On a recent Saturday, Sean “sectiontoo” Lawrence sauntered into Fool’s Gold, a bar nestled in between the Bowery and Lower East Side, with the swagger of an R&B-leaning emerging artist with co-signs from Timbaland and Spike Lee. However, his attire was less distinct — a long sleeve shirt, black glasses and a green dad hat that allowed his mini-afro to billow out of. The singer of Guyanese and Puerto Rican descent spoke with the weariness of an average New Yorker who had completed a long shift at a nearby restaurant the night before.
“I hate getting up at 4:30 in the morning every day,” he says as Notorious B.I.G’s “Juicy” attempts to drown out his answer. “But the reality is that I’m not in a situation where music supports me fully.”
He is proof that most of our favorite emerging artists are superheroes, like Superman or Batman. They have personas that they present during the day before they can become their true selves at night. In this case, sectiontoo is a multi-purpose staff member at a local New York restaurant by day and a rising artist with 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify by night. While he’s not fighting crime or saving the world, the grind of balancing both acts is brutal and tiring, but it’s something that he was born to do. And after five years of releasing music and performing in smaller venues, the best is yet to come as he prepares to release his fourth studio album.
Sectiontoo’s origin story doesn’t involve reading issues of Word Up! or listening to Rap Attack on WBLS like Notorious B.I.G’s “Juicy” describes. He’s a 90s baby with many 2000s influences. His childhood and early teenage years in Jamaica, Queens were spent listening to Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Jeffrey “Ja Rule” Atkins Sr., A Tribe Called Quest and Onika “Nicki” Minaj. Those early influences created much of the melodic blend of R&B, Pop and Rap that permeates throughout songs like “Honeybun” and “Walk Right.” However, there is a key musical influence of his that may be a bit more difficult to detect, but is hidden within songs like “Heaven Only Knows.”
“The Backstreet Boys were probably one of my earliest musical influences,” he says with the bliss of a young kid who just heard “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” for the first time.
As a toddler, his Dad’s youngest sister played him a VHS tape of the boy band’s Homecoming Tour performance in Orlando. Enthralled by the screams of the crowd and the group’s attire, he became obsessed with their ability to disguise the soulfulness of R&B as radio-friendly pop music.
It didn’t take long for his family’s musical influence to stretch beyond the VCR player. His father, who worked long days on Wall Street, had a past as a DJ, while his mother played the flute throughout her childhood and early adult years. By 15, he had begun learning how to make beats on his MacBook and formed a production duo with his friend, Will Fisher. The two had hoped to become the millennial version of Pharrell and Chad Hugo’s The Neptunes, but sectiontoo’s musical curiosity led him in another direction.
After spending much of his high school experience making music with Fisher, he enrolled in the University of New Haven’s music production program. Living and working with dedicated musicians in a new city inspired him, but his journey would lead him back to City College in New York as a transfer student looking for a more affordable college destination close to his family. Reunited at City College with his longtime friend, Will Fisher, he spent nights making beats and producing songs at the college’s recording studio, but a cold winter night in January 2018 changed everything.
“One day, [sectiontoo] came to me and said, ‘Yo, I have these demos [of me singing].’ I always knew he sang. Still, it was an afterthought, but I was like, ‘Let’s try to record them.’ It was just a [musical] exercise for fun. We didn’t think much of it at first, but they became really good [songs],” Will explained as he took a break from mixing sectiontoo’s forthcoming album.
The collection of demos eventually gave birth to “Girls Like Anita,” the standout single from his debut EP, Portrait. The self-produced single draws listeners in with a story of the City College graduate pursuing his alluring, yet mysterious classmate at a party.
“There’s a girl named Anita. Me and her [have] got some history. I know you’d want to meet her,” he sings over a sultry R&B soundscape of guitars and drums that sometimes feels like a much more toned-down version of Justin Timberlake’s “Señorita” with a less celebratory ending.
“But, I’ve got to tell you. She’s a mystery. She was 5’3 [with] a thin waist [and] brown hair. [If you] walk by, I guarantee you’ll stare, but she was the one I let get away.”
