Project Review: Teezandos Keeps Drill Crown On ‘Still Odd’

Words by Sakithya Sothinathan

She’s the princess of drill – militant, feminine and straight to the point. Teezandos’ debut mixtape, “Still Odd”, is a love letter to her originality and where vim meets sincerity within the canon of the genre. An ethos first voiced on her breakout track, Need Focus, “fuck bein’ normal / I wanna be the oddest one”, has now become a cemented identity. Though this project doesn’t stray too far from tradition, there glimmers a prophecy of what contemporary drill can potentially manifest into. 

The tape opens with Back On, a sonic translation of walking into a room with your head held high and proud. Zandos’ delivery is confident, self-assured and intimidating at times. She’s well-governed and wants you to know what happens if you cross her.

Yet, there are plenty of piously reflective moments that offer up a new vulnerability, complicating the hardened exterior she’s known to exhibit. It’s not just what she says, but how. It’s the way the bullet rattles on the floor whilst she’s still pushing for the next bar. Zandos boasts an impressive range of vocal ad-libs that don’t just sit as passive, ear-candy ornaments, but actively work to translate the frustrations of her memories back into life. 

On Drvgz she opens up about her struggle with Xanax addiction, with an off-kilter production that feels dizzying and disorienting to keep up with. In Tagging Up, “how can you get me if you never felt what I feel”, she confronts the difficulty in relating with people because of the violence she’s seen on the roads, questioning whether real, sustained change is even possible, and admitting that battle-scars “makes life realer”. She constantly explores everything from both sides of the coin, covering the tensions in the grey area between survival, choice and desire. 

The tape is framed by her strong first-person perspective whilst the production pays homage to Drill’s heritage with curious bouts of experimenting. We’ve got this dark electronic piano arrangement in yeah! that taps into more jersey-style energy, with a sharp and unique Spanish guitar that loops in the outro. Jail subtly includes a beautiful saxophone flourish that adds to the melancholia whilst the spine of the song remains up-beat and jovial, despite the dark subject matter. Best friend, the light-hearted closer, contributes a romantic edge about her outlook on friendship, after a mixtape that’s largely shaped by betrayal and loss. All in all, Zandos’ signature lies in her ability to find light in the dark, both lyrically and sonically. 

Production comes from an array of artists and she’s cherry-picked intentional features – Cristale, Wohdee, P3Lz, and Show Hustle. This range doesn’t dilute the mission, in fact stressing the importance of artistic alignment in creating something that still feels very Zandos-centered. 

“I really think I’m the reason bitches did it”, is not just a provocation but one out of a stacked account of observations throughout her run in the game, enlightening the listener of the unspoken politics behind the scenes for a female MC and Drill artist in a competitive and predominantly male-dominated space. Shut Up is her remedy to this and the armour she wears against the world, validating real-life experience as truth and by noting how people in the industry feign experiences for commercial viability, which is a principle she is strongly against. In fact, so much of the tape is a manifesto of her rules: the ones she’s broken, invented, and still attempting to negotiate. 

Emotionally real and entirely honest, she’s beginning to let her guard down, yet still maintaining control – a universal problem but a combination she proves only works for the self-assured. In a previous interview, she stated that, “you shouldn’t be inspired by drill”. Yet Zandos demonstrates the opposite. By taking a firm grip of authorship, cutting off snakes, overcoming addiction, returning to faith, sharpening her focus on making money and sharing her Truth – “Still Odd”, is a journal-like record of a transformation that is inspiring and necessary to sit with.

Star Rating: 4/5