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Lil Yachty On His Big Rock Pivot: ‘F-ck Any of the Albums I Dropped Before This One’

With his adventurous, psychedelic new album, 'Let's Start Here,' he's left mumble rap behind — and finally created a project he's proud of.

By Lyndsey Havens

Lyndsey Havens

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Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16 .

Lil Yachty: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.

It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”

For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here . For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.

It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.

Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”

His desire to move on from his past is understandable. When Yachty entered the industry in his mid-teens with his 2016 major-label debut, the Lil Boat mixtape, featuring the breakout hit “One Night,” he found that along with fame came sailing the internet’s choppy waters. Skeptics often took him to task for not knowing — or caring, maybe — about rap’s roots, and he never shied away from sharing hot takes on Twitter. With his willingness and ability to straddle pop and hip-hop, Yachty produced music he once called “bubble-gum trap” (he has since denounced that phrase) that polarized audiences and critics. Meanwhile, his nonchalant delivery got him labeled as a mumble rapper — another identifier he was never fond of because it felt dismissive of his talent.

“There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references,” he continues. “They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.”

Let’s Start Here is proof. Growing up in Atlanta, the artist born Miles McCollum was heavily influenced by his father, a photographer who introduced him to all kinds of sounds. Yachty, once easily identifiable by his bright red braids, found early success by posting songs like “One Night” to SoundCloud, catching the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder/COO of Quality Control Music, now home to Migos, Lil Baby and City Girls. In 2015, Coach K began managing Yachty, who in summer 2016 signed a joint-venture deal with Motown, Capitol Records and Quality Control.

“Yachty was me when I was 18 years old, when I signed him. He was actually me,” says Coach K today. (In 2021, Adam Kluger, whose clients include Bhad Bhabie, began co-managing Yachty.) “All the eclectic, different things, we shared that with each other. He had been wanting to make this album from the first day we signed him. But you know — coming as a hip-hop artist, you have to play the game.”

Yachty played it well. To date, he has charted 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 , including two top 10 hits for his features on DRAM’s melodic 2016 smash “Broccoli” and Kyle’s 2017 pop-rap track “iSpy.” His third-highest-charting entry arrived unexpectedly last year: the 93-second “Poland,” a track Yachty recorded in about 10 minutes where his warbly vocals more closely resemble singing than rapping. ( Let’s Start Here collaborator SADPONY saw “Poland” as a temperature check that proved “people are going to like this Yachty.”)

Beginning with 2016’s Lil Boat mixtape, all eight of Yachty’s major-label-released albums and mixtapes have charted on the Billboard 200 . Three have entered the top 10, including Let’s Start Here , which debuted and peaked at No. 9. And while Yachty has only scored one No. 1 album before ( Teenage Emotions topped Rap Album Sales), Let’s Start Here debuted atop three genre charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums , Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums .

“It feels good to know that people in that world received this so well,” says Motown Records vp of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani. “I think it’s a testament to Yachty going in and saying, ‘F-ck what everyone thinks. I’m going to create something that I’ve always wanted to make — and let us hope the world f-cking loves it.’ ”

Yet despite Let’s Start Here ’s many high-profile supporters, some longtime detractors and fans alike were quick to criticize certain aspects of it, from its art — Yachty quote-tweeted one remark , succinctly replying, “shut up” — to the music itself. Once again, he found himself facing another tidal wave of discourse. But this time, he was ready to ride it. “This release,” Kluger says, “gave him a lot of confidence.”

“I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other sh-t,” Yachty says. “It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the sh-t I was making did not add up to the sh-t I listened to.

“I just wanted more,” he continues. “I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.”

Last spring, Lil Yachty gathered his family, collaborators and team at famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch.

“I remember I got there at night and drove down because this place is like 30 miles outside El Paso,” Coach K says. “I walked in the room and just saw all these instruments and sh-t, and the vibe was just so ill. And I just started smiling. All the producers were in the room, his assistant, his dad. Yachty comes in, puts the album on. We got to the second song, and I told everybody, ‘Stop the music.’ I walked over to him and just said, ‘Man, give me a hug.’ I was like, ‘Yachty, I am so proud of you.’ He came into the game bold, but [to make] this album, you have to be very bold. And to know that he finally did it, it was overwhelming.”

SADPONY (aka Jeremiah Raisen) — who executive-produced Let’s Start Here and, in doing so, spent nearly eight straight months with Yachty — says the time at Sonic Ranch was the perfect way to cap off the months of tunnel vision required while making the album in Brooklyn. “That was new alone,” says Yachty. “I’ve recorded every album in Atlanta at [Quality Control]. That was the first time I recorded away from home. First time I recorded with a new engineer,” Miles B.A. Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist.

Yachty couldn’t wait to put it out, and says he turned it in “a long time ago. I think it was just label sh-t and trying to figure out the right time to release it.” For Coach K, it was imperative to have the physical product ready on release date, given that Yachty had made “an experience” of an album. And lately, most pressing plants have an average turnaround time of six to eight months.

Fans, however, were impatient. On Christmas, one month before Let’s Start Here would arrive, the album leaked online. It was dubbed Sonic Ranch . “Everyone was home with their families, so no one could pull it off the internet,” recalls Yachty. “That was really depressing and frustrating.”

Then, weeks later, the album art, tracklist and release date also leaked. “My label made a mistake and sent preorders to Amazon too early, and [the site] posted it,” Yachty says. “So I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” He says the biggest loss was various videos he made to introduce and contextualize the project, all of which “were really weird … [But] I wasn’t introducing it anymore. People already knew.” Only one, called “Department of Mental Tranquility,” made it out, just days before the album.

Yachty says he wasn’t necessarily seeking a mental escape before making Let’s Start Here , but confesses that acid gave him one anyway. “I guess maybe the music went along with it,” he says. The album title changed four or five times, he says, from Momentary Bliss (“It was meant to take you away from reality … where you’re truly listening”) to 180 Degrees (“Because it’s the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever done, but people were like, ‘It’s too on the nose’ ”) to, ultimately, Let’s Start Here — the best way, he decided, to succinctly summarize where he was as an artist: a seven-year veteran, but at 25 years old, still eager to begin a new chapter.

Taking inspiration from Dark Side , Yachty relied on three women’s voices throughout the album, enlisting Fousheé, Justine Skye and Diana Gordon. Otherwise, guest vocals are spare. Daniel Caesar features on album closer “Reach the Sunshine.,” while the late Bob Ross (of The Joy of Painting fame) has a historic posthumous feature on “We Saw the Sun!”

Rouzbehani tells Billboard that Ross’ estate declined Yachty’s request at first: “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean. They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.” But Yachty was adamant, and Rouzbehani played the track for Ross’ team and also sent the entire album’s lyrics to set the group at ease. “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call,” she says. “Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”

From the start, Coach K believed Let’s Start Here would open lots of doors for Yachty — and ultimately, other artists, too. Questlove may have said it best, posting the album art on Instagram with a lengthy caption that read in part: “this lp might be the most surprising transition of any music career I’ve witnessed in a min, especially under the umbrella of hip hop … Sh-t like this (envelope pushing) got me hyped about music’s future.”

Recently, Lil Yachty held auditions for an all-women touring band. “It was an experience for like Simon Cowell or Randy [Jackson],” he says, offering a simple explanation for the choice: “In my life, women are superheroes.”

And according to Yachty, pulling off his show will take superhuman strength: “Because the show has to match the album. It has to be big.” As eager as he was to release Let’s Start Here , he’s even more antsy to perform it live — but planning a tour, he says, required gauging the reaction to it. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he says. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”

While Yachty’s last full-length studio album, Lil Boat 3 , arrived in 2020, he released the Michigan Boy Boat mixtape in 2021, a project as reverential of the state’s flourishing hip-hop scenes in Detroit and Flint as Let’s Start Here is of its psych-rock touchstones. And though he claims he doesn’t do much with his days, his recent accomplishments, both musical and beyond, suggest otherwise. He launched his own cryptocurrency, YachtyCoin, at the end of 2020; signed his first artist, Draft Day, to his Concrete Boyz label at the start of 2021; invested in the Jewish dating app Lox Club; and launched his own line of frozen pizza, Yachty’s Pizzeria, last September. (He has famously declared he has never eaten a vegetable; at his Jersey City listening event, there was an abundance of candy, doughnut holes and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.)

But there are only two things that seem to remotely excite him, first and foremost of which is being a father. As proud as he is of Let’s Start Here , he says it comes in second to having his now 1-year-old daughter — though he says with a laugh that she “doesn’t really give a f-ck” about his music yet. “I haven’t played [this album] for her, but her mom plays her my old stuff,” he continues. “The mother of my child is Dominican and Puerto Rican, so she loves Selena — she plays her a lot . [We watch] the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez a sh-t ton and a lot of Disney movie sh-t, like Frozen , Lion King and that type of vibe.”

