“I don’t have to practice how to sound like myself,” Lil Tecca tells Apple Music. “I got my own sound, so it’s easy.” The Queens-hailing MC’s sound is a byproduct of his personal taste and his actualization as a rapper who can speak both to and for New York City. His We Love You Tecca 2, which comes roughly a year after his debut album, Virgo World, is less a return to his story’s origin than to an energy he recognizes from when he’d first broken out. “We Love You Tecca represents a point of my life where I’m having fun and I’m just free and shit,” Tecca says. “And I feel like that’s exactly where I’m at in life again. So, I just wanted to come back to the theme.” Not unlike Virgo World, however, We Love You Tecca 2 is rife with stories about his dealings with women, warnings about how protected he is as his circle’s breadwinner, and then also ruminations on how life has changed since rap stardom took hold. It’s enough to overwhelm probably any other 18-year-old, but luckily for Tecca, just doing his job is the answer to his problems. “Sometimes music is the only thing that can make me feel something,” he says. “Even after I blew up, I still didn’t know if I was really a music person. But there’ll be moments where I’m like, nothing has made me feel the way music does. And I just believe how I feel and don’t try to put logic behind it. I just trust my feelings.” Below, Lil Tecca goes a bit deeper into what he was feeling while creating some of the standout tracks from We Love You Tecca 2. “MONEY ON ME” “When I made this song, I was just in my head. I was just like, ‘Fuck everything. Everything’s getting me mad now.’ I’m in the studio—you could look at me a type of way, I might get a little upset. Everything made me furious.” “REPEAT IT” (feat. Gunna) “That’s definitely the biggest flex song on the whole project, and that was needed. I needed something I could just talk on, just let the swag flourish. No one got swag like people from New York. No one talks like us, no one walks like us. So, being from here, it just makes it easier to do everything I want to do.” “CAUTION” “I don’t know why, but when I made this song, I was really low-key uncomfortable in the studio. But I knew I had something, so I was just like, ‘I’m going to finish the song.’ There was a few times while recording that song that I was going to stop, but I just kept going. I’m not a person that relies on motivation or inspiration to work. So, if I feel like I need to record or make music, that’s what I’ma do.” “YOU DON’T NEED ME NO MORE” “I fuck with this one so hard. Honestly, it’s just a relatable song. Like the beat was really just telling me what to say the whole time. It isn’t anything that personally happened to me.” “CHOPPA SHOOT THE LOUDEST” (feat. Trippie Redd) “So, me and Trippie recorded this shit in the studio to a whole ’nother beat. And then we was tryna figure out who to put on it. But then Taz Taylor sends me the song on a whole ’nother beat, which is what it is now. And Chief Keef hopped on that version. I can’t lie—he snapped.” “BANK TELLER” (feat. Lil Yachty) “When me and Yachty recorded this, we did 11 songs that day. I think this was probably the second one or the first one we recorded. We just go in the booth and get a whole song done in, like, 25 minutes. And if we want to take extra time, it is what it is, but we just be snapping.” “ABOUT YOU” (feat. NAV) “You know when you distance yourself from people, they might take it personal or whatever? But my personal decisions are basically—I’m just saying it’s not directed towards anyone. I just maneuver how I want to.” “INVESTIGATION” “Besides the fame or whatever, everyone has that point where they’re just waiting on being the best version of themself, like the version of their self they envision in their head. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost like a butterfly effect, like just waiting to evolve into exactly who I see myself as. And who I see myself as, I’m still figuring that out. So, that’s why I’m just being me. No expectations about anything.”