I love Tek Lintowe. Sometimes I listen to him with my Beats By Dre studio headphones on, sometimes I listen to him off my Android phone speaker, sometimes me and the guys throw Tek on the big speakers in the locker room to get hyped, sometimes we throw him on the hot tub speakers to chill out. Sometimes I even rent a car just to ride around to Tek Lintowe. There’s a lot of Tek music, which means there’s a lot of music for everyone to love. One could try to put together some sort of genre name to describe what Tek does—a combination of -cores and descriptors and more -cores and more descriptors, continually updated as he adds more swag across different projects. Rather than getting boxed into these labels, Tek hits you with a Matrix Moment: there is no spoon, there is no box, maybe there isn’t even a Tek.

Hop into the whip with me—we’re bumping “Ween Wao” and spinning the block, remembering that being an old head is a state of mind. The track takes a Pluggnb beat and adds a vocal tag announcing that it’s a “BRAND NEW BANGER”' to the beginning. Memories of Evil Empire and Trap-O-Holics mixtapes flash by before Tek begins rapping gibberish in the most expressive ways, layering AutoTuned vocals that play with different flows as he hits extended high notes. The result: Tek’s biggest song, Viral on TikTok, the type of track that makes the audience lose their mind when they hear it performed live. You might think it’s funny at first, but then you realize this is not a joke. It’s pure expression, and besides—if it’s bussin, it’s bussin.

“Ween Wao” and its virality, or rather the inevitability of its virality given Tek’s Very Online following as an Internet Musician, is only just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his body of work. You’ve gotta dig in the internet trenches for tracks, where his music is spread across a number of identities, collaborations, Soundcloud accounts, unlisted YouTube videos, even fan reuploads from Tek’s private profile on Clyp. And you can try to find it all on a search engine but weird characters and upload names bury the works even deeper, demanding a certain level of dedication to be a real Tek head. Initially making music as “800,” which morphed into “Tek 800” and then Tek Lintowe, which of course has splintered off into many forms and identities, he’s dug rabbit hole after rabbit hole to fall down, with a dense network of burrowed tunnels awaiting, stocked with gems to discover.  

In recent eras, Tek’s been spending time in England and New England, working with a number of artists in both locales. While in New England, he’s created a significant amount of work with Shed Theory, a collective founded by Marlon Dubois whose other prominent members include Joeyy, Laker, and Woody, among others. On Primitive Tech, a standout pluggnb project, Tek’s slurry deliveries that recall early Summrs at times combine with Woody’s self-described “Lispnb,” where he quite literally spits his bars with a vocal effect that leaves Soundcloud commenters frequently comparing him to Walt Jr. from Breaking Bad. 

These stylistic decisions have a huge impact on doing numbers and Shed Theory’s members, especially Marlon and Joeyy, are aware of how memes can elevate the popularity of an artist, making plays like using Joeyy’s face to create a poster that hypebeasts can flip for $1,499.99 on eBay and dropping a group album titled Nod Theory while posting IG reels in which they appear to be to nodding off, making a cheap joke of the opiate crisis for shock value which clearly sells. The nod meme’s most recently been made Viral by Fivio Foreign, co-opting it to promote an upcoming single, while also showing the sort of ripple effects that these corners of the Internet can have on the larger music industry—and there’s a beautiful loop that’s formed between Joeyy also having co-opted the way Fivio would say “movie” as a catchphrase, whether in interviews or on Instagram. The beats for Joeyy and Marlon’s biggest, or rather most viral, songs—GOUT and TUB—use the same types of synths you’ll hear on a Playboi Carti or Yeat song, but their approach to mixing, chopping, and lyrics, along with the images cultivated by the artists, results in a profoundly different affect. “Ween Wao” exists similarly, where rather than hearing Summrs or Autumn! croon over a pluggnb beat, Tek’s voice comes out and gargles out a mess of syllables. The result is both memeable and mesmerizing. 

