Tisakorean’s A Guide To Being A Partying Freshman sounds made for a Myspace page in 2008. With its tinny mix and Fruity Loops-style finger snaps and steel drums, you can easily imagine the whole thing being made on a high school computer lab’s Dell desktop. His rushed vocals, meanwhile, sound recorded in a bedroom closet just before his mom forced him to do his homework. And yet the Texas rapper has established himself 2019’s king of dance rap.
His journey picked up momentum in late 2017, when he uploaded “WERKKK” to the YouTube page of Texas-based videographer and dance video host JMoney1041. The song served as a widespread introduction to Tisakorean’s startling screeches and sinister whispering, inspired by Texas dance rap staples like Yung Nation. He followed up “WERKKK” with “Dip,” a song that found success soundtracking a Dallas-Fort Worth area dance craze called “The Woah” on social media—eventually getting the Lil Uzi Vert remix treatment. But his social media ascent was solidified when he hollered, murmured, and danced his way into virality in an ongoing series of Instagram freestyles.
In the mold of a teenage Soulja Boy, Tisakorean’s A Guide To Being A Partying Freshman—featuring a mixtape cover influenced by the YA novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid—is packed with brief minimalist tracks about school, made to be danced to on social media apps like Triller, TikTok, and Instagram. The goal is virality, but there’s a refreshing innocence to the project. Nothing is polished and nothing feels forced. Tisakorean’s lyrics are mostly irrelevant. His voice is just another instrument in the mix—one that I’m not sure he always knows how to use—with constantly changing volumes and melodies as he falls in love in the school hallway on “Gabby (Booty in the Hallway).”
A Guide To Being A Partying Freshman’s issues are minimal. One is the Kenny Beats-produced “Apple Sauce” which feels too slick and sticks out. Another is “Where’s Ms. Juicy (Hamburger Booty)” in which Tisakorean takes the Soulja Boy influence too far, with horns that need to stay locked up in a mid-2000s Atlanta time capsule. But those moments don’t prevent Tisakorean from creating one of the first mixtapes that can be enjoyed on Instagram, TikTok, and Triller. So pick any song from A Guide To Being A Partying Freshman, download the Triller app, mimic Uzi, and experience Tisakorean the way you’re supposed to.
