How Liyakk! Became Pittsburgh’s Hottest DMV Style Rapper At 18

Liyakk! hated “Psychotic” so much he almost deleted it. It was his first DMV-style song, and he called his best friend Tone to ask if it was trash. Tone told him to drop it. He posted it to TikTok that night, and the likes climbed from a thousand to 10K, 20K, then 60K. The song took off, and from there he became a DMV rapper.

He still won’t perform it. “I hate that song to the day. I will not perform it.”

Liyakk! is 18, about to turn 19, originally from Pittsburgh’s Hill District and raised on the West Side. He sat down with First Impressions TV to talk about growing up inside, four years at Brashear, the record deal he’d hold off on if he could do it again, and his upcoming project, Seven Days of Horror.

Hill District Roots, a West Side Childhood and a Broken Xbox

He was never an outside kid. Growing up on the West Side, he stayed in his room playing the game, watching movies and chilling. Outside was so far from his thing that when his mom wanted to punish him, she made him go outside.

The game ended up pushing him toward music. His Xbox 360 got the Red Ring of Death. Then the HDMI port on his Xbox One S blew out. Between that and being tired of Fortnite, he started picking up music for real. He laughed that he plays more now than ever.

His mom raised him. She had him at 17, and he said they damn near grew up together. They lived with her mom until she moved out at 17 and started getting her own place. She always knew he was musically inclined, and music was how they bonded. It played around the house when he woke up, and she played it to put him to sleep. He fell asleep to music in her bed until he was about 12.

These days, he said, he’s all around the city.

Four Years at Brashear

He went to Brashear all four years. He called it one of the worst high schools ever, then said he wouldn’t choose any other school, because it made him who he is. If you have a name there, he said, people ride you no matter what you do. He was always in his own lane, and he caught on early that a lot of people weren’t messing with him for it.

Being different cost him. He said classmates called him gay for about three years of high school, and when he got his septum pierced, people were mad about it. He found that corny, caring that much about what someone does with their own face or body. Now, he said, the same people who didn’t understand him try to copy him.

High school is also when he finally got outside, mostly because he had no choice. He said he fought about six times in his first month alone, over the stupidest stuff. He was around a hundred pounds soaking wet with long dreads down his back, and in ninth grade he was taking losses. After ninth grade, that changed. Fights moved downtown, and some went viral on Instagram. Eventually, he said, things got more serious and people got tired of fighting.

He called high school a mixture of both, a lot of downs that turned out to be why he is who he is. It was rough, he said, but it was worth it, because he made something out of it.

GloryTonio, BandLab and the Name Change

Liyakk! credits one person for getting him into music: GloryTonio, who he calls Tone, his friend since the first year of sixth grade. They met in music class and both went on to Brashear. Tone had been making music since elementary or middle school and was already on FL Studio. When Tone played him his first song, Liyakk! decided he wanted to be a rapper. He said he wouldn’t be rapping if it wasn’t for him.

He made his first song around 13, in his closet, on BandLab with a set of wires. He quit four or five times. By high school, though, his mind was made up. “I’m not trying to get a job, bro. I’m not trying to go to college, bro. I want to rap, bro.”

Social media kept him going. Before rapping, he was a TikToker, so he already knew how to work the algorithm. He made new accounts, posted trailers for his songs, and the fans kept him moving.

The name has a story too. He used to go by Yakk, after the name on an old Instagram account belonging to Slump 6, a rapper he listened to. He switched to Liyakk! this year after searching Yakk on Apple Music and finding about 75,000 results. When he typed in Liyakk, nobody had it.

From Bieber to Detroit to the DMV

He was honest about his first favorite: Justin Bieber. He called himself a true fanboy until about 12, and kids at school called him Bieber because of his long hair with a swoop. He also listened to Waka Flocka and Lil Wayne.

His first recordings chased the Detroit sound his mom was playing at the time, artists like Veeze, Babyface Ray and BFB Da Packman, around the era when Lil Yachty was popping up in Detroit booths. Whatever he’s listening to, he said, is what he ends up making. His first EP came out of the underground wave of artists like Tana and Slump 6, and it was much more auto-tuned than what he does now. He never took his old music down. It lives on an old SoundCloud account.

That ability to switch sounds is something he’s proud of. Give him any beat, he said, and he can take that sound.

Psychotic, Anaconda and Noid

“Psychotic” opened the door. It put him in a room with Noid, also known as Noid4l, a DMV artist he calls his dog and his brother. When Liyakk! started making DMV music, Noid was the first artist to tap in and show love, and one of the most up artists at the time. Liyakk! called it the first real rap connection that actually benefited him. Together they made “Anaconda,” and that’s when his career went up. He now has most of his songs with him.

They first linked in person this year, when Liyakk! and Tone went to D.C. for the first time and shot the “Fight or Flight” and “Get Down” music videos with Ego, who he called one of the best cameramen in the DMV.

His advice for artists who catch a hit is to stay on it. People want to prove they’re versatile, he said, but the DMV sound took him further than anything else. He plans to ride that wave until it falls off, then adapt to whatever’s popping next.

He’s also caught the attention of Koda, a TikTok comedian he called a phenomenon, whose viral bit name-dropped him alongside other artists.

As for collaborations, he said anyone he wants a song with is just a matter of getting in the room. At the top of his list are Skaiwater and 9Vicious, plus a group of DMV artists he’s been listening to.

The Deal and Seven Days of Horror

Liyakk! signed a deal during his senior year at Brashear, when he had around 2K monthly listeners. Now he’s somewhere in the 20K to 30K range. The label still supports him, and he said it helped, but he kind of regrets it. His advice to other artists is blunt: don’t sign that early. He would have waited.

What he has works for now, he said, but in the next two years he’ll be a grown man, and things will need to be different. A couple of labels are already looking, and he’s aiming for something big. He isn’t chasing being filthy rich, though. He wants to be stable and have enough for what he wants.

Next up is Seven Days of Horror. He wants to drop it on his birthday, October 29, two days before Halloween, or on Halloween itself.

Blackballed at Home

For all those numbers, he said Pittsburgh barely knows him. “I really be feeling like I’m blackballed.” He has over 30K monthly listeners and people from everywhere else finding him, but in the city where he lives, most people don’t know who he is.

He doesn’t have a short answer for fixing Pittsburgh. He’d start with infrastructure, because outside of downtown, he said, the city is falling apart. Then there’s the culture. He said Pittsburgh is about seven years late on everything. He’ll do something early, and when everyone else catches on, they take the credit. This isn’t a city that gives you your flowers, he said. His fix is a reset, or Wiz Khalifa coming back to save it.

In five years, he expects to be big. He and Tone did everything in about a year, with no management, off pure grit. He bought his own FL setup. He thinks people will look back and say they remember him, and that he came on First Impressions TV.

Asked for a message to the youth, he joked first: stay in the house. Then he gave a real one. “Whatever y’all love, make that y’all passion.” Keep working on it and find a way to make money from it, whether that’s painting, rapping or producing. Peep the signs, he said. When it’s your time to go, go. Don’t wait.