Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith sent the Twitterverse into a frenzy on April 28 when he tweeted “THE WAIT IS OVAH!!!!” along with a loading graphic leading to “5/7/21.” Speculation ran wild online about which TDE artist would drop on that date.
It turns out that Top Dawg Entertainment’s Isaiah Rashad is the person Tiffith was teasing last month. The Tennessee-raised rapper returned with the new tune “Lay Wit Ya” featuring Duke Deuce. The track is a precursor to the long-awaited The House Is Burning album.
“This album was difficult,” states Rashad. “I love music, but I don’t like to say s###. It’s almost like a game for me. It’s like working out. I don’t want to be redundant. Redundancy in general bothers me. Any song that I make, I usually make it in about 30 minutes to an hour, and that’s it. My ideas come to me immediately.”
He adds, “Music is where I go to express myself. It’s what I do to close a chapter. You know what’s crazy? I’m not even ashamed to say it… I really think my albums aren’t different from each other. Eventually, one of my albums will become a classic. I just love this s###. It’s me.”
Isaiah Rashad has mostly been on a musical hiatus for the last five years. With the exception of loosies like “Why Worry” in 2020, the 29-year-old former XXL freshman class member remained relatively quiet since The Sun’s Tirade album came out in 2016.
The Sun’s Tirade was met with widespread critical acclaim at the time of its release. Rashad’s debut studio LP currently has an 80/100 score on Metacritic.com. Plus, the project was included on numerous publications’ 2016 end-of-the-year “best album” lists. 2014’s Cilvia Demo mixtape also received rave reviews.
Back in 2016, Isaiah Rashad spoke publicly about his battles with drug addiction and alcoholism, even admitting he was in “a really bad place” at one point. TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith reportedly refused to release any of Rashad’s music at the time until he “got his s### together.”
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