Fetty Wap thinks this 13-year-old is the future of music

Liam Lis may be the second coming of Justin Bieber. The small, well-coiffed boy from New York is only 13 years old, but he’s already worked with Rae Sremmurd and Fetty Wap.

Lis started singing at five years old, and has already enjoyed a fair amount of YouTube celebrity. His cover of Leona Lewis’s “Better in Time” has more than 2 and half million views. He sings. He dances. He performs.

In a webisode he recorded and posted to YouTube, Lis says, “I just love music; it’s my life.” His original songs, with lyrics like “I wanna be your first kiss,” are age-appropriate and full of the kind of sappy love references used to make young boys appealing to legions of young female fans. And he’s got one of America’s biggest hits on his side.

America loves Fetty Wap right now. His three last singles (“Trap Queen,” “679,” and “My Way”) have all climbed into the top 10, and with the release of his new album today, it seems like Fetty is on his way to being a fixture in American rap.

At the end of August, Lis opened for Fetty at his New Jersey concert. The two even worked on a song together titled “Number One Girl.”

https://instagram.com/p/7A2OkDpR4k/?taken-by=liamlis

“My friend knew Fetty so he played it for him, and Fetty really liked it, so he thought it would be a really good collaboration. We went to New Jersey to record the song and then he did his part and then we performed it at Stage 48—it was awesome,” Liss told Music Times.

You can vaguely hear a clip of that upcoming release in this short clip that Lis tweeted, but more importantly you can see Fetty Wap riding a hoverboard!

Lis writes his own music, plays piano, and told AXS that he wants to ignore haters, because “if they’re talking about you so much, that means they’re supporting you kind of.”

He’s already signed to Lava Records, and thought he hasn’t released his EP yet, it’s expected to arrive later this year. It’s always precarious for a young musician to grapple with fame early on, but if Fetty believes in this kid, well, I guess we should too.