The last time Tory Lanez pulled up to the REVOLT offices, he promised to not only shake things up with the release of his sophomore album, Memories Don’t Die, but also to prove that he’s one of the dopest artists out. “_I Told You_was a great project, but I’m a different animal this time,” said the singer-songwriter, in December. “I’m coming at this whole thing with a different kind of energy, right now.” Now that the album is officially out, he’s ready to double down on his promise.
“I’m a very innovative guy,” said a confident Lanez during this morning’s sit down with The Breakfast Club. The visit also resulted in him telling Charlamagne tha God and Angela Yee the meaning behind Memories Don’t Die, how he almost beefed with Travis Scott and why Nicki Minaj took her verse off of “Shooters.”
On meaning behind Memories Don’t Die: “The Memories Don’t Die title basically stems from a summer I had a long time ago. I was 16 or 17 and my friends had betrayed me. I was in a little bit of a situation and they ain’t help me and it kind of pushed me away from hanging with people. That’s when I said I’m going to do music.”
On his influence on other artists: “I think earlier in my career when I was just the hook guy, behind the scenes and I was giving everybody the records I feel like there was a lot of innovative sounds that I created and I put in place with people and they ran with it.”
On singing lyrics someone else wrote: “I’m not singing another nigga’s songs. That’s like wearing another nigga’s draws.”
On why he almost beefed with Travis Scott: “Me and Travis’ situation is a little bit different. With him, there was a record that had got done by T.I. for a mixtape. It was T.I., Meek Mill and Travis. A beat that somebody had given to me, that I wrote a hook for had somehow, someway gotten to T.I. and Meek and they put Travis on the hook. Looking at it now and knowing it from Travis’ standpoint, I don’t even think he wanted to sing the hook. I didn’t even know that at the time. I just remember he sung the hook, so I was more like, ‘You sung my record. I wrote it. I don’t care what you are talking about.’ But he was like, ‘I was just doing a favor for them. Like bro, I write all of my own shit. You know that Tory.”
On Nicki Minaj almost getting on “Shooters:” “Nicki Minaj was originally on “Shooters.” She did an incredible verse and I was asking her something about the verse and changing something around, because of where it placed the hook at in the song. I think, because we were talking over text it just kind of came off the wrong way. It may have came off like I was trying to critique her verse or something like that. I think she wasn’t really rocking with it and she was like I’m taking my verse off of the song. She didn’t do me like that though. She was very nice. She was just like if it’s something like that may this is not the right project or song.”
More of Tory Lanez’s sitdown with The Breakfast Club can be viewed above.