“Girls Like Anita” and Portrait landed him an editorial feature on PopSugar.com and performance time at the legendary S.O.B.’s restaurant and concert venue. While the road to success appeared to be paved with gold in 2019, sectiontoo quickly learned that reaching his goals in music would take a bit more time. Working various day jobs and spending what spare time he could on music, he produced and recorded two albums, Never Nothing and Cascade Effect, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite concerns from family, he remained committed to his goal of making his passion a full-time career.
“I am privileged to have two parents who are fans of my music but also support me in this treacherous journey that I’ve embarked upon and recognize there is a strong chance I could actually do something with this,” he said.
“Granted, I know they worry about me. I’m sure they don’t say it out loud all of the time, but they definitely worry about me. Still, they’re super supportive of me and I’m more than privileged to have them in my corner.”
The number of people in sectiontoo’s career grew in 2021 when he released a freestyle over Jay-Z’s “Imaginary Players” on Instagram. Jay-Z’s fan base called the track “sacrilege,” but received praise from Mecc Rashawn, a music industry veteran with experience working with Busta Rhymes and writing for The Source. Rashawn’s praise ultimately turned into a deal at his label, Viper Records. The deal didn’t make him into an instant superstar, but it brought him into the current stage of his career.
Now in his late 20s, sectiontoo has refined his sound as an artist. Bringing together the soulfulness of R&B, the authenticity of Rap and the vitality of Pop, his music doesn’t fit into a single genre. Instead, he simply calls it Black music and with that understanding of who he is sonically, the native New Yorker has begun to pour more and more of his personal life into his music. “Black Thing” is a Will Fisher-produced audio diary entry that celebrates Black culture in the face of oppression, released 24 months after he donated the proceeds from Cascade Effect to the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. “Heaven Only Knows” is a groovy obituary to his younger self and a birth certificate to the man he is quickly maturing into.
“I look at sectiontoo as a mirror. I feel like we’re all obviously different but still similar, we go through and feel a lot of the same things. I like to think that people could potentially see themselves in my music, and hopefully they can resonate with some of the things I’m talking about,” he explained.
Crafting personal tracks such as “Black Thing” and “Heaven Only Knows” is both therapeutic and somewhat scary. The emerging vocalist’s laid-back demeanor and confident stage presence don’t give off the perception that he loses sleep over critiques of his music, but he does want those writing about it to be fair and thoughtful. As he releases music, gains listeners and moves closer to his goal of becoming a full-time musician, there is a level of notoriety that will come that he’s not quite comfortable with.
“I love music journalism. God forbid this music thing doesn’t work out, I’m going back to school for journalism,” he mentioned.
“I was listening to The New York Times’ Popcast the other day. I love Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. They’re great writers and they have great commentary. But I was listening to an episode the other day about the landscape of women in pop music and they were talking about Tate McRae, Taylor Swift and the entire lineup of women in pop music right now. They were just destroying Tate McRae.”
“They don’t like her for some reason,” I laughed.
“Granted, I’m not Tate McRae’s number one fan. I like a few of her songs. At the same time, they were speaking so wantonly about this girl’s music when that music is probably really special to her. I was just thinking about things from the artist’s perspective. There’s just a lot of carelessness when it comes to speaking about artists and their art,” he continued
The concerns he has about the carelessness that can sometimes plague music criticism won’t stop him from releasing more introspective and creative projects. In the coming weeks, he plans to begin rolling out his next album. While it’s impossible to predict how well the album will perform commercially or how it will be reviewed by critics, it does feel like it could be the project that begins to take him out of the service industry permanently and into the studio full-time. His monthly Pandora listenership has just crossed 50,000 and his Instagram fan following is nearing 30,000. The Breakfast Club’s Nyla Symone invited him to perform at her “It’s A Certified Vibe” showcase. Music media powerhouse Lyrical Lemonade said he had “a unique sound that is unheard of right now.” Now, sectiontoo finds himself capitalizing on the momentum he’s built with soon-to-be released album that he says is “some of [his] best work.”
“I think people will be able to hear the growth,” sectiontoo says about his upcoming album as his smile nearly grows wider than his glasses.
“It’s a really big deal for me to be able to share my gift with the world because not many people get the chance to do so. It’s truly a privilege.”
From his days as a high school student who built a relationship with Will Fisher to balancing his day job with his recording schedule, one thing has remained constant — making music a full-time job. As the calendar turns page after page, he’s closer than ever to being the hometown hero who made his dreams come true by remaining dedicated, playing the long game and being his authentic self.
