Toronto singer and rapper Tory Lanez has his eyes fixed on mega stardom. “My name is Daystar Peterson. One day I’ma be the biggest artist in the whole world,” he says casually in the opening moments of his debut album, I Told You. But for now, he isn’t even the biggest artist in his own city. Lanez is among a group of Toronto artists trying to escape Drake’s long shadow through emulation. He has been pestering the OVO boss in an attempt to get his attention and by extension, the world’s, and Drake eventually gave him half a bar on the Meek Mill diss “Summer Sixteen” with a dig at the so-called "New Toronto," the class of up-and-comers molded in Drake’s image.
This shot, in a way, legitimized Lanez as a Drake adversary or at least a potential Drake understudy, and Lanez has since produced a platinum single, the Brownstone-sampling “Say It.” In Lanez’s mind, these constitute huge stepping stones in his career, one that started when he was kicked out of his grandmother’s house. I Told You chronicles this journey, relying heavily on skits and an out-of-body Menace II Society-esque narration ploy to tell its story, which basically is a long-winded build to (as its title implies) force-feeding doubters crow, cycling through several iterations of Drake in the process. As a title, I Told You isn’t a far cry from Thank Me Later.
To be clear, Tory Lanez will never be Drake. He doesn’t have the knack for hooks, he isn’t better at writing raps than the Drake brain trust (or at making songs, for that matter), and he has a much tougher time finding the right rapping to singing ratio. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to remake Take Care on his debut. Some songs smolder into other attached songs, like “I Told You / Another One” and “Dirty Money.” Others try to dole out that patented half-sung rapping that has become a Drake staple. And “Loners Blvd” is a straight up “Look What You’ve Done” knockoff in both intent and tone. There are even samples of “We’ll Be Fine” in “4am Flex” and “Friends With Benefits.” Give Lanez credit, though: He has succeeded where several others have failed in playing Drake’s game (politicking in interviews but waging a war of subliminals) and existing in his world and sonic space (c.f. the robbery he pulled on his version of “Controlla” or his play for world audiences with the dancehall-flecked single “Luv.”) In a post-VIEWS universe, it isn’t impossible to imagine a scenario where Lanez cuts the distance between them.
Over the last few years, Tory Lanez has grown into a relatively versatile artist, a better singer than rapper, but decent at both. I Told You is a sonic variety pack compared to his last two mixtapes The New Toronto and Chixtape 3, both of which tried to split his sound cleanly down the middle. His debut is an introduction not only to his story, but to his full skill set. He isn’t a particularly quotable rapper, but he strings together some interesting cadences on “To D.R.E.A.M.,” which, in the narrative flow, functions as his “Backseat Freestyle.” His falsetto slips into the melting guitar licks on “Guns and Roses,” a song that toys with a simple but effective ‘love is war’ metaphor. “Cold Hard Love” is like putting songs from two different Weeknd eras together at the seams, and it’s an intoxicating brew of atmosphere-warping R&B and pop zip.
The longer I Told You runs, though, the more it unravels. It’s an overly ambitious project that attempts to shoot a movie and forgets it’s an album in the process. Sometimes in an effort to pat himself on the back, Lanez reduces songs to plot points in his own myth-making. He could’ve shaved at least 10 minutes off the 76-minute runtime just by cutting the fat. He suffers from Travis Scott Syndrome: the tendency to overdo. Songs don’t always need big second acts or elaborate arrangements. Sometimes, less is more. “Flex,” a song almost entirely made of hooks, is two hooks too long. “4am Flex” could’ve done without the rapped outro. Everything doesn’t need a skit.
Some songs here are hastily penned with only exposition in mind like a pivot moment in the Fox industry drama “Empire.” Others are jammed in completely ignoring the flow of the album, making room where there isn’t any through dialogue or soliloquy. It’s also ironic that an album this long somehow rushes the ending; the climax of his rags-to-riches yarn is fumbled in a frenzy of singles. Tory Lanez is a promising talent who has a long way to go before he can be considered Drake’s peer, but he’s already nailed at least one Drake-ism: the bloated, overwrought album.
