Teezo Touchdown is Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Year

In late May, Teezo Touchdown — clad in all-black leather, sharp silver claws digging into his shoulders — jumped onto the stage at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles. As he performed his legendary 2023 song “Mood Swings,” he let out a sun-kissed “Wee!” ad-libs mid-air, and a live bouquet of flowers containing his microphone floated with him.

“A night at Lil Yachty's house” inspired his mic setup, Teezo says today as he intermittently eats a raw orange carrot to match the couch he's lounging on. Teezo and Yachty have marathoned Morrissey music videos, and the way the former Smiths frontman nonchalantly waved a bouquet of flowers in the video for “This Charming Man” “really affected” Teezo — so much so that the avant-garde 31-year-old rapper -meets -rock star finally made it his own.

He's now twirled that mic onstage at the country's biggest arenas and stadiums, thanks to opening concerts for Tyler, The Creator in 2022 (after featuring on Tyler's “RunItUp”) and Travis Scott in 2023 (after appearing on Scott's UTOPIA track “Modern Jam”). “Being an opener is so hard,” Teezo admits – but he's gained valuable perspective by playing for early arrivals interested in the main act.

“I'm like the doorman who welcomes you to Tyler's crib, Travis' crib: 'Can I grab you anything? It will fall soon. But while you're here, let me entertain you,” he explains. That attitude also informed Teezo's recent guest appearances on tracks by artists like Drake, Doja Cat and Don Toliver — chart-topping collaborations that catapulted him onto the Billboard Hot 100 with “Amen,” off Drake's 2023 album. For all dogsmarking Teezo's highest charting entry at No. 15.

“Teezo is your favorite artist's favorite artist,” says his manager, Amal Noor, who has been working with him since 2019. “He respects these artists' careers and knowing that they love him creatively is an amazing feeling.”

After his own first headlining tour last spring, which followed his debut album in 2023, How do you sleep at night?, Bulletin boardThe 2024 R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Year is still coming to terms with his current level of stardom. “I can still go to Whole Foods and grab my six hard-boiled eggs or go to Paris and walk the streets and no one bats an eye,” she says. “But on the other hand, I'm on the biggest albums in the world, the biggest tours.”

Long before he became Teezo Touchdown, the artist born Aaron Lashane Thomas followed in his father's footsteps, a DJ and avid music collector, and started DJing in the second grade, playing at friends' parties, weddings and graduations in his hometown. of Beaumont, Texas. “Every year I got something music-related for Christmas, but in seventh grade I got this little box. There was a key inside the studio that my father had made for me upstairs,” he says. Teezo made his first song that day — and he still plays piano riffs in the studios he visits “to call that kid back at Christmas, like 'Look where you are right now.' “

Tragedy affected his trajectory early on. After his girlfriend was fatally shot in 2016, Teezo channeled his grief into his art, and in February 2019, he dropped the somber single “100 Drums,” which decried gun violence for a sample of Panic! to Disco's emo “I write sins not tragedies”. Chance the Rapper and Trippy Red both noticed, and the latter flew him out to Los Angeles for the first time the following month. Noor also noticed: After seeing a clip of the “100 Drums” music video on a meme page, she also contacted Teezo.

While spending time at his childhood home later, Teezo stumbled upon his father's toolbox. “Punks are usually sharp. My dad had nails around the crib, and I said, 'This is going to be my spike,'” he says. In March 2020, Teezo asked his best friend to braid nails into his hair for the first time, for his 'Strong Friend' music video. “I think I had to find [the nails],” says Teezo, adding that he has slept comfortably with them in his hair many times.

His unorthodox image complemented his developing sound, which he now describes as “R&B with a rock twist.” He didn't think he could combine these genres until he saw the Afropunk festival's Instagram post about Black rock band Living Color and its producers, Brendan Grieve and Hoskins, played him a mashup of Craig David and metalcore band Killswitch Engage.

How do you sleep at night? (released last September on Not Fit for Society/RCA Records) showcases Teezo's genre-defying talents — from the garage punk-meets-R&B anthem “Too Easy” to the guitar indie-rock jam “Impossible.” It didn't crack the Billboard 200, but Teezo only cares about the numbers for one reason: “I'm so obsessed with the numbers because I just want to make my team proud. I'm proud because I make music and one person knows who I am.”

Drake shouted How do you sleep at night? “Some of the best music ever” when Teezo played it to him a month earlier. But ironically, Teezo's profile expanded even further when Kendrick Lamar's name landed him on the Hot 100 No. 1 Drake dis track, “Not Like Us” (“Nail an—a to the cross/He walk around like Teezo”). Having just started his own tour (a “little bubble” filled with “loving fans”) at the time, “I made the decision that I wasn't going to listen to any of the back-and-forth,” says Teezo. who claims to have avoided listening to the inescapable “Not Like Us” in its entirety. “I see a mob mentality and I don't like division. Sorry to be so kumbaya, but it's all love here.' The simple fact that both Drake and Lamar “know who I am… is still one of those pinch yourself moments. The kid in Beaumont, I'm pretty sure he's jumping off the roof right now.”

In October, Teezo will hit the road again on Don Toliver's North American tour — an opportunity he initially hesitated to take because he wanted to focus on making his next album. But”[Don] he was like, “Teezy, I'm telling you. If you know you've got a tour coming up, it'll get you locked in.” I needed a fire under me and this was the fire.”

And it works: Teezo has already started his next project. “The word which [we] Continuing to discover is “undeniable”. Everything we make, is it indisputable?' he says. “If it's not, put a red mark on it and let's move on to the next one.”

This story appears in the August 31, 2024 issue Bulletin board.