“[Suge Knight] tellin’ me he think I could be bigger than Pac,” claims Tory Lanez on “MAWA Interlude x Lunch Tray,” a track from his new album Peterson. Recorded over the past several months while he serves out a 10-year sentence in California Correctional Institution for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, it’s a 20-track data dump that recasts the onetime Canadian hitmaker as an incarcerated Black martyr. For those of us who remember Tory as the author of mewling, highly formulaic melodic raps like “Luv” and “Say It,” his evolution into a hard rapper (albeit while deploying a stilted Drake-like cadence) doing time in “gangland” is a notable if not exactly profound shift. “Jail is only makin’ me more famous than I was,” he claims.
It’s difficult to parse out Peterson’s artistic qualities from one’s own opinion about Tory’s criminal conviction, his self-righteous anger against anyone he believes is siding with Megan Thee Stallion – Megan’s management company ROC Nation, court reporter Meghan Cuniff, and former defense lawyer Shawn Holley all get dissed on the score-settling “Verdict Day x Lawyer Fees” – and the cascade of social-media hate his supporters continue to direct at Megan for bringing charges against him. It’s admittedly a more focused and provocative work than his last album, 2022’s Sorry for What. Prison life has given him newfound purpose, and his angst-ridden passion is palpable. But given that Tory spent much of his nearly decade-long career churning out blandly appealing pop with trap, R&B and tropical notes, it clears a low bar. Peterson hardly ranks in a canon of pre-and-post-incarceration epics that includes 2Pac’s Me Against the World, Lil Kim’s The Naked Truth, and Drakeo the Ruler’s Thank You for Using GTL.
Still, Peterson savvily mines Tory’s ongoing support from the manosphere, as well as celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Pras, Drake, and Chris Brown. He slathers the album in gospel-ized choruses, and casts himself as a child of god. At the end of “My Shayla,” he appends an AI impression of Donald Trump’s voice, perhaps in hopes that the president’s inner circle will take an interest in Tory’s case. “Tory actually protected two black women that night,” says the voice, echoing Tory’s debunked theory that Kelsey Harris, Megan’s friend who was with them that night, is the actual shooter. He invites his outspoken father, Sonstar, to proclaim on “Guide Me Through the Storm,” “It was not just about you, but also about the others/The many other incarcerated sisters and brothers.” These proclamations of inner spiritual strength contrast with endless rhymes about his sexual prowess, from fapping with groupies for “Phone Secs x FaceTime” to lusting after “CO bitches” on “I Fxcked a Lady Cop.” He reveals that he has a jones for rising star Doechii: “I low-key love her/I won’t DM and fuck the chance up that we gon’ be fuckin’.” Yet even Tory isn’t immune to being hurt by a “bitch” who’s “obsessed.” “Every now and then, I run into a Robin Givens,” he claims on “My Shayla.”
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From claims that he’s got “Jewish lawyers” to fight for him and Trump fan Snoop Dogg in his corner to phone daps from cult rapper Max B and Ric Flair snippets, Tory drapes Peterson in self-centered liberation dreams and misogynoir sleaze. Give him credit: he effectively builds on his self-described villain persona to stoke curiosity, and perhaps even sympathy, though it’s likely his detractors will simply recoil at his true intentions. “My release date is this year 2025 and I decree it in the name of Jesus,” he announces on the final track, “Free Tory.” Who knows if that will happen, but it’s near certain that Peterson will notch an impressive debut on the Billboard album chart. The world is a disgusting and miserable place, and Tory Lanez is eager to exploit it.
