There are songs that take years to write and seconds to understand. “My Boy,” the powerful new single from acclaimed Māori soul artist TEEKS, is exactly that kind of song. Released June 26 via Sony Music Entertainment New Zealand, it is the most honest thing he has ever put on record, which is saying something considerable for an artist whose entire catalog has been built on emotional precision and a voice that seems physically incapable of insincerity.
Built around TEEKS’ unmistakable baritone and intimate songwriting, “My Boy” is equally as vulnerable as it is assured, finding him embrace an excitingly honest expression of his queer identity, drawing from his own lived experience with a new level of openness, excitement, and contentment. The song does not announce itself loudly. It settles in close, the way a real conversation does, and it stays there. Muzic.NZ
The story behind the song is the kind that makes the listening experience land differently once you know it. TEEKS was doing sessions back to back and grew tired of explaining or correcting people on his sexuality. It got to a point where he would simply go with whatever people assumed so that he could just get through it.
That quiet accommodation eventually became its own kind of weight. “Eventually, I started to feel disingenuous, and so when I did the session with M Basa and Josh Fountain, I thought f**k it. It’s now or never. I got into the vocal booth and didn’t hold anything back,” TEEKS said.
That decision to stop holding back is audible in every second of the track. The production, co-written with M Basa and Josh Fountain, creates a soundscape warm enough to hold the vulnerability the lyrics are carrying without softening the edges of what is being said. The song moves through desire and longing with an ease that only comes from writing about something real, something lived rather than imagined. Lyrics like “My boy pretty like a sunrise, so strong, gentle like a butterfly” place tenderness and strength in the same frame with complete conviction, refusing the idea that those qualities belong in separate categories.
Directed by TEEKS alongside longtime collaborator Ray Edwards, the music video pairs the song’s tenderness with a striking visual world of queerness and homoeroticism. Through evocative imagery and moments of genuine affection, the video challenges ideas and expectations around masculinity, manhood and sexual fluidity within Polynesian and POC communities, creating a powerful companion piece to the song’s emotional core.
That specificity of context matters enormously. This is not simply a queer love story placed on screen for general consumption. It is a love story told with full awareness of the cultural space it is entering, of the conversations it is joining and in some cases starting. For Polynesian communities, where notions of masculinity have historically carried very particular weight, placing queerness and homoeroticism within that frame is not a small gesture. It is a genuinely significant one, offered not with confrontation but with the kind of quiet confidence that only comes from a place of personal truth.
Born Te Karehana Toi in 1993 in Northland, TEEKS grew up between his father’s home in Opononi near Hokianga and the city of Tauranga where his mother lives. He has Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Ranginui whakapapa, and after high school he studied music and taught Māori at Unitec. The relationship between language, storytelling, and music runs deep in his background, and it shows in the way he writes. He has spoken of being shaped by soul greats including Marvin Gaye, Adele, and Frank Ocean, and those influences are not hard to locate. The unhurried vulnerability of Ocean in particular feels like a genuine spiritual predecessor to what TEEKS does at his most unguarded.
His debut EP “The Grapefruit Skies” arrived in 2017, the same year he won Best Māori Artist at the New Zealand Music Awards while also earning nominations for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Best Soul/RnB Artist. His debut album “Something to Feel” topped the charts in Aotearoa in 2021, earning TEEKS a nomination for Album of the Year at the 2021 Aotearoa Music Awards.
“My Boy” marks his first single in two years, and the intentional space between releases says as much as the music itself. It has been five years since TEEKS released his debut album, time he used deliberately to figure out what he wanted his next project to be. What “My Boy” suggests is that he used those years well, arriving not at a louder or more commercial version of himself, but at a truer one.
Fan reaction to the video since its release has been immediate and deeply felt. Comments on the official YouTube upload describe it as a masterpiece, with viewers pointing to the gentleness of the imagery alongside the fullness of the vocal as the combination that makes it land so hard. There is something almost relieving in the response, a sense that the audience TEEKS has built over nearly a decade was ready for this version of him, perhaps more ready than he realized.
With “My Boy” available across all streaming platforms, TEEKS invites his dedicated community of listeners into an essential space of vulnerability, tenderness, and truth. For those already in that community, the invitation feels less like a new direction and more like a door finally opening to a room that was always there.