Aside from being a dad, he most cares about working with other artists. Recently, he flew eight of his biggest fans — most of whom he has kept in touch with for years — to Atlanta. He had them over, played Let’s Start Here , took them to dinner and bowling, introduced them to his mom and dad, and then showed them a documentary he made for the album. (He’s not sure if he’ll release it.) One of the fans is an aspiring rapper; naturally, the two made a song together.

Yachty wants to keep working with artists and producers outside of hip-hop, mentioning the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even sharing his dream of writing a ballad for Elton John. (“I know I could write him a beautiful song.”) With South Korean music company HYBE’s recent purchase of Quality Control — a $300 million deal — Yachty’s realm of possibility is bigger than ever.

But he’s not ruling out his genre roots. Arguably, Let’s Start Here was made for the peers and heroes he played it for first — and was inspired by hip-hop’s chameleons. “I would love to do a project with Tyler [The Creator],” says Yachty. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”

Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW ; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.

This story originally appeared in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.

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Let’s Start Here.

By Alphonse Pierre

Quality Control / Motown

February 1, 2023

At a surprise listening event last Thursday,  Lil Yachty   introduced his new album  Let’s Start Here. , an unexpected pivot, with a few words every rap fan will find familiar: “I really wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, not just some SoundCloud rapper or some mumble rapper.” This is the speech rappers are obligated to give when it comes time for the drum loop to take a backseat to guitars, for the rapping to be muted in favor of singing, for the ad-libs to give it up to the background singers, and for a brigade of white producers with plaque-lined walls to be invited into the fold. 

Rap fans, including myself, don’t want to hear it, but the reality is that in large slices of music and pop culture, “rapper” is thrown around with salt on the tongue. Pop culture is powerfully influenced by hip-hop, that is until the rappers get too close and the hands reach for the pearls. If anything, the 25-year-old Yachty—as one of the few rappers of his generation able to walk through the front door anyway because of his typically Gushers-sweet sound and innocently youthful beaded braid look—might be the wrong messenger. 

What’s sour about Yachty’s statement isn’t the idea that he wants to be taken seriously as an artist, but the question of  who  he wants to be taken seriously by. When Yachty first got on, a certain corner of rap fandom saw his marble-mouthed enunciation and unwillingness to drool over hip-hop history as symbols of what was ruining the genre they claimed to love. A few artists more beholden to tradition did some finger-wagging— Pete Rock and  Joe Budden ,  Vic Mensa and  Anderson .Paak , subliminals from  Kendrick and  Cole —but that was years ago, and by now they’ve found new targets. These days, Yachty is respected just fine within rap. If he weren’t, his year-long rebirth in the Michigan rap scene, which resulted in the good-not-great  Michigan Boy Boat , would have been viewed solely as a cynical attempt to boost his rap bona fides. His immersion there felt earnest, though, like he was proving to himself that he could hang. 

The respect Yachty is chasing on  Let’s Start Here. feels institutional. It’s for the voting committees, for the suits; for  Questlove to shout him out as  the future , for Ebro to invite him  back on his radio show and say  My bad, you’re dope.  Never mind if you thought Lil Yachty was dope to start with: The goal of this album is to go beyond all expectations and rules for rappers.

And the big pivot is… a highly manicured and expensive blend of  Tame Impala -style psych-rock, A24 synth-pop, loungey R&B, and  Silk Sonic -esque funk, a sound so immediately appealing that it doesn’t feel experimental at all. In 2020, Yachty’s generational peers,  Lil Uzi Vert and  Playboi Carti , released  Eternal Atake and  Whole Lotta Red : albums that pushed forward pre-existing sounds to the point of inimitability, showcases not only for the artists’ raps but their conceptual visions. Yachty, meanwhile, is working within a template that is already well-defined and commercially successful. This is what the monologue was for? 

To Yachty’s credit, he gives the standout performance on a crowded project. It’s the same gift for versatility that’s made him a singular rapper: He bounces from style to style without losing his individuality. A less interesting artist would have been made anonymous by the polished sounds of producers like  Chairlift ’s Patrick Wimberly,  Unknown Mortal Orchestra ’s Jacob Portrait, and pop songwriters Justin and Jeremiah Raisen, or had their voice warped by writing credits that bring together  Mac DeMarco ,  Alex G , and, uh,  Tory Lanez . The production always leans more indulgent than thrilling, more scattershot than conceptual. But Yachty himself hangs onto the ideas he’s been struggling to articulate since 2017’s  Teenage Emotions : loneliness, heartbreak, overcoming failure. He’s still not a strong enough writer to nail them, and none of the professionals collecting checks in the credits seem to have been much help, but his immensely expressive vocals make up for it. 

Actually, for all the commotion about the genre jump on this project, the real draw is the ways in which Yachty uses Auto-Tune and other vocal effects as tools to unlock not just sounds but emotion. Building off the vocal wrinkle introduced on last year’s viral moment “ Poland ,” where he sounds like he’s cooing through a ceiling fan, the highlights on  Let’s Start Here. stretch his voice in unusual directions. The vocals in the background of his wistful hook on “pRETTy” sound like he’s trying to harmonize while getting a deep-tissue massage. His shrill melodies on “paint THE sky” could have grooved with  the Weeknd on  Dawn FM . The opening warble of “running out of time” is like Yachty’s imitation of  Bruno Mars imitating  James Brown , and the way he can’t quite restrain his screechiness enough to flawlessly copy it is what makes it original.

Too bad everything surrounding his unpredictable and adventurous vocal detours is so conventional. Instrumental moments that feel like they’re supposed to be weird and psychedelic—the hard rock guitar riff that coasts to a blissful finale in “the BLACK seminole.” or the slow build of “REACH THE SUNSHINE.”—come off like half-measures.  Diana Gordon ’s falsetto-led funk on “drive ME crazy!” reaches for a superhuman register, but other guest appearances, like  Fousheé ’s clipped lilts on “pRETTy” and  Daniel Caesar ’s faded howls on the outro, are forgettable. None of it is ever  bad : The synths on “sAy sOMETHINg” shimmer; the drawn-out intro and outro of “WE SAW THE SUN!” set the lost, trippy mood they’re supposed to; “THE zone~” blooms over and over again, underlined by  Justine Skye ’s sweet and unhurried melodies. It’s all so easy to digest, so pitch-perfect, so safe.  Let’s Start Here. clearly and badly wants to be hanging up on those dorm room walls with  Currents and  Blonde and  IGOR . It might just work, too. 

Instead, consider this album a reminder of how limitless rap can be. We’re so eager for the future of the genre to arrive that current sounds are viewed as restricting and lesser. But rap is everything you can imagine. I’m thinking about “Poland,” a song stranger than anything here: straight-up 1:23 of chaos, as inventive as it is fun. I took that track as seriously as anything I heard last year because it latches onto a simple rap melody and pushes it to the brink. Soon enough, another rapper will hear that and take it in another direction, then another will do the same. That’s how you really get to the future. 

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Lil Yachty Shares New Album ‘Let’s Start Here’

Yachty's latest marks his fifth studio album and arrives following the release of his 2021 project ‘Birthday Mix 6.’ Last year, he bagged a hit with "Poland."

Image via Publicist

Lil Yachty ’s first new studio album in three years has arrived .

The release of Let’s Start Here  was preceded by the rollout of a suspenseful skit in which the artist was depicted strolling into a facility deemed “the Department of Mental Tranquility.”

View this photo on Instagram

Stream Let’s Start Here below via Spotify . When unveiling the cover art this week, Yachty thanked fans for their patience when pointing to what he’s billing as a “second chapter.”

Yachty also shared visuals for “Say Something,” which you can watch below.

View this video on YouTube

Last October, Yachty scored a massively ubiquitous hit in the form of the decidedly brief “ Poland ,” which saw him warping his voice in a unique fashion that kept the song on constant rotation for millions of listeners. During a subsequent appearance on the ZIAS! YouTube channel, Yachty provided some insight on the track’s hook, namely its reference to Poland. According to Yachty, that portion of the track was actually inspired by seeing someone who was “just drinking a Poland Spring water bottle” in the studio.

“Poland” appropriately wound up being ranked by Complex among the best songs of 2022 . 

Later this year, fans can expect to see Yachty make a guest appearance on the sixth season (a.k.a. “Season 666”) of The Eric Andre Show. Yachty was confirmed in an Adult Swim announcement last May and will be joined by Tinashe, Jon Hamm, Diplo, Natasha Lyonne, Raven-Symoné, Rico Nasty, Meagan Good, Cypress Hill, and more.  

