On the Rise
LeoStayTrill

Alongside an expansive touring schedule and juggling schoolwork, LeoStayTrill is riding the wave of his 2023 breakout hits, "Pink Lemonade" and "Honeybun." Although he’s found a burning spotlight, he’s been putting in the work to make it find him, meaning that when luck struck, he was more than prepared to capitalise on it.

The Zimbabwe-born, South London-raised Tinotenda Leon Gandanzara has always been enthralled with music, even gravitating to music-based toys as a child. It was Jaden Smith’s early-years combo of acting and rapping that first piqued his entrepreneurial interest, combined with Disney movies such as Let It Shine – “those movies where it's a young kid who's in school when he's writing," as he explains on a Zoom call. "When it got down to me being in school, my creativity led me to writing.”

Since the early days of scribbling day-to-day observations, Gandanzara has been channelling internal truths. “What I was writing about, it was nonsense – I'm four, five, six, seven, eight years old. It's like, what can you write about other than school bullies? Girls? You're just young," he laughs. "But I feel like it was all channelling from me naturally – my soul just connected to music.”

This soon started interrupting his schooling, when he began getting in trouble for writing bars in class. His skills were beginning to manifest, but it wasn’t until one show in particular that his parents witnessed how music had become a goal he could finesse and take to the next level.

It was a school visit from the educational music project We Sing U Sing, which involved a concert at the end, that gave Gandanzara his taste for performance. “My parents came to it,” he recalls. “There was like 1.4k people, and I was like nine, and I performed it with full confidence, really doing the solo, like I've been here before. And that's when my parents told me they realised, ‘Okay, cool; music is the way for this kid.’ And from then it kept progressing.”

Gandanzara is of the generation raised on content. It’s how he seamlessly transitioned from being a schoolboy to a burgeoning name in social rap circles. LeoStayTrill is Gandanzara's final form, at least for the time being. Having tried on a few different monikers – most notably, OfficiallyLeo – he settled on one born from a basic DNA. “It's just the fact that I was being true to myself, like it was actually me,” he shares. Trill is slang for authenticity, and that's Gandanzara's MO: "Putting it in my name, I don't have to fake nothing.”

When he was 10, Gandanzara didn’t have a computer to record himself on, but he still managed to figure out the mechanics. Whenever he could get his hands on some equipment, he would record himself, using a voiceover utility on some video editing software, then using GarageBand on his phone and headphones with a built-in microphone. Finally in possession of a laptop – but still no studio – he taught himself to produce, and as time passed, the building blocks started stacking up. “As time went on, I was just teaching myself audio interfaces, equipment, all of that I taught myself. I just kept learning and elevating,” he explains.

In 2021 LeoStayTrill was recruited to appear on The Voice Kids UK and reached the finals, having been coached by will.i.am. He was scouted after coming second in Youtuber KSI's viral "Poppin'" challenge, where fans could freestyle a verse to be included on a remix version of the track. This was Gandanzara's lightning bolt moment. Reflecting today, he says, "A lot of things were coming my way. But it was like it was steady."

This self-reliance is built around one key thought for Gandanzara: “No one's coming to save you – I always understood the importance of independence.” When I ask if this is a frame of mind that still lingers today, he’s quick to affirm that “it's even worse, because I know how I want stuff now, and because my independence has got me to this point, I know what I'm talking about. So if I have to go independent, I’m not scared, because the independence got me here. The independence of recording the songs on my own got me here, so why would I fix something that's not broken?”

LeoStayTrill’s hype is, for the time being, oriented around his biggest releases. However, his latest offering, “France” – a collaboration with French rapper KAHUKX – builds upon a focused and purposeful catalogue. Throughout his work, LeoStayTrill employs a flowing, floating staccato, rapidly firing out his reality and history while bristling with eagerness. He’s as comfortable on top of bouncing afro beats as he is brooding trap. But, as he explains to me, there’s still a lot he’s got locked and loaded. One project in particular, earmarked for an early 2025 release, is tentatively titled Life Not Average. It’s based on his life, and balancing being at school while trying to be a superstar.

“It’s the idea of, I'm in the studio with my favourite artists, with all these celebrities that I've dreamt of being with, and living a superstar lifestyle, but tomorrow, 8:50 in the morning, I still need to meet these deadlines,” he explains. “I still need to come to school and hand in these assignments, you know?” Having reached the point where he almost got kicked out of school for either leaving early or showing up late (sometimes both), Gandanzara can count on this duality as his most earnest ploy. “And these are one-time opportunities,” he reasons to his flights of fancy, “so why not play off of that, make an actual creative body of work around it? People are just taking songs, putting them together, giving them a name and a cool cover and putting it out. No – let's show you my life through my body of work.”

Gandanzara wants to prove himself. He’s put the work in already, but he’s aware there’s a long road ahead, especially given his age. “With the blood, sweat, and tears that we put in the first six-seven months of this year, with the pain and all the hard work that we've done behind closed doors, it's all paying off,” he says. “With the stuff I was complaining about, I'm not complaining about anymore; the stuff that I was scared to trust is what got us here.”

Approaching the twilight of his teens, Gandanzara is brewing a confidence that defies how grounded he is. He’s amassed millions of streams across his tracks, and even the US is waking up to him: “Seeing things that I've always wanted to achieve are kind of starting to play out, the things I used to doubt… hitting those certain milestones that you thought you can never hit, and doing stuff that you didn't fully believe in, and seeing it play out the way that you wanted it to play out is when you realise, ‘maybe I'm doing something right.’”

Legacy is a bold thought for a teenager, but given Gandanzara’s work ethic, it’s hardly surprising that it’s on his mind. While most his age would be driven by a lust for money and fame, for Gandanzara, his ambitions are fuelled by a tireless hunger for progression. “I still have a lot of goals to achieve,” he admits. “I'm not the biggest in the world. And I'm scared to fall off. I have a fear of being forgotten or not letting the world see my full talent.” He’s in a very sensible frame of mind, understanding that, in this day and age, everything can disappear as quickly as it appears: "I haven't done anything. I just had a song that's moved and, okay, I'm doing big things – let me not discredit it completely – but in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing.”

It’s all about forward motion. As he enthuses, “The only way to stay grounded is to just understand that the job's not done and to have a fear of being where you were before or being forgotten.” His eyes gleam with ambition as he leans forward. “With a talent like mine, I wouldn't want the world to forget me.” And as all good upstarts should, he ends with a final promise: "I'm just waiting for the right time. There's nothing to rush. I'm still young. When the time is right, we will know, and we will strike and put out the music the way we're supposed to."