“Dopamine” is an album by Lil Tecca released June 13th of this year, fans and critics alike praised the album for its experimental nature and Lil Tecca himself got praised for his improvement since he first started releasing music, but what exactly makes this album so great?
Well there’s many factors that make this album such a great listen, one being the improvement of Tyler-Justin Anthony Sharpe- more commonly known as Lil Tecca, who first got popular in 2019 with his hit song “Ransom” and continued to get popular until 2020 and managed to get a remix with a Juice WRLD feature- Juice being another rapper who passed away in 2019. When Lil Tecca first started getting popular he was making lyrical rap music with trap instrumentals, which for a period of time worked. His first studio album, “We Love You Tecca”, got popular just for that specific type of music and for a while Tecca didn’t seem like he wanted to change anything about himself.
That is until he did. With his album “Virgo World” released in 2020, Tecca changed his style and transformed it to a more electronic hiphop style of music and he included a lot of features on his album. Though this project was unique and new it was not a fresh breath of air like Tecca hoped it would be. After negative reviews and feedback from fans, Tecca decided to go back to his old style of music and released his third studio album, “We Love You Tecca 2”.
After releasing his third studio album in 2021, in 2022 he released no albums which was quite a shock to fans and critics alike. Though he released no albums he did release a few singles such as “Blessing”, “Faster”, and “Treesha” and he also made a couple songs with Internet Money such as “She Want Some More” and “Falsetto”. He also featured on Lil Wayne’s album “Sorry 4 The Wait” track 3 “Anti-Hero”, and on 24k Goldn’s album “El Dorado (Deluxe)” on track 15 “Prada”, and on one of the “Rover” song’s remixes alongside featuring on a few more albums by less known artists.
After his pseudo break from music in 2022 he released his album “TEC” in 2023 which blew up everywhere on social media and sold 41,000 units in the first week and debuted at number eleven on the Billboard 200 chart. Tracks from that album such as “500lbs” and “HVN ON EARTH” were everywhere on social media. You would think that TEC wouldn’t do well since how experimental of an album it was but it did because Tecca showed everyone that he could be experimental and still sound amazing. TEC featured more trap and R&B type of beats and a chill lyrical rapping style that Tecca used to express exactly how he felt and how he wanted everyone else to feel. The only feature on this album was an artist called Ken Carson who featured on “Fell In Love”.
After TEC he released “Plan A” in 2024 which sold 42,000 units in the first week and debuted at number nine on the Billboard 200 charts. The album quickly went viral with tracks like “Bad Time”, “120”, “24HRS” and “I CAN’T LET GO” blowing up everywhere on social media and most fans having these songs on at least one of their playlists. This album featured more of a hype style of music from Tecca and some songs had a more chill and somber style to them, examples being of these chill songs would be “SELF2SELF”, “FLOWERS”, and “COLD GIRLS”. The only feature on this album was an artist named Don Toliver who featured “I CAN’T LET GO”.
Then finally he dropped his latest album, “Dopamine”, which sold 48,000 units and debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 chart in its first week. Dopamine was the most experimental Lil Tecca album to date and it was the most hyped up by fans. There were fake song lists of the album going around and fans theorizing that it would outsell most mainstream artists albums that have been released this year. It had songs that were jazzy, songs that were pop, songs that were trap, hiphop, rap and usually mixed those different genres together. Tracks that got popular include “Dark Thoughts”, “OWA OWA”, “Favorite Lie” and “Tic Tac Toe”. The only feature on this album was by an artist named Ken Carson who featured on “Tic Tac Toe”.
But even before this album was released Tecca appeared on the NEWS to talk about his album and explained that he wanted the album to be full of good and happy vibes and that’s why he named it “Dopamine”. And another thing that happened before the album was that Lil Tecca’s version of “Ref” , a song made by an artist called Osamason, was leaked by fans. The song had the same beat as Ref but was called something different, “Dallas Therapy”, it also had different lyrics from the original song. Because this song got leaked, the originality of both the songs were questioned as Tecca fans were certain that he had recorded the song with the beat before Osamason did and Osamason fans believed the opposite. Though Osamason fans and Tecca fans stay at odds to this day, Lil Tecca and Osamason have never actually had a conflict or a beef and the whole situation has gotten nowhere to this day.
Even though there was a period in time where Lil Tecca wanted to give up on music due to the lack of faith people had in him, Tecca’s now one of the most respected music artists in the rap community even being compared to other famous rappers who are around the same age as him- such as Ken Carson- and being respected by older artists such as Don Toliver.
Even though Lil Tecca went through some controversy before the release of Dopamine, he still managed to create a great experimental rap album that combines old-school beat making and more modern vocals that’s definitely worth a listen if you like rap music.