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Music Features

Lil yachty's delightfully absurd path to 'let's start here'.

Matthew Ramirez

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 29: Lil Yachty performs on the Stage during day 2 of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2017 at Exposition Park on October 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Rich Fury/Getty Images hide caption

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 29: Lil Yachty performs on the Stage during day 2 of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2017 at Exposition Park on October 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Lil Yachty often worked better as an idea than a rapper. The late-decade morass of grifters like Lil Pump, amidst the self-serious reign of Future and Drake (eventual Yachty collaborators, for what it's worth), created a demand for something lighter, someone charismatic, a throwback to a time in the culture when characters like Biz Markie could score a hit or Kool Keith could sustain a career in one hyper-specific lane of rap fandom. Yachty fulfilled the role: His introduction to many was through a comedy skit soundtracked by his viral breakout "1 Night," which tapped into the song's deadpan delivery and was the perfect complement for its sleepy charm. The casual fan knows him best for a pair of collaborations in 2016: as one-half of the zeitgeist-defining single "Broccoli" with oddity D.R.A.M., or "iSpy," a top-five pop hit with backpack rapper Kyle. Yachty embodied the rapper as larger-than-life character — from his candy-colored braids to his winning smile — and while the songs themselves were interesting, you could be forgiven for wondering if there was anything substantial behind the fun, the grounds for the start of a long career.

As if to supplement his résumé, Yachty seemed to emerge as a multimedia star. Perhaps you remember him in a Target commercial; heard him during the credits for the Saved by the Bell reboot; spotted him on a cereal box; saw him co-starring in the ill-fated 2019 sequel to How High . TikTok microcelebrity followed. Then the sentences got more and more absurd: Chef Boyardee jingle with Donny Osmond; nine-minute video cosplaying as Oprah; lead actor in an UNO card game movie. Somewhere in a cross-section of pop-culture detritus and genuine hit-making talent is where Yachty resides. That he didn't fade away immediately is a testament to his charm as a cultural figure; Yachty satisfied a need, and in his refreshingly low-stakes appeal, you could imagine him as an MTV star in an alternate universe. Move the yardstick of cultural cachet from album sales to likes and he emerges as a generation-defining persona, if not musician.

Early success and exposure can threaten anyone's career, none so much as those connected to the precarious phenomenon of SoundCloud rap. Yachty's initial peak perhaps seeded his desire years later to sincerely pursue artistry with Let's Start Here , an album fit for his peculiar trajectory, because throughout the checks from Sprite and scolding Ebro interviews he never stopped releasing music, seemingly to satisfy no one other than himself and the generation of misfits that he seemed to be speaking for.

But to oversell him as a personality belittles his substantial catalog. Early mixtapes like Lil Boat and Summer Songs 2 , which prophetically brought rap tropes and pop sounds into harmony, were sustained by the teenage artist's commitment to selling the vibe of a track as he warbled its memorable hook. It was perhaps his insistence to demonstrate that he could rap, too, that most consistently pockmarked his output during this period. These misses were the necessary growing pains of a kid still finding his footing, and through time and persistence, a perceived weakness became a strength. Where his peers Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti found new ways to express themselves in music, Yachty dug in his heels and became Quality Control's oddball representative, acquitting himself on guest appearances and graduating from punchline rapper to respectable vet culminating in the dense and rewarding Lil Boat 3 from 2020, Yachty's last official album.

Which is why the buzzy, viral "Poland" from the end of 2022 hit different — Yachty tapped back into the same lively tenor of his early breakthroughs. The vibrato was on ten, the beat menaced and hummed like a broken heater, he rapped about taking cough syrup in Poland, it was over in under two minutes and endlessly replayable. Yachty has already lived a full career arc in seven years — from the 2016 king of the teens, to budding superstar, to pitchman, to regional ambassador. But following "Poland" with self-aware attempts at similar virality would be a mistake, and you can't pivot your way to radio stardom after a hit like that, unless you're a marketing genius like Lil Nas X. How does he follow up his improbable second chance to grab the zeitgeist?

#NowPlaying

Lil yachty, 'poland'.

Let's Start Here is Lil Yachty's reinvention, a born-again Artist's Statement with no rapping. It's billed as psychedelic rock but has a decidedly accessible sound — the sun-kissed warmth of an agreeable Tame Impala song, with bounce-house rhythms and woozy guitars in the mode of Magdalena Bay and Mac DeMarco (both of whom guest on the album) — something that's not quite challenging but satisfying nonetheless. Contrast with 2021's Michigan Boy Boat , where Yachty performed as tour guide through Michigan rap: His presence was auxiliary by function on that tape, as he ceded the floor to Babyface Ray, Sada Baby and Rio Da Yung OG; it was tantalizing curation, if not a work of his own personal artistry. It's tempting to cast Let's Start Here as another act of roleplay, but what holds this album together is Yachty's magnetic pull. Whether or not you're someone who voluntarily listens to the Urban Outfitters-approved slate of artists he's drawing upon, his star presence is what keeps you engaged here.

Yachty has been in the studio recording this album since 2021, and the effort is tangible. He didn't chase "Poland" with more goofy novelties, but he also didn't spit this record out in a month. Opener (and highlight) "The Black Seminole" alternates between Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix-lite references. It's definitely a gauntlet thrown even if halfway through you start to wonder where Yachty is. The album's production team mostly consists of Patrick Wemberly (formerly of Chairlift), Jacob Portrait (of Unknown Mortal Orchestra), Jeremiah Raisen (who's produced for Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira and Drake) and Yachty himself, who's established himself as a talented producer since his early days. (MGMT's Ben Goldwasser also contributed.) The group does a formidable job composing music that is dense and layered enough to register as formally unconventional, if not exactly boundary-pushing. Yachty frequently reaches for his "Poland"-inspired uber-vibrato, which adds a bewitching texture to the songs, placing him in the center of the track. Other moments that work: the spoken-word interlude "Failure," thanks to contemplative strumming from Alex G, and "The Ride," a warm slow-burn that coasts on a Jam City beat, giving the album a lustrous Night Slugs moment. "I've Officially Lost Vision" thrashes like Yves Tumor.

Yet the best songs on Let's Start Here push Yachty's knack for hooks and snaking melodies to the fore and rely less on studio fireworks — the laid-back groove of "Running Out of Time," the mournful post-punk of "Should I B?" and the slow burn of "Pretty," which features a bombastic turn from vocalist Foushee. That Yachty's vaunted indie collaborators were able to work in simpatico with him proves his left-of-center bonafides. It's a reminder that he's often lined his projects with successful non-rap songs, curios like "Love Me Forever" from Lil Boat 2 and "Worth It" from Nuthin' 2 Prove . That renders Let's Start Here a less startling turn than it may appear at first glance, and also underlines his recurring talent for making off-kilter pop music, a gift no matter the perceived genre.

At a listening event for the record, Yachty stated: "I created [this] because I really wanted to be taken seriously as an artist. Not just some SoundCloud rapper, not some mumble rapper. Not some guy that just made one hit," seemingly aware of the culture war within his own genre and his place along the spectrum of low- to highbrow. To be sure, whether conscious of it or not, this kind of mentality is dismissive of rap music as an artform, and also undermines the good music Yachty has made in the past. Holing up in the studio to make digestibly "weird" indie-rock with a cast of talented white people isn't intrinsically more artistic or valid than viral hits or a one-off like "Poland." But this statement scans less as self-loathing and more as a renewed confidence, a tribute to the album's collective vision. And people like Joe Budden have been saying "I don't think Yachty is hip-hop " since he started. So what if he wants to break rank now?

Lil Yachty entered the cultural stage at 18, and has grown up in public. It adds up that, now 25, he would internalize all the scrutiny he's received and wish to cement his artistry after a few thankless years rewriting the rules for young, emerging rappers. Let's Start Here may not be the transcendent psychedelic rock album that he seeks, but it is reflective of an era of genreless "vibes" music. Many young listeners likely embraced Yachty and Tame Impala simultaneously; it tracks he would want to bring these sounds together in a genuine attempt to reach a wider audience. Nothing about this album is cynical, but it is opportunistic, a creation in line with both a shameless mixed-media existence and his everchanging pop alchemy. The "genre" tag in streaming metadata means less than it ever has. Credit to Yachty for putting that knowledge to use.

Lil Yachty Reveals AI-Generated Album Cover for ‘Let’s Start Here,’ Depicting Demented Boardroom of Executives

By Yousef Srour

Yousef Srour

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Lil Yachty has revealed the artwork and release date for his forthcoming album, “Let’s Start Here,” set to debut Jan. 27 on Quality Control Music and Motown Records.

