Just keeping it 100? Apple Music 1’s Ebro Darden really is in touch with the culture and proves it with some pretty solid conversations with everyone from Burna Boy to Lil Tjay in 2023. The Bronx rap star Lil Tjay chops it up with Ebro on everything from his connection to hip-hop heavyweight Ice Spice to reliving being shot a year ago in New Jersey.

Lil Tjay chops it up with Apple Music 1’s Ebro Darden

While the conversation is, of course, an Apple Music 1 exclusive, there are some pretty solid key quotes from the discussion worth noting. Slide into the streaming giant to get the full-fledged conversation.

Lil Tjay on the night he was shot, not remembering anything, and how he had to invent details for his song “June 22nd”:
Ebro Darden: In the song, I want to play June 22nd, the song. It's a dramatization. Clearly it's not based on facts, but is there anything in the song, like you say in the song you seen a car following you, is that facts? Like, y'all had seen that, or it was more sudden than that in real life?
Lil Tjay: Nah, in reality it's like I heard something like that. Somebody told me, this is a little bit about what happened, but I don't remember nothing.
Ebro Darden: Right.
Lil Tjay: I just remember waking up in the hospital and just not being able to move.

Lil Tjay on Ice Spice and growing up one street away from each other:
Ebro Darden:  How close did y'all grow up together, both being from the Bronx?
Lil Tjay: I'm from 183rd. She from 184th.
Ebro Darden: Literally a block away?
Lil Tjay:  Yeah, but she from other side of the thing, but-
Ebro Darden: From Grand-
Lil Tjay: Yeah, she other side of the concourse.
Ebro Darden: Grand Concourse, which is a whole quarter mile across the street, mad, mad lanes.
Lil Tjay: Yeah. She from the other side.
Ebro Darden:  Word, but you never saw her in the neighborhood before?
Lil Tjay:  Nah, nah.
Lil Tjay on “Foster Baby” and the first time he’s opened up about being adopted:
Foster Baby, it talks about me being adopted. I never addressed that in none of my music. I be having so much stuff going on that it's like, you really think about it, I ain't even addressed that part of my life yet. You feel me? To a certain extent, it was like that, but it's also like, when do I do it? I felt like it was the right time, and I felt comfortable enough to say, because it's like, you young, you think some shit like that is embarrassing. So, on the song I say, I got to the point I feel like if I speak, it's all right, and I just talk about my living environment when I was younger, how my mom was, and things, how things was going…I feel like it came up easy. I would've never been able to record it with girls in the studio, just chilling, you feel me? I have to be alone, you feel me? But, it's easy to put together, because it's like, that's what I do, but it's more so me knowing that that type of record I wouldn't drop would be the reason why I wouldn't make it. I feel like I can't be scared to be vulnerable and maximize on telling my story, and just motivating people, and being regular. I can't be scared to be regular. I'm Tjay already, you know?