Houston, TX · hip-hop · trap · alt-r&b · r&b

Don Toliver

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Sings trap like a psychedelic crooner — a warped, weightless voice floating over beats built for a stadium's worth of low end.

Don Toliver, born Caleb Zackary Toliver in 1994, was raised in the Alief neighborhood of Houston, Texas, and attended Hastings High School. His father sang and rapped around the independent Houston label Swishahouse, filling the house with its music alongside Michael Jackson and Usher, both formative influences on his own singing style.

He released a collaborative mixtape, Playa Familia, in 2017 before signing to Atlantic Records and We Run It Entertainment in 2018. His major-label debut mixtape, Donny Womack, came out one day before Travis Scott's Astroworld, on which Toliver appeared on "Can't Say." Scott signed him to Cactus Jack Records days later, in a joint venture with Atlantic.

His approach leans more on melody than on rapping in the conventional sense, using heavily processed vocals over trap production with a psychedelic, slurred quality. The singles "No Idea" and "After Party" both went viral on TikTok before crossing onto the Billboard Hot 100, each earning triple-platinum certification.

His debut album, Heaven or Hell, reached the Billboard 200's top ten in 2020, a run continued by Life of a Don, Love Sick and the trap-centered Hardstone Psycho, which peaked at number three behind the single "Bandit." He also guested on Internet Money's top-ten hit "Lemonade" alongside Nav and Gunna.

Since then he has released a run of full-length projects and remained a frequent collaborator across contemporary rap and R&B; his fifth album, Octane, became his first to reach number one, led by the singles "Tiramisu" and "ATM." His live shows are built around the drifting, sung hooks that define the records.

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