Ever the provocateur, the rapper’s new cover art previews an AI-generated image of what seems to be seven executives sitting next to each other in suits. With malformed faces akin to a psychedelic trip down the rabbit hole, the artwork seems unremarkable upon first glance. However, the longer you stare at their faces, they look inhuman, with contorted facial features and warped smiles.

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In an interview with Icebox last year , the “ Minnesota ” rapper has expressed that his “new album is a non-rap album,” hence the second chapter that he alludes to in his Instagram post. Yachty explains: “It’s alternative, it’s sick!” After recently collaborating with artists such as Tame Impala, he’s been in the process of creating a “psychedelic alternative project… [with] all live instrumentation.”

Slowly shedding major label support, Yachty now has his own label and creative consultant company, Concrete Records and Concrete Family, respectively. Working closely with Concrete Family, Yachty teamed up with the General Mills cereal brand in 2020 for a limited collaboration with Reese’s Puffs and has an undisclosed sneaker set to be released at a later date. Similar to his 2021 mixtape, “Michigan Boat Boy,” which featured almost solely Detroit artists including Rio Da Yung OG and Babyface Ray, Yachty plans to also release a mixtape with the Concrete Boys collective sometime this year.

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Lil Yachty’s Great Gig in the Sky

Since the release of his Lil Boat mixtape in 2016, Lil Yachty has cultivated a peculiar rap career that has benefited from versatile musical interests. The Atlanta rapper, singer, and producer’s early work juggled booming southern trap drums, gauzy synths, unclearable samples , and melodic sensibilities on loan from children’s television. Shifting listlessly between disaffected snark and sweet repose, the best songs answered the question of what Brian Wilson’s teenage symphonies might’ve sounded like if he’d grown up hanging around the Migos. On future projects, Yachty leaned into the gruff anthems of his labelmates on Atlanta’s Quality Control Music, toughening up on 2018’s Lil Boat 2 in some of the ways Drake did on Scorpion the same year, this after dividing critics and listeners with the synthpop and reggae excursions on Yachty’s 2017 debut studio album Teenage Emotions .

Restlessness saves his catalog from the pedestrian work of peers chasing the sound of a beloved early mixtape. Lil Yachty is always up to something , quietly penning an undisclosed piece of the City Girls smash “Act Up,” or producing a chunk of Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss , or logging an unlikely chart hit about sneaking promethazine through customs . He’s a lightning rod for guys who see a new wave of absurdists and crooners as a displacement of rap traditionalism (rather than a continuation of a detailed history within it); he knows what the fans are into and where they’re getting into it online, so accusations about his music ruining hip-hop are complicated by every unforeseen success. The work varies greatly in style as well as quality, but being difficult to pin down also buys him freedom to make unusual plays.

Let’s Start Here , his fifth album and first full-length excursion into psychedelic rock, didn’t spawn entirely from nowhere, and not just because it sprung a leak under the name Sonic Beach a few weeks back. His appearance on a remix for Tame Impala’s Slow Rush jam “Breathe Deeper” hits a few of the markers the new album visits: the taste for psychotropic drugs and the interaction between the shimmering sound achieved by an elaborate pedal board and raps that feel both lightly thought through and also spirited and spontaneous. The first song, “The Black Seminole,” outlines the project’s guiding ethos, from its burbling, delay-drenched analog-synthesizer sound to the trippy changes and show-stopping vocal performance by “Bad Habit” co-writer Diana Gordon — all of which amount to an attempt to jam every idea housed in Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon into a single seven-minute performance. Bolstered by memorable spots from Gordon (who gives the Clare Torry screams in “Failure” and “Seminole” her all), Fousheé (whose softCORE album served rockers like “Die” and “Bored” that share Yachty’s love of walls of noise), and Justine Skye, the new album makes more space for women in its love songs than most rappers percolating on the charts tend to care to now. (Note also the presence of one Daystar Peterson in the credits as a co-writer on “Paint the Sky.”)

Let’s Start Here journeys back in time and out to space and sometimes up its own ass. It’s a drug odyssey that delightfully defies expectations whenever it’s not overindulging, taking its adulation for its influences from pastiche to parody, pushing its sound from psych to cacophony. Much will be made of Kevin Parker’s impact here, because Tame is also a project about savvily jumbling ideas from other eras and getting synthesizers to feel as delicately enveloping as puffs of smoke. It’s also an oversimplification of the scope of Let’s Start Here to call it Lil Yachty’s Tame album. Patrick Wimberly co-produced every song, and the snap of the drum sound and the flair for gooey horn accompaniment are assets Chairlift — Wimberly’s former group with Caroline Polachek and Aaron Pfenning — used to employ. U.K. producer Jam City and Yves Tumor collaborator Justin Raisen sat in on a lot of these, too; the maximalist sonics and the mix of love songs and acid-addled horror here are both a result of its pick of personnel and an authentic re-creation of the wild fluctuations of a lurid trip.

Its intriguing bio- and band chemistry are Let’s Start Here ’s gift and curse. “Running Out of Time” kicks off with drums that feel like Thundercat’s “Them Changes” (which, in turn, feels like Paul McCartney’s “Arrow Through Me”) and a bubbly bass line evoking “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. Pushing through to a gorgeous bridge, matching vocals with Skye, Yachty pokes out from under the shadow of his forebears and delivers one of the finest bits of music he’s ever made. The blissed out “The Ride” plants the Texas rapper Teezo Touchdown into a wobbly groove that could’ve fit into last year’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. It feels like both songs could collapse at any moment, hanging a sharp turn into an unflattering section wrecking the momentum they built. Equally prone to swift tense shifts and long detours, Let’s Start Here meanders a great deal between highlights, raining sheets of sound that soak and weigh down the delicate grooves it’s trying to build. “Paint the Sky” sounds like a radio hit dropped into a flooded pit cave. These songs sink or swim on Lil Yachty’s ability to steady himself amid a maelstrom of phase-shifted guitars, delay-kissed drums, and synths shrouded in reverb. He’s a good study and a great hook man, but the novelty of some of his experiments wear off as ideas repeat and choruses get smothered. The less they tinker, the better.

Restraint guides Let’s Start Here to a few of its most sublime moments. “Pretty” will draw comparisons to Childish Gambino’s Awaken My Love! and the hit slow jam “Redbone,” but the drum programming recalls the stuff Prince did with the LinnDrum and the vocal performances feel inspired by cloud rap, a sensibility teased out in a cocky, carefree verse by Fousheé . “Say Something” strikes gold coolly poking around the pillowy synth pads and echoing drums of ’80s pop in the same way recent albums from the Weeknd picked up where Daft Punk left off in marrying dueling interests in 20th- and 21st-century popular music. “Pretty” and “Say Something” keep things relatively simple, stacking a few complementary ideas on top of each other and allowing space to breathe. (Other producers might abuse the clav hits in the latter for the old-school feel they bring, but this group lets them drift in and out of frame, recalling the minimalist trap lullabies on the back end of Lil Boat .) The noisier and less structurally sturdy cuts that surround them feel like the jams a band works through on the way to more refined compositions, before taking them on the road where they grow new layers of sound and significance. Let’s Start Here begs to be untangled in a live setting the way artists drawn to the tactile and communal experience of music tend to, allowed to drift over warm air, playing during the sunny days and reckless nights it describes.

Maybe this album is the new beginning its title implies, a first step toward tighter songcraft on the horizon, and maybe Yachty will pop back up in six to 18 months’ time on some different shit entirely, as is often his tendency. The new record finds him sniffing around the same intersections of pop, rock, psych, and soul as “Bad Habit” or Frank Ocean’s “Pretty Sweet,” sacrificing the brevity of his hits for a purposeful sensory overload, which sometimes works in his favor but sometimes encumbers tracks that ought to seem weightless. It is important for young artists to get the space to grow and change and eat mushrooms and make weird but enthusiastic indie-rock music.

Let’s Start Here fits into a long tradition of pleasant curveballs from rappers, unheralded classics like Q-Tip’s Kamaal the Abstract, side projects like the Beastie Boys and Suicidal Tendencies offshoot BS2000 , imperfect genre excursions like Kid Cudi’s WZRD , and effortless R&B pivots like Tyler, the Creator’s Igor . Yachty is stumbling down well-trod pathways, learning lessons imparted on generation after generation of listeners ever since Pink Floyd’s international breakthrough 50 years ago and taking metaphysical journeys endeavored since humans first discovered fungi and plants that made them see sounds and smell colors. The sharpest songs here could go toe-to-toe with the best in the artist’s back catalog, and the worst ones sound like excitable demos for various guitar pedals. Let’s Start Here isn’t Lil Yachty’s greatest work, but it goes over better than the pitch — “Poland” guy does shrooms and jams on instruments — implied it might. And if shoegaze-adjacent rockers like “I’ve Officially Lost Vision” and sound experiments like the one at the end of “We Saw the Sun” drone-pill even a fraction of the audience, it was all worth it.