When I was in the field with my bros, running laps and bumping Tek (specifically “Fwme”), one of them compared his vocal delivery to Heems from Das Racist. It was the type of superficial offhand comment that ended up lingering in my head, causing me to think back on how “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” was also one of the first real Viral tracks that pushed the issues of irony, sincerity, and “is this a joke,” the same way “Ween Wao” or a Joeyy track with a “LEGALIZE NUCLEAR BOMBS” tag from DJ Smokey does today. Except now we’ve moved into something truly post-post, a space beyond these categorizations and historicizations, beyond the need or desire to be turned from art into discourse. And beyond moving past the need for them, we’re also moving too fast, the combinatorial game of mixing sounds and genre tropes occuring at such a rate that once you attempt to catalog a moment, it’s already shifted, and you end up chasing a meta that’s always just out of reach. 

Sometimes the ride feels blissful. “The Suntrap,” a collaboration with Helica and Mimics Gate of the London collective mirror:image, is a poetic reverie, with impressionistic lyrics about hundreds of thousands of years, carpenters, and eternal summers sung by a number of voices and layered over synthy strings. mirror:image, a project that appears to be helmed by Helica, takes a different approach to releasing music and art that contrasts significantly with the viral approach that Shed Theory takes. The artists who’ve worked with mirror:image generally maintain a low key social media presence, producing rigorously composed pieces that reflect the realization of very specific aesthetic desires into existence. Take Mimics Gate’s handmade (as opposed to digitally rendered) cover art for “The Suntrap,” or the music video for Helica’s “Ravenfield,” which rapidly cuts between painted works and landscape shots on the coast of the British countryside. I am a evil person, an EP Tek recorded with Oakland-based producer (and Bladee and Black Kray collaborator) Pentagrvm, is another standout, with Tek mumbling over hazy instrumentals that evoke the rainiest, gloomiest of days.

This breadth of collaborators, across geographies and sonic palettes, demonstrates the genius that is Tek Lintowe. He takes sounds like drill, dancehall, indietronica, and even sometimes what sounds like musique concrete, and synthesizes them with so many other influences and makes all of it fit into the warped world of Tek Lintowe, augmented visually with signature fonts on his posts and auxiliary drip resale sites, album covers that look like bootleg PC games edited with a cracked version of Photoshop and 2004 Microsoft Paint illustrations of elf-like creatures, DJ booths, and basketball courts. The thing about Tek is that it’s strictly about the slaps—all these slaps hit in different ways, but like any good smack to the dome, you feel something.  

All of this said, what does Tek Lintowe sound like? The sometimes game begins again: sometimes there’s echoes of James Ferraro’s BEBETUNE$ project. Sometimes his music sounds like a Nintendo 64 cartridge excavated from the depths of The Great Deku Tree, and sometimes he’s playing with tropical house and you just need to get up and shake that thing to it. The next time someone hits you with the “u up?” text, hit them back with the “Yeah and Tek’s up too” and link them to these plays. This week we’re running The Tek Method. It’s like he says: “While the haters gather round, what am I supposed to do?”

“Supposed to”

Produced by Tek, Lauren Auder, and Mimics Gate, this track off the project ` "NuHitz The Evolution The Mixtape​.​.​" — TeK​⠀​*​*​NuHitz Inc. Exclusive​*​* ℗ takes inspiration from Milwaukee rapper Chicken P’s 2020 hit “Posed 2 Do,” swapping out the piano chords that back the regional icon’s track for a wobbly keyboard while adding a bassline straight from a medieval rave. In the video, Tek rocks out in Bristol wearing a travel neck pillow a la buzzing Milwaukee artist Certified Trapper as he drops bars like “When I was three years-old I bought a flatscreen”—all while taking a regional sound built from post-industrial decay and flipping it into something new: “It’s a new day so I have to go a little harder.”

