Born in Houston, Texas, Caleb Zackery Toliver (better known as Don Toliver) recently announced that he is embarking on his North American “HARDSTONE PSYCHO” tour this year.
Toliver’s love for music started at a young age when he frequently listened to legendary R&B artists such as Michael Jackson and Usher. He started off his career making music with his friend, who was professionally known as Yungjosh93, and they released their collaborative mixtape “Playa Familia” which garnered little attention from the general public. In fact, it is still unknown to some of his biggest fans today. His solo debut came with the release of his first solo project “Donny Womack” released in early August of 2018. The mixtape was more successful than the last project and raised Toliver’s level of fame from a nobody to an underground SoundCloud artist that one would be blessed to discover. The biggest song off the album titled “Diva” has garnered over 36 million streams on Spotify since release, and was the beginning of what Don didn’t know would be the turning point of his career. After the release of Diva and the rest of the mixtape, Don Toliver caught the eye of Atlantic Records and signed with them, but more importantly, he caught the eye of Travis Scott.
Travis Scott, during this time was having a booming year and getting ready to release the biggest album of the year, “ASTROWORLD”. Scott saw the vision in Toliver and invited him to many studio sessions to help work with him on his album. They ended up collaborating on the song “CAN’T SAY”, which ended up becoming the fifth most streamed song on the album, amassing over 665 million streams to this day. This song alone put Don Toliver on the map to the masses and gave him a fanbase to build off of. Building off of this hype, Don hopped on the chance to release a collaboration album the following year with artists such as the Migos, Young Thug, and the late Pop Smoke. This album, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 albums, gave fans new songs, and a new hunger for solo music again. The wait for an official solo song came to an end on May 29th, 2019. On this special day, Toliver released the lead single for his title less upcoming album- “No Idea”. The track instantly became a hit on the popular social media app TikTok, becoming the most used sound on the platform in December 2019, with 6 million videos posted in a month. This gave the artist his first solo billboard entry with the song peaking at number 43 and spending eleven weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Certified 3x platinum with over 989 million Spotify streams to date, it remains one of his biggest songs ever released. The song annually trends on TikTok every winter and launched Toliver to stardom status.
He jumped at the opportunity and almost a year later released his debut album “Heaven or Hell” on March 13th, 2020. With rave reviews, the album debuted and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Not only was the album successful though, it also spawned another hit song “After Party”. Released officially as a single on June 23rd, 2020, the song instantly took TikTok by storm, amassing a longer chart run on the Hot 100 with 20 weeks on the chart and a peak of 57. 16 months later, Don dropped his second studio album “Life of a Don”. The album debuted and peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, with 1.5 times as many first-week sales as “Heaven or Hell”. Taking a solo hiatus after his “Life of a Don” album, Toliver released a few feature singles here and there for various movie soundtracks. However, in 2020, he garnered his most successful song chart-wise jumping on the song “Lemonade” with Internet Money, Gunna, and Nav. Released on August 14th of 2020, the song spent 29 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart peaking at number six (his first and only top ten single to date), and his first and only song currently with over 1 billion streams on Spotify. His biggest song to date cemented Toliver as a mainstay in the music landscape.
Building off of the most successful wave he has had in his career, he released his third album “Love Sick” the following year in February containing hit singles such as “Private Landing” with artists such as Justin Bieber and Future. A departure from his previous commercial successes, the album debuted and peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 albums chart. With this Toliver took a break from the music scene only releasing features the rest of the year and returned with the heavy-hitting song “Bandit”. The song was a commercial success peaking at 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spending 18 weeks on the chart. The song was critically acclaimed as well citing how well it blends new infusions with the sample of “One More Hour’ by Tame Impala. Amassing over 230 million streams, the single opened up the way for Toliver to have his most successful album to date, “Hardstone Psycho”. The album debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 albums chart; it sold 76,500 copies in its first week, giving Don his biggest sales week yet. With this, he announced his North American tour titled the “HARDSTONE PSYCHO” tour, has over 30 shows in multiple states, provinces, and countries. The tour is looking to be a success starting in October of 2024 and has already sold out multiple shows. Don Toliver may have been known as a potential one or two-hit TikTok wonder, but time and time again has proven himself to be a mainstay in today’s culture, and is likely to make better and more successful projects in the future.