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Let’s Start Here.

January 27, 2023 14 Songs, 57 minutes Quality Control Music/Motown Records; ℗ 2023 Quality Control Music, LLC, under exclusive license to UMG Recordings, Inc.

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‘Let’s Start Here’ is a reset for Lil Yachty’s sound

Lil Yachty reinvents his sound in “Let’s Start Here,” but his lyrics show that old habits die hard.

Aaliya Luthra

Lil Yachty’s newest psychedelic-rock album features 14 tracks including “the BLACK seminole.” and “The Alchemist.”(Illustration by Aaliya Luthra)

Sandy Battulga , Music Editor February 2, 2023

Since the release of hit singles “One Night” and “Minnesota,” Lil Yachty has based his lucrative musical career on mumble rap, a genre often defined by its simple rhymes and prevalence on SoundCloud . Lil Yachty — whose real name is Miles Park McCollum — has maintained that being known as a SoundCloud rapper is not enough for him. 

“I’m not a rapper — I’m an artist,” he said to The New York Times in a 2016 interview . “And I’m more than an artist. I’m a brand.” 

In his new album “Let’s Start Here,” Lil Yachty breaks out of the constraints of SoundCloud mumble rap once and for all. Sound-wise, the album is rooted in psychedelic rock. The first track, “the BLACK seminole.,” has a reverberating bass line that sweeps across the entire song, providing a syrupy tone that coats the rest of the album. Lil Yachty has cited Pink Floyd as a major inspiration for this album. This influence is especially evident in “the BLACK seminole.,” which features a virtuosic guitar solo, fast-paced synthesizer melody and epic vocal aria. 

This album experiments with composition and ambient soundscapes in an intriguing way. The fifth track, “:(failure(:,” showcases cavernous drones and guitar chords, over which Lil Yachty speaks, ruminating on failure and what it’s like to be “rich and famous.” The song was written in part by Alex G and Mac DeMarco, so it has a psychedelic and almost spiritual sound. For every serene moment in “Let’s Start Here,” however, “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!” is a track filled with the chaos to match. The song touches on classical music, glitch music, hard rock and R&B — all within its runtime of just over five minutes. The song ends with an air of calm though, with a minute-long recording of a person walking outside, while a string section plays a meditative composition. “Let’s Start Here” leaves no stone unturned, exhibiting varying levels of intensity and pacing that make the album a feast for the ears.

Although the diversity of sound in the album is exciting and original, its lyrical content doesn’t break away from the mumble rap mold nearly as much as it could. Lil Yachty is known for his music’s refreshingly youthful and goofy perspective, but this lyric construction strategy seems out of place amid the more mature and developed sonic environment he established in “Let’s Start Here.” The album has the beginnings of a more introspective and thoughtful reflection on his life compared to his previous work, but Lil Yachty’s muscle memory of writing simple rhymes that revel in adolescence seems to overtake the full realization of a truly contemplative tone. 

“The Alchemist,” for example, is the second to last track, and it depicts two different characters: one cocky and one vulnerable. Lil Yachty returns to his background in mumble rap, energetically delivering lines like, “No need to brag, but I knew that I was built for this / I know now that most men would kill for this / Seamlessly, I walk around infamous” and “Papa made a young pimp, I’m outside / Southside, tote a shank, I’ma up rank / Lemonade pink seats in a fish tank.” These verses ooze the positivity that Lil Yachty is known for, providing a familiar tone to fans that were originally attracted to the artist because of his easy confidence. In between the rapper’s verses, though, R&B singer Fousheé provides a different attitude, softly singing, “It feels good / Don’t need no harm, this for shits and giggles / My taxes in on time” and “​​Up on my cloud / My feet don’t touch the ground / Don’t try to shoot me down / I’m only a human / It’s my first go ’round in this thing.” She articulates sentiments that Lil Yachty doesn’t usually associate himself with such as sensitivity and domesticity. This song offers listeners insight, if brief, into the Lil Yachty behind the curated brand he has built around himself. 

Most of the songs on the album revolve around a boyish infatuation with women, like in “WE SAW THE SUN!” Once again, the instrumentation is what keeps the listener’s attention. A hypnotic guitar introduces the track, and Lil Yachty’s voice is fragmented into a rhythmic accompaniment. The song ends with a snippet of Bob Ross speaking: “Just let your imagination run wild, let your heart be your guide / In the time you sit around worrying about it and trying to plan a painting, you could’ve completed a painting already.” But the lyrics of this track don’t measure up against the complexities of its composition. Lil Yachty’s verses are juvenile, still reflecting his past projects: “Few more drops up on your tongue / At night, too many that can’t be undone / Head spun, meanwhile, you’re done / Had a little too much fun / I cannot stop touching you / This just took my high to the moon.” 

Despite the lack of development in his lyricism, Lil Yachty has showcased incredible dexterity in shaping this album’s sonic landscape. The last track of “Let’s Start Here” indicates that more complex lyrics may be on the way. “REACH THE SUNSHINE” features Daniel Caesar, who starts the song off with an interpolation of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song.” “Staring in the mirror and what do I see? / A three-eyed man staring back at me / Two for the flesh and one for the soul / But where did man go? I’m tryna fill that hole,” the song drones. The track ends on the fourth note of the scale instead of the tonic, so it leaves the track — and the album — unresolved. The listener walks away craving more, but thankfully — as the title of this album suggests — this new era of Lil Yachty is just getting started.

Contact Sandy Battulga at [email protected] .

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Sandy is a sophomore double-majoring in comparative literature and social and cultural analysis. When she's not complaining about her love-hate relationship...

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Lil Yachty Delivers New Psychedelic Rock Album ‘Let’s Start Here.’

Lil Yachty’s new album, Let’s Start Here, continues to further the star’s reputation as an innovative savant. The new album is 15 tracks in length, delivering a new experience for fans.

Let’s Start Here was crafted in areas ranging from El Paso to Brooklyn, with Lil Yachty immersing himself in day and night sessions. The result is a Psychedelic Alternative album executive produced by SADPONY. The album is influenced by Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon and experiential psychedelic journeys.

Ahead of the album, Yachty released a skit titled “Department of Mental Tranquility.” In the skit, Yachty strolled a hallway entering what would be the first step into the rest of his life. Playing multiple roles, Yachty was introduced to his upcoming float experience in a sweltering room until it overcomes his body, and he is directed to room 10. What you hear is the result of that trip, double entendre, don’t even ask me how.

You can see the skit and hear the full album below.

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How Lil Yachty Ended Up at His Excellent New Psychedelic Album Let's Start Here

By Brady Brickner-Wood

The evening before Lil Yachty released his fifth studio album,  Let’s Start Here,  he  gathered an IMAX theater’s worth of his fans and famous friends at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City and made something clear: He wanted to be taken seriously. Not just as a “Soundcloud rapper, not some mumble rapper, not some guy that just made one hit,” he told the crowd before pressing play on his album. “I wanted to be taken serious because music is everything to me.” 

There’s a spotty history of rappers making dramatic stylistic pivots, a history Yachty now joins with  Let’s Start Here,  a funk-flecked psychedelic rock album. But unlike other notable rap-to-rock faceplants—Kid Cudi’s  Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven  comes to mind, as does Lil Wayne’s  Rebirth —the record avoids hackneyed pastiche and gratuitous playacting and cash-grabbing crossover singles; instead, Yachty sounds unbridled and free, a rapper creatively liberated from the strictures of mainstream hip-hop. Long an oddball who’s delighted in defying traditional rap ethos and expectations,  Let’s Start Here  is a maximalist and multi-genre undertaking that rewrites the narrative of Yachty’s curious career trajectory. 

Admittedly, it’d be easy to write off the album as Tame Impala karaoke, a gimmicky record from a guy who heard Yves Tumor once and thought: Let’s do  that . But set aside your Yachty skepticism and probe the album’s surface a touch deeper. While the arrangements tend toward the obvious, the record remains an intricate, unraveling swell of sumptuous live instruments and reverb-drenched textures made more impressive by the fact that Yachty co-produced every song. Fielding support from an all-star cast of characters, including production work from former Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Justin Raisen, Nick Hakim, and Magdalena Bay, and vocals from Daniel Caesar, Diana Gordon,  Foushée , Justine Skye, and Teezo Touchdown, Yachty surrounds himself with a group of disparately talented collaborators. You can hear the acute attention to detail and wide-scale ambition in the spaced-out denouement on “We Saw the Sun!” or on the blistering terror of “I’ve Officially Lost Vision!!!!” or during the cool romanticism of “Say Something.” Though occasionally overindulgent,  Let’s Start Here  is a spectacular statement from hip-hop’s prevailing weirdo. It’s not shocking that Yachty took another hard left—but how exactly did he end up  here ?

