 we saw Lil Tjay featured twice on the late Pop Smoke’s mixtape Meet The Woo 2. Shortly after the release of this project Pop Smoke was murdered and his album reached as high as second on the US top R&B/Hip-Hop Billboard. Shortly after Lil Tjay went back to that drill sound and dropped a 7 track EP titled State Of Emergency. This included some of the hottest Brooklyn drill artist in the game including, Fivio Foreign, Sheff G, Sleepy Hallow, and the late Pop Smoke. The best song on the project was Zoo York (Feat. Fivio Foreign & Pop Smoke). This was a smart move because at the time the drill sound was catching all over the country and Pop Smoke was all over the charts.
On Lil Tjay’s new project Destined 2 Win you get a mixture of both melodic songs and drill songs. The first single off the project was Calling My Phone. A collaboration with 6LACK which became Lil Tjay’s first number one song on the US R&B/Hip-Hop Billboard. While this song is in that melodic lane, his second biggest song on the album is most likely going to be Headshot. A song with Polo G and Fivio Foreign. This song could be looked at as the sequel to Polo G’s song Pop Out. Headshot may not be a number one like Calling My Phone, but it will be big enough to show you that Lil Tjay could have success in both lanes.
On this project Lil Tjay has 21 tracks. 5 of which have features. Another song that is going to get a lot of streams is Move. A song with Tyga featuring Saweetie. With Saweetie and Quavo’s break up being all over the media there is no better time to have a Saweetie feature. The only people benefitting more from that break up is Justin Laboy and Saweetie herself.
Some other songs to check out is None Of Your Love which is a remake of Justin Bieber’s song Baby. This is another example of how young Lil Tjay is. He was only 8 years old when Justin Bieber put this song out. It’s safe to say Tjay has Bieber Fever. Another artist Tjay probably looks up to is Drake. In the song Born 2 Great, Tjay puts a spin on one of Drake’s verses. The verse that was on Rihanna’s smash hit “Work”. Other songs to check out are What You Wanna Do and Run It Up featuring Offset and Moneybagg Yo.
This is Lil Tjay best project to date but there is still room for improvement. It’s hard for me many listeners to take him serious when he is making songs about sex. 19 is certainly old enough but his voice actually makes him sound younger than he is. He should stick to songs about relationships or young love. That’s one of the reason I feel Calling My Phone was such a hit. It’s a song that everyone can like including young listeners. This is the same reason I think None of Your Love will have success. I usually don’t like remakes of songs because there never as good but 11 years later I think Tjay has the voice to pull it off.
I would have also liked to heard a few more features. I always give credit to an artist who can carry an album themselves. I’d rather you have no features than too many. However, on a 21 song project that runs over a hour I think 8-10 features would have been perfect. A rule for all artist should be no more than 50 percent on the features. If we are being picky then some of Lil Tjay songs are on the long side. I’d rather here a 4 minute song than a song that’s a minute long but the sweet spot should be somewhere in the middle. Overall, this project was a success for Lil Tjay. We see some growth and he’s got a number one song. I would still give the edge to A Boogie as the king of New York but Lil Tjay has to be in the conversation. I give this LP a 70% or 3.5 stars.
Best Song = Calling My Phone (Lil Tjay & 6LACK)
Download: Destin 2 Win
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