“Idle Hands” (feat. Mimics Gate)

Tek Lintowe and Mimics Gate linked up?! Need it, expeditiously, on the level of Pooh Shiesty and SpottemGottem—they’re arguably the most Dynamic Duo since TeejayX6 and Kasher Quon dropped “Dynamic Duo.” Tek reaches into his singing bag, softly warbling out honest observational lines that form the backbone of the song. “And I speak so directly some would call it journaling,” he sings, before going on to talk about cracks in the floor, flickering lights, and sitting on his phone.

And then this incredible ending—“Cameras. Cameras. CAMERAS. CAMERAS!” Tek chants. Watching the video, there’s this added effect of reflecting on the camcorder textures of the video, grainy moments of life overlaid upon more grainy moments of life, before Tek brings everything to the most beautiful conclusion: a “Picture perfect Kodak Moment.”

“Shorty Kapital Balmain” (feat. Audrey Lyrics) + Tek Lintowe and Audrey Lyrics NTS Mix

This collab between Tek and Audrey Lyrics, best known for her animation and design work with fashion brand VeniceW, and who also shot the video for “Idle Hands,” premiered on a mix the pair made for NTS, nestled in between a track by the late Bay Area legend The Jacka and a corrido by Junior H. The mix dropped in late August without a tracklist, but people immediately began parsing together the breadth of sounds it spans in YouTube comments, from unidentified noise rock and witch house tracks to a slowed down version of The Streets’s “Blinded by the Lights.”

On “Shorty Kapital Balmain,” the duo’s autotuned raps about designer goods are reminiscent of how Bladee’s late 2010s output elevated materialism and luxury into a kind of mystical experience, which of course was inspired by Chief Keef flexing designer belts, which was inspired in turn by Gucci Mane putting Gucci in his name, and on and on in an infinite history of all those who came before us who understood that it feels dope as fuck to throw money and cop shit. Catch Tek on the gram flexing VeniceW jewelry.

Weird Backwards Path: “33” and “Geek Dungeon”

These two remix-based compositions off of Tek’s April project Weird Backwards Path—the title’s a pretty apt way of describing the warped and chaotic journey the record takes you on—Tek up a pair of popular Polo G and Yeat tracks. Polo’s “33” is slowed down; fragmented samples from anime come in, followed by string sections, and then a baile drum sample. Immediately after, a sample from Yeat’s “Dub”—“I just caught a dub with some thugs, rock Balenci”—echoes from the back of a mix, buried under filters and lowpasses. Tek doesn’t excavate it, but instead builds a monument around it, making “Dub” a Dub AKA putting W’s on the board.

“Things fall apart” feat. Bug Bus Piano (from Demented Tek’s The World)

A folk song from a dimension and a half away, this collaboration between Tek and the notorious Bug Bus Piano (who performed at Nina HQ this summer) feels like something you’d hear at an abandoned ale house, featuring trombones and accordions and an MPC wired through filters and pedals dug out of a junkyard. There’s this unmistakable haunted echo of desolation, but the drums beat on and the chords are kind of major. Eventually everything fades away but these buoyant keys. And then there’s a gunshot.

“Never Love Again” by Laker (Prod. Tek)

Real emotional banger. You feel it immediately, this grand piano and these beautiful chords that loop on and on and on as a sample of crows cawing comes in. Tek immediately plunges you into this sonic space that feels like a Movie. And that’s Movie both in the sense of hopping on IG Live to go “Movie” and the sheer melodrama conveyed by the sound that situates it somewhere between John Hughes and Douglas Sirk. 

And who better to star in this movie than Shed Theory affiliate Laker, aka “Laker Brady from The Valley” who drops the type of vocal performance that’d have you searching for his star on Hollywood and Vine. It’s pure heartbreak. Laker croons about forgetting what a lost lover’s embrace feels like, wails that he’ll never love again, how he keeps thinking about her, it’s classic, it’s so classic you want it to head a little east to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Imagine one hundred thousand people shedding one hundred thousand tears while Laker belts out “Babe you broke my heart that’s why I’ll never love again” and Tek plays the keys to a hundred thousand hearts.