Peterson (album)

On September 25, 2020, Lanez released his fifth studio album, Daystar, amid criminal allegations that he had shot Megan Thee Stallion in her foot earlier in the year;^[3] several songs on that album found him denying the allegations.^[4] Due to its surrounding controversy, many critics opted not to review it.^[5] Two years later, in December 2022, Lanez was convicted on three felony charges in relation to the shooting, and was subsequently jailed;^[6][7] he would be sentenced to 10 years in prison on August 8, 2023, and is currently serving out that sentence in the California Correctional Institution.^[8] While incarcerated, he has continued to release music under the "Lost Tapes" and "Prison Tapes" song series, and released a deluxe edition of his album Alone at Prom (2021) in 2023. Lanez has claimed that after "20 [...] to 30 something fuck ups and mistakes", him and his engineer were able to produce "studio-quality material from behind bars".^[9]

On February 20, 2025, a phone call from Lanez was shared to social media, in which he outlined plans to record and release a full-length album within the following three weeks, citing fellow Canadians Drake, PartyNextDoor, and the Weeknd as inspirations.^[1] A video of him rapping on the prison phone before a riot started behind him would surface on February 24.^[10]

On February 28, during a phoned-in appearance on the Full Send podcast, he revealed that the album would be released on March 7, and gave insight into its process.

[...] This is a very crazy task that has never, ever been done. You have to think [about] everybody who's done music from prison or who's done music from jail. Usually, it's like this. Over the phone, shit-sounding, like, 'Yo, this sucks.' That's not what I'm doing here. [...] It's professional. It's going to sound exactly like a Tory Lanez album. But just, the pain is there, the hunger is there. You know, the tears, the cries are there. It's a lot of emotion into it, but it's the first ever professionally recorded prison album. This has never been done before.

On March 4, Lanez shared the album's title and cover art.^[2]

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Rolling Stone	[11]

Close

Mos Reeves in his review for Rolling Stone wrote that "Tory drapes Peterson in self-centered liberation dreams and misogynoir sleaze. Give him credit: he effectively builds on his self-described villain persona to stoke curiosity, and perhaps even sympathy, though it’s likely his detractors will simply recoil at his true intentions."^[11]

• Thank You for Using GTL (2020) by Drakeo the Ruler, a mixtape entirely recorded over Global Tel Link phone calls