Certain hallmarks of youth—like the braces a high-school-aged Lil Tecca still wore when his breakout song, “Ransom,” made him famous in 2018—may be temporary. But the New York rapper’s charm and authenticity are qualities that don’t fade. Queens native Tecca, born Tyler-Justin Anthony Sharpe in 2002, started rapping at age nine, freestyling dis tracks with his friends on Xbox. By the time he was a teenager, he was uploading his songs, honing an imagistic style carried by his singsong cadence. Some of those early tracks did considerable numbers—enough to catch the attention of Internet Money Records’ Taz Taylor, who tweeted that he wanted to work with Tecca. With his parents’ blessing, the 16-year-old and his manager flew out west and joined Taylor in the studio to record “Ransom,” a dancehall-flavored introduction to Tecca’s easy flow and sweetly confident demeanor. With some savvy online promotion, the song promptly turned the internet on its ear upon its 2018 release. His mixtape We Love You Tecca followed in 2019, along with features and cosigns from Trippie Redd, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Lil Tjay, and more. In 2020, Tecca revealed more of himself—both his down-to-earth demeanor and his evident ambition—on his debut album, Virgo World, which boasted not just features from Lil Durk and Lil Uzi Vert but even production from Skrillex. After all, as Tecca told Apple Music about “Ransom,” “When I said ‘I got black, I got white,’ I meant, I got everything. I’m not just one genre, I’m not just one style.”
