Today, Chicago singer/rapper and recent Top Dawg Entertainment signee Lance Skiiiwalker announced the name and release date of his debut album, Introverted Intuition (due October 18th, next Tuesday) via label head Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith’s instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLjpIcFj_WD/

Back in March, when TDE announced that it had two mysterious new signees known only as John Doe 1 & 2, the internet went crazy trying to figure out who exactly the mysterious additions to one of hip hop’s greatest labels were. When John Doe 1 was revealed to be an unknown artist by the name of Lance Skiiiwalker, people were understandably confused.

Prior to the announcement, Skiiiwalker had only a handful of features to his name, all of which were on TDE tracks: he had an uncredited feature on ScHoolboy Q’s “His & Her Fiend”, a SZA-assisted bonus track of 2014’s Oxymoron; and “Telegram (Going Krazy)” and “Money Trees Deuce” off Jay Rock’s 2015 album 90059. Due to the ScHoolboy credit going largely unnoticed (due to the feature being attributed to his real name, Lance Howard), many actually believed that ‘Lance Skiiiwalker’ was simply a moniker Jay Rock decided to use when he sang.

Since being signed, Skiiiwalker’s had two more TDE features (on Kendrick’s “Untitled 04” and ScHoolboy’s “Kno Ya Wrong”) as well as two solo songs: “Speed” and “Could It Be”, the latter of which came with an extremely odd, Dave Free-directed music video.

It’s surprising that Skiiiwalker’s album is the next on the TDE roster to be released, especially considering Ab-Soul’s past complaints of feeling back-benched and SZA’s recent threats to quit over her album delay, but Top Dawg took to Twitter earlier to announce that neither album is finished yet, whereas Introverted Intuition is ready to go (all this despite stating months ago that both Ab-Soul and SZA’s albums were nearly completed, as well as the fact that both artists deserve better attention from their label, but that’s none of my business).

Personally, I think Lance Skiiiwalker has yet to prove that he belongs on the same label as proven heavyweights Kendrick Lamar, Isaiah Rashad, ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, and SZA, but hopefully this album will prove what prompted Top Dawg to sign this little-known artist to one of the most successful music labels in the world.