TITUS

TITUS is making sounds that are quintessentially of-the-moment, drawing from the music and experiences that have marked his life to produce music that’s unmistakably personal.  TITUS was drawn to music almost immediately in his early adolescence; after his parents divorced, he’d spend the time visiting his father listening to rap greats like Lil Wayne and 50 Cent. As he became a teenager, TITUS turned to skating and developed a taste for emo and pop-punk—but the looming influence of Lil Wayne who, like TITUS, has spent his career bridging the gap between rap and myriad other genres, always remained.  “He had incredible wordplay and songwriting structure,” TITUS explains while recalling the impression Wayne’s music had on him, “but he was also freestyling these melodies, which felt so brand new to me.” Inspiration struck, and TITUS bought a performance microphone and plugged it into his computer to start recording tracks straight to his hard drive. “I’d literally rip beats off the internet and we’d make songs out of them,” he recalls.  His single “COOL,” featuring Good Charlotte’s Billy Martin, is the most fully realized work to-date from this New Jersey-hailing polymath—an energetic song that speaks to his younger self as well as the youth of today, as TITUS channels pop-punk’s infectious melodic spirit to chart his own path forward.   Eventually, TITUS and his friends formed the Zoo Troop Gang collective and built serious buzz on the internet, going as far to sell out the basement venue of New York City’s famed Webster Hall performance space while still in high school. Their burgeoning success led them to a stint on the Warped Tour, where TITUS rubbed elbows with future contemporaries like Machine Gun Kelly and G-Eazy. After meeting producer and fellow Jerseyan Miles William, TITUS and Miles formed the Future Moguls collective as the former started experimenting more with making rock and dance music. But despite his adventurousness as well as a crest of buzz over TITUS’ capability for pleasing vocal flips, he found himself wanting more. “I didn’t feel fulfilled,” he explains. “I couldn’t tell the stories I wanted to. I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to continue, because I wasn’t on the path that I saw myself going down.”  Seeking a fresh start, TITUS put several in-gestation projects aside and dove deep into the wells of his memories—specifically, the experiences he had with Zoo Troop while on the Warped Tour. “I had this need to chase the nostalgia for an incredible time in my life,” he said, and that’s how last year’s electrifying Lost Valley came about. “For the first time, I was so happy and eager to share my music with the world,” he enthuses, and as his music found success on TikTok and elsewhere, he found that “The excitement was there again for me, and for other people as well.”  Featuring contributions from Sum 41 drummer Frank Zummo, Lost Valley touches on themes that have run throughout TITUS’ life: love, grief, responsibility, and the relationships we have with ourselves and the communities we end up being a part of. “Feeling stuck in the middle has been a theme throughout my life,” he explains while reflecting on his New Jersey upbringing. “I’ve always not really ever felt comfortable with my place, as far as being a mixed kid and a product of divorce, as a Black kid living in a predominantly white neighborhood.” And “COOL” is TITUS speaking directly to his younger self, as contemplations of alienation and status collide with the song’s massively melodic main riff. “It’s a song I wish I had in my library when I was in high school,” he explains while discussing the tune. “It’s about identifying and mocking the over inflated ego that drives a human to believe they are too cool to be accepting of others." As TITUS continues to prepare more new music for future release, he’s also navigated fresh pain in his life through the loss of his mother, who passed earlier this year from cancer. “I haven’t figured out how to process my grief yet. Losing her feels like losing a huge piece of emotional stability,” he ruminates, before restating his resolve to use his art to process the difficulty of loving, losing, and living: “I feel an obligation to keep going.”