This article is partly taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.
22-year-old singer Liim Lasalle (pronounced ‘Leem’) takes his interview with Dazed from the doorstep of a Brooklyn apartment complex. It’s his homie’s place, but he still greets residents as they enter the building. “I like being outside, I get stressed out if I’m in the crib doing nothing,” he explains. ”I’m an outside kind of guy, you know?”
Listening to Liim’s debut mixtape, Liim Lasalle Loves You, released September 2025, this definitely checks out. The project hits like a sonic tour of New York City, cruising from distant hip-hop, R&B and soul influences right through to detours in bossa nova and even French chansons. Lyrics, meanwhile, act as a slice-of-life companion to these musical escapades, delivering an episodic tale of cycling from Harlem 125th St down to the beach, encountering both young love and heartbreak along the way.
Between this whirlwind of influences, the one constant is the Harlem-born and Brooklyn-based artist’s crooning, half-sung delivery. Teetering in and out of key, yet brimming with emotion, it’s the kind of musical rule-bending that usually comes from a master of the medium. Liim, however, insists that he has no classical training whatsoever.
“I was at the YouTube beat University, I was recording on my phone for the longest time,” he dismisses, citing Stevie Wonder, Kodak Black and Smashing Pumpkins in the same breath when describing his vocals. “I started off with music with no rules. I’m the type of n***a to be like, ‘Yo, let’s have the BPM go from 120 to 160 and back to 130!’ And [producer] AJRadico will be like, ‘That doesn’t make sense!’ I feel like my superpower is that I’ve always looked at music differently to most artists.”
Below, Tyler, the Creator-co-signed singer unpacks the experiences underpinning his inimitable music, from the true story behind breakthrough single “Register Gyal”, to how New York City radio stations influenced his debut mixtape.
Your music truly sounds like nothing else. Where do you think that comes from?
Liim: I’m glad, I definitely want to have my own identity musically. I always go back to the fact that I grew up Muslim, so, in my household, there wasn’t any music being played. We didn’t listen to any music at all. Most of the people I make music with, their parents played soul and gospel and things of that nature.
Once I was sentient enough to start looking for music on my own, I was finding unique ass shit that was not good at all by any means, but different. To this day, I still don’t like it when people show me music; I like to find it myself because that’s how I first connected to it. My pops was not Muslim, so when I was around him, he’d play DMX and shit like that. I don’t think it influenced my sound that much because of how long ago it was, though.
Your lyrics also feel equally vivid to me. Is “Register Gyal” about a real person?
Liim: That’s funny, I hate that song, but I also love it. I was still trying to find my sound at that point. But, yeah, that’s a real story. It was at Village Square Pizza in East Village. [Me and the girl at the register] dated for three months. Then, she said some racist shit to me…
I was talking to her, getting vulnerable about how I didn’t really have much growing up. Nothing sad, just talking about my life and what I experienced. She was like, ‘I’ve dated other Black guys before, silly’. I was like, ‘Yo! So you associate being Black with…?’ I was up out of there.
Maybe pizza joints aren’t the best place to meet the love of your life…
Liim: Man, me and the love of my life are no longer with each other. Right now, I’m not focused on that. I’m just trying to find my crush.
Do you think New York City has had an influence on your music?
Liim: OD! Definitely. Even though I didn’t grow up with music in the crib, even in school we were doing plays and shit. I grew up in a neighborhood where people are blasting music every day, like the biggest speaker you ever seen in your life just chilling in the park. It’s always been around me. I just wasn’t really tapped into music on the same level as everybody else because I wasn’t going home to it. But, yeah, I’ll always like Harlem music, down from drill music all the way to light feet music, that shit has inspired me.
I’m also interested in the radio opening to Liim Lasalle Loves You. Did you listen to much radio growing up?
Liim: Yeah, that’s what I meant when I said I’d be with my I used to be with my pop in the car as a kid. My earliest memories of being with my dad – rest in peace – are of us in the car and him playing music. It’s New York radio, so I’d hear New York-ass n***s on some funny shit like, ‘Yo, yo, yo, everybody put your hand in the cash register for no reason! Their money is your money as of right now!’ I was super inspired by that type of shit.
Especially back then, in the early 2000s, I feel like radio was always the best way to be introduced to some shit. Even now, me and my homie Judah just be driving around, blasting music all day, looking around and taking in the city.
In my head, your music almost feels like Hey Arnold! meets Harmony Korine’s Kids. Do you see what I mean?
Liim: Yeah, shout out Harmony. You ever seen the show MTV Downtown? That’s some East Village-ass shit. It’s about these kids growing up in LES [Lower East Side]. Graffitti-ass n****s, radio shop-type people doing shit.
Liim Lasalle Loves You is out now
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.dazeddigital.com ’
