“Being early” is one of those tricky things: Pull it off properly, and it’s a welcome surprise; get it wrong, and you’re the guy who shows up for the party while the host is still setting out the snacks. It remains to be seen which category rapper and singer Bryson Tiller suddenly fell into today, when he released his second album, True To Self, almost a full month before its previously announced release date.
The album is the follow-up to his well-regarded debut Trapsoul, which landed on a number of “Best of 2015” lists and marked him as a performer to watch. Tiller has been releasing singles from True for a while now, but he dropped the whole thing on Spotify and Apple Music tonight, despite saying two weeks ago that it would arrive on June 23. (Admittedly, that’s one way to do a surprise release.) Tiller also released a new video for one of the album’s tracks, “Somethin Tells Me.”