Luh Tyler

The video for Luh Tyler’s new song “First Show” is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect a 17-year-old rapper to make as he lives out his dream of stardom. It’s both cheeky and earnest at the same time, filled with all the fantasies a teenager would think were the coolest things he could stuff into a music video, from a trio of models waking him up to a pool party packed with pretty women and water pistols.

Sure, it’s not groundbreaking stuff, but knowing the kid still isn’t old enough to vote takes it from being the cliched material it usually is and transplants it into the actual summertime activities of a high school junior looking forward to three months of vacation. Instead of coming off kind of grody, the way it does when rappers twice his age indulge their Peter Pan syndrome, it reads here as a kid being a kid.

It helps that he employs that distinctive Florida drawl of his toward tales of turn-ups rather than shoot-outs, filling his verses with perfectly-punned punchlines that make him endearing in a way a lot of his fellow party rappers fall short of. Between songs like this, “Stand On Biz,” and “Law & Order,” Tyler has set himself up as a completely unique specimen in hip-hop, half Curren$y and half Kodak Black, with just enough of IT (you know, IT factor) to be recognizable as something new and worth keeping an ear out for.

Watch Luh Tyler’s “First Show” video above.

Luh Tyler is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Rap has a long history of teen stars — the creation of the genre is largely credited to a group of New York teenagers throwing house parties in the Bronx — and the latest just might be one of its biggest yet. Luh Tyler is just 17 years old and already signed a deal with Atlantic Records — a deal that has already produced one of the better-received projects of the year — and been dubbed the “coolest rapper/teenager in America/rap” by Pitchfork and Stereogum, the “most exciting rapper in Florida” by Complex, and the “feel-good story in rap” by GQ.

Hailing from Tallahassee, Tyler — not to be confused with the similarly-named Luh Kel — creates low-stakes but engaging music supported by breezy rhymes that don’t so much detail the circumstances of his upbringing as his immediate surroundings at any given moment. He makes the basics sound fly — like a teen Curren$y — but what sets him apart from his contemporaries from the sunshine state is his insistence on defining his existence by good times rather than trauma.

Perhaps no song better exemplifies this than “Back Flippin,” one of his standout tracks and the one that has become his calling card. Then, there’s “Law & Order,” his most successful track to date, built on a sample of the theme from the long-running procedural. Tyler built on the momentum from these two tracks on his debut My Vision with songs like “Stand On Biz” and following up with “First Show,” and if he can keep it up, he might just remain the coolest well beyond the next three years he’s still a teen.

Buzzing teenage rapper Luh Tyler has been getting more and more attention lately. With his debut mixtape My Vision out now (along with its deluxe version My Vision: Reloaded, he isn’t taking any time to rest on his laurels. Dropping a new song, “First Show,” he draws attention to his upcoming My Vision Tour, which kicks off on June 20 at The Echo in Los Angeles and includes performances at Rolling Loud in Germany, Miami, and Portugal, as well as Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash in Chicago.

“First Show” is short and simple, with Luh Tyler rapping straight through, boasting that he’s “snappin’ in this rap, just had to you know.” As the first new music since the release of his mixtape, “First Show” is an effective display of the young rapper’s appeal.

Check out “First Show” above and see the dates for the My Vision Tour below. You can get more info here.

6/20 -– Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
6/22 –- New York, NY @ Market Hotel
6/24 — Chicago, IL @ Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash
6/25 -– Dallas, TX @ HOB Cambridge Room
6/27 –- Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
6/28 -– Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade – Purgatory
6/30 -– Orlando, FL @ The Social
7/1 — Tampa, FL @ Crowbar
7/5 — Portimao, Portugal @ Rolling Loud Portugal
7/7 –- Munich, Germany @ Rolling Loud Germany
7/11 –- London, UK @ Colours
7/22 –- Miami, FL @ Rolling Loud Miami