On Jan. 20, rap journalist Noz tweeted a song by a rapper named OMB Peezy called "Lay Down" and crowned the second verse, in which Peezy spits, "Ride around with fed cases, murk a nigga for a couple dead faces / fuck yo baby momma, ain't no sympathy, hope she have a dead baby," as "verse of the year so far and permanently."

Noz has a point. That verse, and every other verse Peezy's released on the internet so far, comes right from the heart with an energy that evokes the tenacious spirit of the late, great Lil Snupe.

A couple weeks after Noz's tweet, Peezy popped up in a picture with E-40 and Earl's artist Nef The Pharaoh on Instagram. Barely a week after that picture was posted, Nef revealed footage of Peezy signing on the dotted line to Sick Wid It Records.

Peezy, who just turned 20 earlier this year, grew up in the Orange Grove Housing Projects of Mobile, Ala. but relocated to Sacramento, Calif. for a second time two years ago. In early Dec. of last year, he released "Lay Down" produced by Georgia beatmaker Drum Dummie, and later that month, Nef was cruising around the Bay when he heard the song for the first time.

"When I get back off the road, I always tap in with my urban soil," Nef tells XXL about discovering Peezy. "I was in the car with one of my cousins and he actually was playing the song, and I’m like bro... who the fuck is this nigga? The song is like three weeks old, and he’s like… oh it’s OMB Peezy."

Nef told his manager Ken to find Peezy, and within two days Ken had tracked the rapper down. "First time I met him, I didn’t say shit to him, just passed him a blunt and I’m like, 'You like this beat?'” remembers Nef. "So we sit down and smoke and still didn’t talk to each other, I went and laid my verse, he laid his verse, and after I’m like wow, we sound dope. And we just clicked after that."

Nef showed 40 Peezy's music, and Earl was blown away. "He spit real shit, shit I can relate to," says 40. "His aggressiveness on the microphone, you can hear all the words clear, you can tell it’s from the heart. I can relate to what he’s saying, because I was once 20 years old. And he smart too. To spit like he spitting, it’s gangsta but at the same time he got a lot of knowledge, you can just hear the wordplay. He say some slick shit, paint the picture. There’s a lotta shit in his lyrics I’ve heard."

Nef chimes in with one of his favorite Peezy lines: "Getting paper like a printer, lame niggas wanna copy."

Peezy says signing to Sick Wid It is "life-changing," and recalls when he met E-40, 40 said 2Pac would have kidnapped Peezy if he heard the kid's music. "He definitely would have been in the Outlawz," 40 says with a laugh.

Ever since getting with the crew, Peezy's been grinding, holing up in the studio for 29 straight hours and knocking out 13 songs before blowing the speakers out. He's got a solo project on the way called Loyalty Over Love (you can hear a preview of the tape below) and is planning a joint project with Nef The Pharaoh called 600 Degreez as well.

"He's better than me!" says Nef. "That nigga is really raw talented. Everything he says is reality. If you never even been in those type of situations, when you listen to his music and close your eyes, it’s like a simulator. You visualize yourself in those situations."

Watch Peezy's videos for "Lay Down" and "When I Was Down" below and listen to a couple more standout Peezy records we compiled in a SoundCloud playlist. This kid is about to be a problem.

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