In 2016, as the forefather of “bubblegum trap” ascended into mainstream consciousness, an achievement like  Let’s Start Here  would’ve seemed inconceivable. The then 18-year-old Yachty gained national attention when a pair of his songs, “One Night” and “Minnesota,” went viral. Though clearly indebted to hip-hop trailblazers Lil B, Chief Keef, and Young Thug, his work instantly stood apart from the gritted-teeth toughness of his Atlanta trap contemporaries. Yachty flaunted a childlike awe and cartoonish demeanor that communicated a swaggering, unbothered cool. His singsong flows and campy melodies contained a winking humor to them, a subversive playfulness that endeared him to a generation of very online kids who saw themselves in Yachty’s goofy, eccentric persona. He starred in Sprite  commercials alongside LeBron James, performed live shows at the  Museum of Modern Art , and modeled in Kanye West’s  Life of Pablo  listening event at Madison Square Garden. Relishing in his cultural influence, he declared to the  New York Times  that he was not a rapper but an  artist. “And I’m more than an artist,” he added. “I’m a brand.”

 As Sheldon Pearce pointed out in his Pitchfork  review of Yachty’s 2016 mixtape,  Lil Boat , “There isn’t a single thing Lil Yachty’s doing that someone else isn’t doing better, and in richer details.” He wasn’t wrong. While Yachty’s songs were charming and catchy (and, sometimes, convincing), his music was often tangential to his brand. What was the point of rapping as sharply as the Migos or singing as intensely as Trippie Redd when you’d inked deals with Nautica and Target, possessed a sixth-sense for going viral, and had incoming collaborations with Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen? What mattered more was his presentation: the candy-red hair and beaded braids, the spectacular smile that showed rows of rainbow-bedazzled grills, the wobbly, weak falsetto that defaulted to a chintzy nursery rhyme cadence. He didn’t need technical ability or historical reverence to become a celebrity; he was a meme brought to life, the personification of hip-hop’s growing generational divide, a sudden star who, like so many other Soundcloud acts, seemed destined to crash and burn after a fleeting moment in the sun.

 One problem: the music wasn’t very good. Yachty’s debut album, 2017’s  Teenage Emotions, was a glitter-bomb of pop-rap explorations that floundered with shaky hooks and schmaltzy swings at crossover hits. Worse, his novelty began to fade, those sparkly, cheerful, and puerile bubblegum trap songs aging like day-old french fries. Even when he hued closer to hard-nosed rap on 2018’s  Lil Boat 2  and  Nuthin’ 2 Prove,  you could feel Yachty desperate to recapture the magic that once came so easily to him. But rap years are like dog years, and by 2020, Yachty no longer seemed so radically weird. He was an established rapper making mid mainstream rap. The only question now was whether we’d already seen the best of him.

If his next moves were any indication—writing the  theme song to the  Saved by the Bell  sitcom revival and announcing his involvement in an upcoming  movie based on the card game Uno—then the answer was yes. But in April 2021, Yachty dropped  Michigan Boat Boy,  a mixtape that saw him swapping conventional trap for Detroit and Flint’s fast-paced beats and plain-spoken flows. Never fully of a piece with his Atlanta colleagues, Yachty found a cohort of kindred spirits in Michigan, a troop of rappers whose humor, imagination, and debauchery matched his own. From the  looks of it, leaders in the scene like Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, and YN Jay embraced Yachty with open arms, and  Michigan Boat Boy  thrives off that communion. 

 Then “ Poland ” happened. When Yachty uploaded the minute-and-a-half long track to Soundcloud a few months back, he received an unlikely and much needed jolt. Building off the rage rap production he played with on the  Birthday Mix 6  EP, “Poland” finds Yachty’s warbling about carrying pharmaceutical-grade cough syrup across international borders, a conceit that captured the imagination of TikTok and beyond. Recorded as a joke and released only after a leaked version went viral, the song has since amassed over a hundred-millions streams across all platforms. With his co-production flourishes (and adlibs) splattered across Drake and 21 Savage’s  Her Loss,  fans had reason to believe that Yachty’s creative potential had finally clicked into focus.

 But  Let’s Start Here  sounds nothing like “Poland”—in fact, the song doesn’t even appear on the project. Instead, amid a tapestry of scabrous guitars, searing bass, and vibrant drums, Yachty sounds right at home on this psych-rock spectacle of an album. He rarely raps, but his singing often relies on the virtues of his rapping: those greased-vowel deliveries and unrushed cadences, the autotune-sheathed vibrato. “Pretty,” for instance, is decidedly  not  a rap song—but what is it, then? It’s indebted to trap as much as it is ’90s R&B and MGMT, its drugged-out drums and warm keys able to house an indeterminate amount of ideas.

Yachty didn’t need to abandon hip-hop to find himself as an artist, but his experimental impulses helped him craft his first great album. Perhaps this is his lone dalliance in psych rock—maybe a return to trap is imminent. Or, maybe, he’ll make another 180, or venture deeper into the dystopia of corporate sponsorships. Who’s to say? For now, it’s invigorating to see Yachty shake loose the baggage of his teenage virality and emerge more fully into his adult artistic identity. His guise as a boundary-pushing rockstar isn’t a new archetype, but it’s an archetype he’s infused with his glittery idiosyncrasies. And look what he’s done: he’s once again morphed into a star the world didn’t see coming.

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We simply must talk about Lil Yachty’s latest album, ‘Let’s Start Here.’

OPINION: The Atlanta rapper’s latest musical offering is — I think(?) — a huge but welcome departure from anything we’ve ever expected from him. 

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Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

It all started with supremely odd album art. Every Friday, I peruse through the Spotify “stacks” of new musical releases. As I scrolled down, I saw an odd assortment of animated people in suits laughing. I looked at the artist and saw the name Lil Yachty. Now, I know about Lil Yachty, but I can’t call myself a fan. Or at least I couldn’t before last week but we’ll get there. I remember his early songs like “One Night,” which I will generously call … not my cup of tea. In fact, none of his music has been my cup of tea while I’ve enjoyed his commercial and corporate glowup. Lil Yachty had commercials with Sprite and Target. Good for him.

But again, I have never cared one bit for his music — no matter where it showed up. So, under normal circumstances, I’d just scroll on through a Lil Yachty project, but I’m a sucker for good album cover. And like with tons of artists I don’t remember or will never listen to again, I decided to give the album a cursory two or three song run-through. To say I was surprised would be the understatement of the millennium. I was aghast. Run amuck. Plymouth Rock landed on me. Did Lil Yachty make this psychedelic, synth, pop, moody, enjoyable, engaging album?? 

HOW, SWAY? That’s the first thing I actually said out loud. I listened to the first song, “the BLACK seminole.” in full — all roughly seven minutes of it; the longest I can honestly say I’ve ever listened to a Lil Yachty anything in one sitting — and loved the sound, vibe and even his lyrics on the song, which aren’t great, but just, you know, work. I went song by song and then restarted the album and listened again, wondering how this happened? Why this happened? Who made this happen? Was Lil Yachty secretly some kind of musical savant that I’d been ignorant ignoring? His catalog suggests not. This album sounds nothing like the rest of his catalog. It’s an entirely different sound and feel. And I love it. 

I think you’ll love it, too. But we must examine this. Questlove from The Roots, whose musical opinion is about as good as it gets these days, posted on Instagram about this album and about folks who make albums that depart from their expected sound and oeuvre and remarked, “I dunno man: after about 3 listens (and I thought I’d NEVER say this—-& not because “I didn’t expect this from Lil Yachty”——but just in general I didn’t expect this from MUSIC)”. 

Now, let me say a few things about that last statement about not expecting this from music. I think that’s an understandably large statement, but a bit of a reach and overstatement. And I respect Questlove’s opinion in spades; it’s an extremely informed one. 

I am mostly surprised that this album came from Lil Yachty. I had absolutely no expectations of him and his musical offerings, and for him to make an album this cohesive that centers so many sounds and other voices that are, quite honestly, more important to the album than Yachty seemed like, until Jan. 27, 2023, an impossibility. I expect genre-bending hip-hop from artists like Kendrick Lamar, not Yachty. In fact, that fact alone makes me want to know everything about how this album came to be. 

It’s Yachty’s album, so I will give him all the credit for bringing these elements together but I need that oral history of “Let’s Start Here.” ASAP. I want to know about the studio sessions and the writing process and how the first records came to be that set the tone for the rest of the album. Did somebody bring the elements to him or was he playing around with sounds and felt good about them? The same three names are on the production credits for nearly every song: Patrick Wimberly, Justin Raisen and Jacob Portrait, each artists whose work tends (according to the little bits I’ve listened to) to be in the space of the album that became Lil Yachty’s. My guess is those folks were working together on some stuff, and Lil Yachty fortuitously stumbled upon these gems and they were all like, “let’s do this!” I have no idea if this is what happened — I’m anxiously awaiting the music review or the article that breaks all of this down. 

