Album Review: They Just Ain’t You by Lil Tjay
The Bronx rapper’s first independent album has the writing to say something real. He uses it on maybe five songs.
Lil Tjay told OkayPlayer the title (They Just Ain’t You) means “people think they know, but they really have no idea what it is like to walk in your shoes.” Tione Merritt has walked through more than most rappers his age will put on a record. He wrote “Resume” at fifteen in a youth detention center after a robbery arrest. By seventeen he was signed to Columbia off the strength of “Brothers”; by eighteen True 2 Myself sat at number five on the Billboard 200. On June 22, 2022, somebody shot him seven times outside a Chipotle in Edgewater, New Jersey—chest and neck, 160 pounds catching every one. He came back performing at Rolling Loud three months later. They Just Ain’t You is his fourth album, his first without Columbia, released through his own TrenchKid Records imprint a day after his twenty-fifth birthday.
Merritt is a better writer than the runtime usually lets on, and the songs where he talks about Fordham like someone who actually lived there prove it. On “Letter to My Block” he addresses the neighborhood, mentions Ryer by name, talks about growing up on Medicaid and dicin’ for money on Scully. At Smelly’s name the tone hardens:
“Disrespect Smelly, know them shells gon’ pop.”
Smelly was a real kid who was stabbed to death when Merritt was fifteen. That bar means something different knowing it. “Can’t Change” dug into the specifics even further. Merritt rapped about spending twenty thousand on his bed after starting on an air mattress, about his friend sitting in the feds for shooting back, about his mother telling him he should try clutching his pole so he doesn’t die. Then everything stops and he just talks: “And everything I said is just fucking sad/But it’s reality, so get the fuck away from this shit.” He sounds irritated at himself, like he caught his own verse doing the thing he hates. “Free the Bros” has him admitting he fell in love with money, wishing he’d stayed in his classes: “I think I fell in love with money/Still got that lil’ hunger in my tummy/Broke, low funds, I was bummy.”
Merritt’s romantic writing splits between genuinely sweet and genuinely pissed. “Ain’t Too Many Hit” is the gentlest song he’s recorded: “Complexion, love your brown/When I stroke, how you sound.” “Used 2 Love” starts sweet and turns ugly fast. He had a conversation with God about this woman, saw a text with no edit, felt like a sucker reading it, and by the second section he’s calling her a “dumb bitch chasin’ after closure” and saying he should’ve only kept her around for sex. That whiplash from devotion to disgust happened inside the same song without a pause. “First Time” circles back to tenderness but slips in darker admissions—“I was on them Percs so bad” and “When you love someone, you’ll go stupid for them/Got the boy ignorin’ red signs.” “Drive Me Crazy” is the exception, a sex track with no personality in either direction.
Some songs, like Bad Wrist,” sound like they were recorded on autopilot. It repeats the hook about hundreds of thousands, and never says anything worth remembering. NoCap showed up on “Never Leave” and rapped about VVS rings and GPS trackers (roughly the same verse NoCap has contributed to every feature for three years). But Merritt says something on that track worth holding onto: “Out my deal, soon I can finally rap/Label deal was tryna get me to go pop.” He sounds relieved. Fuego 3000, Cam Griffin, whywhiteshiene, Baby Mane, and about nine other producers rotate through without anyone’s name leaving a stamp. Any given song’s personality lives or dies with Merritt’s writing, and on the weaker ones there wasn’t enough of it. “Do What I Can” closes the album with a spoken monologue where Merritt apologizes for “misleading the youth” and calls gang-banging stupid.
But “Gone” says more than the closing speech. Merritt remembers robbing for Jordans, getting his first plays, his mother telling him to be brave, a friend put in a grave. He raps about signing for millions and appealing a friend’s case. And buried between a bar about the trenches and a bar about Neiman’s: “I ain’t gon’ lie, I kept it to myself/Thinkin’ ‘bout the belt.”
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Letter to My Block,” “Can’t Change,” “Gone”