Smiley released Buy Or Bye 2 on November 12, 2021 through OVO Sound and Warner Records, his debut album and the sequel to his 2018 project Buy.Or.Bye. The 15-track record arrived four months after “Over The Top” featuring Drake introduced the Toronto rapper to his widest audience, and it was built to answer the question that single raised: what does a full Smiley album sound like?
This is a catalogue album, framed as catalogue. The Smiley Buy Or Bye 2 story is a 2021 story, told with its dates intact. The album later grew by six songs in a deluxe edition on March 25, 2022, and the original has passed 135 million global streams, according to Warner Records reporting at the deluxe launch.
Smiley Buy Or Bye 2 Keeps Toronto In The Room
The guest list is the first argument the album makes. Where the 2018 original carried no features, the sequel is a Toronto roll call with a few American guests folded in. Drake appears on “Over The Top,” Pressa on “38,” shown above, Golde London on “Venice Beach,” Yung Bleu on “Beat It,” OhGeesy on “How Can I Miss” and Duvy on the closing track, “Topic.” For a scene often accused of not collaborating enough, a debut album that puts Pressa and Duvy on the same tracklist as Drake is a statement in itself, and Toronto reviewers noticed it at the time.
SHIFTER’s review singled out “38” as one of the album’s standouts, a Tay Keith production where Pressa delivers what the review called one of his best features. HotNewHipHop heard the same record the same way, describing Pressa cutting the Auto-Tune for a raw opening flow before Smiley extends the song’s theme: friends still inside, and the contrast with a life that got out. That contrast runs through the whole album. The title is a challenge, buy or bye, and the songs keep grading who and what is worth keeping.
Fifteen Tracks, One Unmistakable Voice
The sequencing front-loads the journey. “When I Die” and “In My Zone” open with Smiley alone, “Moving Different” states the theme in its title, and “Venice Beach” brings the first guest at track four. “38” and “Over The Top” form the album’s centre of gravity at tracks five and six, the two hardest records and the two biggest collaborations, placed early enough to pull the rest of the album behind them. The back half loosens: “Krazy Girl,” “Valet,” “Beat It,” “Breakdown,” “Streets Fix,” “Ghetto” and “How Can I Miss,” before “Made It” and “Topic” close the record on arrival and neighbourhood respectively.
Smiley explained the difference between the two Buy Or Bye projects to HotNewHipHop in terms of confidence and company:
“More features on there because Buy or Bye didn’t have features. And more confidence, faster flow.”
The voice remains the dividing line it has always been. His delivery bends behind the beat, rising and falling in a way no other Toronto rapper copies, and the album makes no attempt to smooth it out for radio. That choice is the record’s identity: a major-label debut that sounds like the mixtapes that built his name, with bigger production underneath it from Tay Keith and others.
The Deluxe, And What The Album Proved
On March 18, 2022, Smiley released the single “Bill,” built around his own summary of the new life:
“My job is so awesome. My life is so awesome.”
A week later, on March 25, 2022, the deluxe edition added six tracks, “Grammy” featuring 42 Dugg, “Bill,” “On To Game,” “Find My Way,” “Not Like Him” and “Trippie,” taking the album to 21 songs. By then the original’s headline numbers were already in: “Over The Top” had passed 100 million global streams and reached the Top 10 at US urban radio, and the album itself had passed 135 million streams.
What Buy Or Bye 2 proved is narrower and more useful than a hit single. It proved the Pelham Park rapper’s sound could hold an album, hold Toronto guests and American guests at once, and still sound like one person. Among Toronto rappers who crossed from street buzz to a major label in that period, few debuts kept this much of the original texture intact.
Play The Centre First, Then The Whole Record
The honest entry point is the middle: “38” into “Over The Top,” back to back, Toronto feature into Drake feature. Then run the album from “When I Die” and hear how deliberately it is built. Released November 12, 2021, Buy Or Bye 2 is Smiley’s formal introduction, and it still reads as one: buy or bye was the question, and the album is the case for buy.