Again, my point is that I’m surprised that Lil Yachty made this album. I’d expect it from Kid Cudi. In fact, Kid Cudi (I’m a superstan) has been trying to make an album this genre-bending and cohesive, to me, his whole career. Of most of the forays into off-genre works by hip-hop artists, this is easily one of the best I’ve heard. Full stop. 

So let’s take a look at the other part of Questlove’s statement that he didn’t expect this of music. That part surprises me: if this wasn’t Lil Yachty’s project but some artists whose name I don’t know, I’m not sure I’d be THAT surprised. From groups like Black Moth Super Rainbow and the oft-cited Tame Impala when referencing this album, it’s not an album that is so monumental that it’s changed music. Not to me at least. The surprise and joy of the album is that Lil Yachty and Quality Control Music released this. There’s joy in that fact; when an artist creates music you don’t expect, it ripples. André 3000 taught us that with his half of Outkast’s 2003 double-album, “The Love Below.” Whether you loved or hated that album, you had to respect André’s attempt to do something wholly different but still keep it hip-hop. 

That’s where this album lands for me. The biggest difference is that unlike “The Love Below,” I don’t feel like Yachty is dropping amazing gems or vocal performances or anything. While I enjoy him on the album and give him credit for his presence and ownership of it, he’s kind of random most of the time. There are entire songs where I’d love to have heard other artists. For instance, I would, right now, pay good money to get a Lil Uzi Vert feature on “The Alchemist,” one of my favorite records on the album. In fact, if this was a JuiceWRLD and Lil Uzi Vert collab, I might think this is one of the greatest songs of all time. See? THAT IS AN OVERSTATEMENT. But I can hear them on it. There are songs that I feel like Tyler, the Creator or Pharrell Williams would be perfectly suited for. 

With that said, I fully appreciate that this is Lil Yachty’s album, and he deserves all of the credit for releasing this album. I appreciate that he went this road. I truly enjoy “Let’s Start Here.”, and I enjoy it in full — I listen to this album from start to finish every single time, and it’s been on a constant loop since I first listened to it. I would love more artists who opted into non-expected album releases with a set of producers who curated a sound that rappers would be able to blend with well. I don’t think every rapper is able, but I never thought Lil Yachty would either and he sure showed me. 

Interestingly, this has me looking forward to what he does next. Even if he goes right back to what he was doing before, in any capacity, this album is a welcome excursion into the mind and imagination of Lil Yachty and that’s turned me into a fan. Is “Let’s Start Here.” an album-of-the-year kind of project? I don’t know; the who of it makes it feel like that. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. But I’ll tell you one thing; I’m fairly certain that whenever next year’s Grammy nominations come out, I’ll probably STILL be listening to this album. And happily. 

Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio. He writes very Black things and drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest), but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said: “Unknown” (Blackest).

Make sure you check out the Dear Culture podcast every Thursday on theGrio’s Black Podcast Network, where I’ll be hosting some of the Blackest conversations known to humankind. You might not leave the convo with an afro, but you’ll definitely be looking for your Afro Sheen! Listen to Dear Culture on TheGrio’s app; download it here .

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Lil Yachty is officially back, and his highly anticipated project is making landfall very soon. The Atlanta emcee announced today (Jan. 17) that his forthcoming album is titled Let’s Start Here and will debut on Jan. 27 via Quality Control Music/Motown Records. “Chapter 2. Thank You for the patience,” he wrote on Instagram.

The anticipation for Let’s Start Here was already high thanks to Yachty’s runaway hit “Poland,” which is the project’s lead single. Since its debut back in October 2022, the track quickly rose to popularity thanks to its incredibly catchy opening hook and enticing production by F1LTHY, Lukrative, and Lucian:

I took the Wock’ to Poland, I took the Wock’ to Poland, I took the Wock’ to Poland/ Uh (Phew, phew), ha, I been fiending (Uh), like I’m Kenan, ride around with a Kel-Tec (Phew, Wock’)/ If you mean it, baby girl, do you mean it? I been leaning, baby girl, I been leaning (Yeah, Wock’)/ Phew, phew, phew (Wock’), phone still ringing, battling all my demons (Yeah), I been fiending, baby girl, I been fiending (Wock’)/ Hope you love me, baby, I hope you mean it (Wock’)

Yachty’s last full-length offering was 2021’s Michigan Boy Boat , a 14-track body of work that saw additional features from Tee Grizzley, Swae Lee, Sada Baby, YN Jay, Rio da Yung OG, Babyface Ray , and more. Months later, he dropped off the sixth installment of his Birthday Mix series, bringing in his 24th trip around the sun with SoFaygo, Lil Tecca, DC2Trill, and Draft Day. Since then, he has released a few loose singles like “Tunde” and “Yae Energy.”

Outside of his own releases, the “One Night” rapper delivered some strong assists on recent tracks, including “Humble” by Diplo, “Wocky My Lover” by Mak Sauce, “Rocc Climbing” by Remble, “Rule #1” by DDG, and “Bank Teller” by Lil Tecca.

Check out Lil Yachty’s album cover for Let’s Start Here down below.

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Lil yachty to perform at bryce jordan center september 6.

Rapper Lil Yachty, along with NLE Choppa, J.I the Prince of N.Y, and Chow Lee, will perform at the Bryce Jordan Center on September 6, the BJC announced Wednesday . Tickets will go on sale Friday, May 3.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Bryce Jordan Center (@jordancenter)

The former SoundCloud rapper released his first song “Sad (Happy Remix)” in 2013, then rose to fame following the success of his 2016 mixtape “Lil Boat.” The Atlanta rapper was part of a new wave of young artists changing the game at the time. His “bubblegum trap” approach made him a favorite among young fans, and his debut “Teenage Emotions” made it to No. 5 on the Billboard 200.

Best known for his hits “Broccoli,” “iSpy,” “1 Night,” “Ice Tray,” and “Oprah’s Bank Account,” Yachty continued to grow as an artist and songwriter throughout the years, collaborating with artists like Drake, D.R.A.M., KYLE, DaBaby, and more.

Most recently, Yachty released his last album “Let’s Start Here” in 2023, followed by several singles released in 2024 such as “Stayinit,” “Fallout,” “A Cold Sunday,” and “POINT ME TO IT.”

NLE Choppa is known for hit songs like “SLUT ME OUT,” “PISTON PACCIN,” and “Camelot.” The Memphis, Tennessee, native has two studio albums: “Top Shotta” and “Cottonwood 2.”

J.I the Prince of N.Y broke onto the rap scene in 2019 with his hit single “Need Me.” Since then, he has released three mixtapes. Chow Lee is a New York native with just under 400,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. His top songs include “swag it!” and “JHOLIDAY.”

Yachty joins  Kacey Musgraves ,  Jelly Roll ,  Cody Johnson , and Zach Williams on the list of artists set to perform at the BJC.

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About the Author

Evan Halfen

Evan Halfen is a junior broadcast journalism major from Newark, DE, and is one of Onward State's associate editors. Evan loves all things Penn State, tailgating, being loud, just about any beach, and his puppies, Butterscotch and Wentzy. You can direct all your tips, roasts, and jokes to his Instagram: @evan.halfen or email: [email protected]

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• Kendrick Lamar's Drake Diss "Euphoria"
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Kendrick Lamar Goes Off on Drake for 6-Plus Minutes on Highly Anticipated Diss Track ‘Euphoria’

Kendrick Lamar  is coming for blood in the lyrical battle against Drake . The West Coast rapper just unleashed a new diss track called "Euphoria."

Kendrick Lamar Drops 6-Minute Drake Diss Track "Euphoria"

On Tuesday (April 30), K-Dot continued the lyrical onslaught with "Euphoria," a blistering track full of lyrical ferocity aimed at the biggest artist in the rap game: Drake. The new song, which he released on YouTube and posted in a tweet ,  is in response to Drake coming for Kendrick on the recently released diss track, "Push Ups." This marks Kendrick's second diss directed toward Drake following K-Dot's verse on "Like That."

From the jump, Kendrick uses the dictionary definition of the word euphoria as the cover art for the track. The move also seems to be a move toward the HBO series Euphoria , which Drake is an executive producer for.

K-Dot holds nothing back on the diss, going for Drake's jugular. He insults Drizzy's "fairytale stories," being biracial, the women he has sex with, plus, the way he walks, talks and dresses. Kendrick mentions Lil Yachty, Sexyy Red and Drake's friend Chubbs to cut deep at The Boy.

