Tory Lanez

Background

Tory Lanez is an established rapper, songwriter, and record producer. His music is popular all over the world and is celebrated both as an artist and as a producer. He was born on July 27, 1992, in Brampton, Ontario to his father, Sonstar, and mother, Luella. His father is Bajan and his mother is from Curacao. They moved to Miami in Florida from Montreal, where they were previously based. Daystar Shemuel Shua Peterson, known professionally as Tory Lanez, started his craft at a very young age. He always refined his rapping abilities frequently as a child. Unfortunately, his mother passed on due to an unknown illness. His father then became an ordained minister and this made them move around the United States a lot. He later remarried and they all moved to Atlanta in Georgia. Lanez then met Hakeem, a janitor who gave him the name Lanez because of his thrill-seeking behavior.

He lived with his cousin and grandmother before ending up alone in the streets. He survived on his own from the age of 15 years old to around 18 years old. He admittedly states that his life in the streets shaped the man that he is to date. His first name, Tory, came from a nickname he had given himself, Notorious, as a reference to Notorious B.I.G. who was his idol and that is how Tory Lanez came to be. He began performing at the age of 16 at outdoor concerts and at 17, he took an interest in singing. He started gaining recognition through the mixtape, “Conflicts of My Soul: The 416 Story”. The mixtape was released in August 2013 and in 2015, he was signed with Benny Blanco’s Mad Love Records. This was made possible through Interscope Records. In 2016, he debuted his studio album that was titled, “I Told You” and had hits like ‘Say It’ and ‘Luv’ that went on to be ranked number 23 and 19 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.

He simultaneously released his next two albums in 2018 titled, “Memories Don’t Die” and “Love Me Now?”. In 2019, he released his fourth album, “Chixtape.” He released his fifth album, “Daystar,” in 2020, and was also featured on the U.S. Billboard 200 at number 10. Lanez is also a proud recipient of several awards and nominations. In 2017, he was nominated for ‘Best R&B Song’ at the Grammy Awards and won ‘Rap Recording of the Year’ at the Juno Awards. Lanez has described his genre as “Swavey”. This means fusing more than one together. He says that as much as record labels try and fix artists to one genre, it is not entirely a bad thing to be able to do more than one music genre and it means that you are multi-talented. He terms such artists “Swavey Artists”.