Memories Don't Die


Memories Don't Die is the second studio album by Canadian rapper Tory Lanez, released on March 2, 2018, by Mad Love Records and Interscope Records. The album features guest appearances from Future, Mansa, Nav, 50 Cent, Wiz Khalifa, Fabolous, Davo, and Paloma Ford, among others. Production is handled by C-Sick, Play Picasso and Dr. Zeuz, among others.
Memories Don't Die was supported by three singles: "Shooters", "Skrt Skrt" and "Real Thing" featuring Future.

Background

On June 14, 2017, Tory Lanez confirmed that his second album was "90% completed" via a tweet on Twitter.
The album's completion was announced by Lanez on August 2, 2017. On October 5, 2017, Lanez announced his second album's title.
On August 11, 2017, Lanez was featured in an interview with HotNewHipHop about his album's theme, by stating
On February 9, 2018, Lanez unveiled the album's cover art and tracklist.

Promotion

On January 1, 2017, Lanez released two mixtapes: Chixtape IV and The New Toronto 2 which were promoted as the prelude for his second album.

Singles

The album's lead single, "Shooters" was released for streaming and digital download on September 22, 2017. Its music video was released a month later.
The album's second single, "Skrt Skrt" was released on September 28, 2017.
The album's third single, "Real Thing" featuring Future was released on October 13, 2017.

Promotional singles

The lead promotional single, "I Sip" was released on November 16, 2017, shortly after premiering on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio.
The second promotional single, "B.I.D" was released on February 15, 2018, following the same roll-out as the former.

Other songs

On February 9, 2018, three tracks that were cut from the album – "March 2nd", "More Than Friends" and "Leaning", the latter two both featuring PartyNextDoor, was released by Lanez for his fans.

Critical reception

Memories Don't Die received mixed reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Memories Don't Die received an average score of 46 based on five reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Kassandra Guagliardi of Exclaim! concluded that the album has "a few quality tracks, but overall it misses the mark on classic appeal." In a scathing negative review, Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian described the album as an "astonishingly hackneyed, aggressively chameleonic LP", while comparing the album to the work of Lanez's contemporaries: "As Migos or 2 Chainz ably demonstrate, rapping about racks and whips isn’t necessarily dull, but you need to have wit, nimble hooks and idiosyncratic flow, none of which Lanez possesses. He’s so profoundly unoriginal you start to wonder if he is actually a rudimentary Spotify AI project who has been fed the RapCaviar playlist and given an edgy beard. But Lanez ultimately doesn’t pass the Turing test, and his jack-of-all-trades versatility leaves him the master of none."
Sheldon Pearce of Pitchfork commented that Memories Don't Die is "a record full of crude imitations of every remotely bankable contemporary R&B or rap song", criticising the originality of the album: "Nearly everything he raps on Memories Don’t Die is something you’ve heard before, performed more ably elsewhere, and the few lines that aren’t are unbelievably simple-minded or straight-up witless."

Commercial performance

Memories Don't Die debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart and number two on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, earning 54,000 album-equivalent units of which 15,000 were in pure album sales in its first week of release.
In his home country of Canada, the album debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, earning 8,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. This became Tory Lanez first number-one debut in the country.

Track listing

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes and Tidal.
Notes
Sample credits
Credits adapted from the album's liner notes and Tidal.
Musicians
Technical
Production
Additional personnel

Weekly charts

Year-end charts