The hip-hop world seemingly moved beyond mumbled Soundcloud rap, but Lil Yachty has seemingly moved beyond hip-hop.
“I really wanted to be taken serious as an artist,” Yachty said at a listening party. “Not just some Soundcloud rapper, not some mumble rapper. Not some guy who made one hit.”
On Let’s Start Here, Lil Yachty finds his muse in the woozy indie rock sound of Tame Impala, MGMT, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra — in fact, he enlisted members of the latter two projects to help produce the record. Indeed, the album boasts a laundry list of songwriting and production credits featuring the likes of Mac DeMarco, Daniel Caesar, and Tory Lanez, among others.
Yachty and co truly pull out all the stops in album opener “the BLACK seminole,” a sprawling psych-rock epic that recalls the progressive leanings of Pink Floyd in conjunction with densely layered production and instrumentation. After a few synthesizer chords, the song’s first leg kicks off with an almost drunken blend of limping guitar-and-synth riffage drooped over lazy drumming. The song continues with a David Gilmour-style guitar solo and a hypnotic instrumental mid-section, ending with an epic coda featuring high-flying vocals from singer Diana Gordon.
Awash with auto-tune and reverb, Lil Yachty’s vocals slot right into his new psych-rock-inspired idiom perfectly. Over an unhurried, loosely put-together instrumental, Yachty’s characteristically disjunctive lyrical style is right at home. As Yachty sing-speaks about the titular “Black Seminole,” one finds themselves simply accepting this character at face value, the questions of “who,” “what,” and “why” are lost to the groove.
Continuing down the record’s arbitrarily punctuated track list, “the ride-” eschews the progressive elements of “seminole” in favor of pure, unadulterated catchiness. Where “Seminole” is almost Pink Floyd, “ride” is almost Lil Nas X, as Yachty stacks hook after hook after hook with psych-pop potency. The rock-inspired instrumental only enhances this quality, as wailing synthesizers and infectious drum grooves give the track a dynamic forward momentum. Joining the feel-good vibes is rapper Teezo Touchdown, who adds an extra layer of lyrical prowess to the blissful three-minute musical trip.
Lil Yachty is by no means the first rapper to venture into rock ’n’ roll territory, but he might well be the first one to do it successfully. Where Kid Cudi’s Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven was a misadventure, and Machine Gun Kelly’s Tickets to my Downfall was a retreat, Let’s Start Here is a bold, deliberate exploration of the rock medium. Let’s Start Here succeeds largely in how it adapts — rather than abandons — Lil Yachty’s classic style to the idiom of psych rock, seamlessly integrating Yachty’s pop-rap appeal into mesmerizing psychedelic grooves. If the record’s title is any indication, Let’s Start Here is only the beginning of a new era for Lil Yachty’s music, and only time will tell what he has in store.
Featured image from “Let’s Start Here” – Lil Yachty on Spotify.