• "I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk/I hate the way that you dress/I hate the way you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct/We hate the b***hes you f**k, ’cause they confuse themself with real women/And notice, I said, 'We,' it's not just me, I'm what the culture feelin'."
• "How many more fairytale stories ’bout your life till we had enough?/How many more Black features till you finally feel that you Black enough/I like Drake with the melodies, I don't like Drake when he act tough/You gon' make a n***a bring back Puff, let me see if Chubbs really crash somethin'."
• "I'm allergic to the lame s**t, only you like bein' famous/ Yachty can't give you no swag neither/I don't give a f**k ’bout who you hang with."
• "When I see you stand by Sexyy Red, I believe you see two bad b***hes/I believe you don't like women, that's real competition, you might pop ass with ’em."

Read More:  Kendrick Lamar Already Has the Best Verse of 2024

Drake disses kendrick lamar as response to "like that".

This response from Kendrick is follows Drake's diss "Push Ups." When everyone least expected it, a leaked diss track from Drake made its way around every corner of the internet on April 13. The Canadian MC fired off lyrical rounds at K-Dot, in addition to Future, The Weeknd, Metro Boomin and Rick Ross. The track was initially thought to be fake, but Drake soon claimed it was his by officially releasing the song on DSPs.

One of the standout gibes tossed at Kendrick includes: "Tough on record, in my city, it was friend zone/You won't ever take no chain off of us/How the f**k you big steppin' with a size 7 men's on?"

There was more annihilation where that came from. Drake picked apart K-Dot's past collaborations with Taylor Swift and Maroon 5 as well as his working relationship with Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith. "Your last one bricked, you really not on s**t/They make excuses for you 'cause they hate to see me lit/Pull your contract 'cause we gotta see the split/The way you doin' splits, b***h, your pants might rip/You better do that muthaf**kin' show inside the bitty/Maroon 5 need a verse, you better make it witty/Then we need a verse for the Swifties/Top say drop, you better drop and give 'em 50," Drake delivers.

Drizzy even dismantled the Big 3 , and brought some of hip-hop and R&B's major players into the mix while bashing Kung Fu Kenny. "Pipsqueak, pipe down/You ain't in no Big 3, SZA got you wiped down/Travis got you wiped down/Savage got you wiped down/Like your label, boy, you in the scope right now/And you gon' feel the aftermath of what I write down/I'm at the top of the mountain, so you tight now/Just to have this talk with yo' a*s, I had to hike down/Big difference between Mike then and Mike now," Drake rhymes.

Read More:  Here Are the Complete Lyrics for Drake's New Diss Track

Check out Kendrick Lamar's "Euphoria" diss track toward Drake below.

Listen to Kendrick Lamar's Drake Diss Track  'Euphoria'

See rappers' most wildest insults they've said during beefs, more from xxl.

Lil Yachty announces U.S. tour dates, stop at Bryce Jordan Center

U NIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (WTAJ) – Breaking up a lineup of country artists coming to the Bryce Jordan Center this fall is American Rapper Lil Yachty.

Lil Yachty has announced five U.S. tour dates following his return to the States from The Field Trip Tour in Europe:

• June 15 – Outer Harbor Buffalo in New York.
• July 6 – Summerfest 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Sept. 5 – Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.
• Sept. 6 – Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pennsylvania.
• Sept. 7 – Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, Maine.

Supporting him at the BJC will be special guests NLE Choppa, J.I the Prince of N.Y and Chow Lee.

Get daily updates on local news, weather and sports by signing up for the  WTAJ Newsletter .

Presale starts Thursday, May 2 at noon and general sales starts Friday, May 3 at noon through the Bryce Jordan Center box office.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WTAJ - www.wtaj.com.

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Drake Takes To Instagram As Social Media Reacts To Kendrick Lamar's "Euphoria" Diss

On Tuesday (April 30) evening, Drake appeared to respond to Kendrick Lamar’s fiery “ euphoria ” diss track by posting a video from the 1999 comedy “10 Things I Hate About You” on his Instagram Stories. 

The clip featured Julia Stiles’ character reciting a poem about her contradictory feelings toward a crush, mirroring the sentiment of Lamar’s lyrics. “I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme/ I hate the way you’re always right, I hate it when you lie,” the actress said in the excerpt.

In “euphoria,” Lamar attacked Drake with lines such as, “It’s always been about love and hate, now let me say I’m the biggest hater/ I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress/ I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct.”

It’s worth mentioning that Drake had a similar retort to Lamar’s initial jabs on Metro Boomin and Future’s “Like That.” The Toronto rapper posted several clips and cryptic captions that fans took as veiled shots at his contemporaries. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he actually responded directly via “Push Ups” and “ Taylor Made Freestyle .”

In light of Lamar’s more recent diss, DJ Akademiks revealed that Drake texted him about the track. The artist reportedly said, “See you soon.” Notably, the media personality’s commentary was used for the outro of “Push Ups.”

Lil Yachty, one of the several people mentioned in “euphoria,” also reacted to the record. The “One Night” hitmaker liked a post on Twitter that read, “So, who was raising your child while you were out cheating on your wife with white women, [Kendrick Lamar]?” The tweet referenced the Compton emcee’s attack on Drake for allegedly being an absent father.

However, Yachty clarified that the like was “an accident.” He later quote-tweeted a comment saying “too late” with laughing emojis. As Rap-Up reported yesterday, Gunna and Metro supposedly responded to the song as well. 

Shit was an accident lmao https://t.co/0cF77iblW0 — CONCRETE BOY BOAT^ (@lilyachty) May 1, 2024

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/zXejRz8l3O — CONCRETE BOY BOAT^ (@lilyachty) May 1, 2024

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Kendrick Lamar releases Drake diss track Euphoria, the internet reacts

In the ongoing feud between arguably hip hop's biggest artists, Kendrick Lamar has hit back at Drake with a diss track called Euphoria. 

On the six-minute song, Lamar lays down nasty insults and attacks on Drake while addressing multiple talking points that have surfaced since he first went after the Canadian rap star and J. Cole on Future and Metro Boomin's Like That.

Released more than a month ago, Like That re-ignited decade-long tensions, topped the US charts for weeks, and saw J. Cole responding then retracting from the fight.

Meanwhile, Drake targeted Lamar with his own songs Push Ups and Taylor Made Freestyle, the latter featuring faked AI verses of Snoop Dogg and Tupac '2Pac' Shakur, leading to the late rapper's estate threatening legal action and Drake subsequently removing the track from the internet .

Now, Lamar has released Euphoria, which sees Kendrick rapping in different vocal timbres over multiple beat switches.

The track begins over a soulful, laid-back groove but the Pulitzer prize-winning rapper's lyrics are nothing less than barbed:

Know you a master manipulator and habitual liar too But don't tell no lie about me and I won't tell truths 'bout you

The song then moves sonically from a dismissive hand wave to a balled fist of fury as Lamar approaches from multiple angles to attack Drake – the most commercially successful rapper of his generation – denigrating his love of fame, money, clout, and a whole lot more.

CONTENT WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

Tough rhymes and references

Kendrick says his beef with Drake isn't about critical acclaim or who "the greatest" is:

It's always been about love and hate, now let me say I'm the biggest hater I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it's gon' be direct

Indeed, Lamar is direct here.

He references Taylor Made Freestyle, saying Drake would "make [2]Pac turn in his grave" by faking his voice for a track with lines that reference actor Haley Joel Osment and his films AI and The Sixth Sense via American mega-church pastor Joel Osteen:

"Am I battling ghost or A.I.? N***a feeling like Joel Osteen/ "Funny, he was in a film called AI and my sixth sense tellin' me to off him."

Lamar also references J. Cole's now-deleted diss track 7 Minute Drill, saying Drake has no classic albums and accuses him of getting cosmetic surgery:

"Yeah, my first one like my last one, it's a classic, you don't have one "Let your core audience stomach that / then tell 'em where you get your abs from."

Lamar also claims Drake wanted a feature verse from him and tried to block Like That with a cease-and-desist order.

Most personal of all, Kendrick labels Drake a bad father:

Why would I call around tryna get dirt on niggas? Y'all think all my life is rap? That's ho s**t, I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that

There's many more layered references, including shout-outs to fellow rappers Pusha T, Lil Yachty, and Gunna, and Lamar suggests he's got more fire in the tank for future tracks should this feud continue.

Given how it's reinvigorated hip hop discourse, an end doesn't seem in sight any time soon.

The internet reactions

Within hours of its release, rap fans – who finally got what they were waiting for – flooded social media with their hot takes on Euphoria. The song is already considered a hit with the Kendrick Lamar faithful, naturally,

Some have riffed on Lamar calling himself "the biggest hater", noting it as a reference to an old radio interview from late New York City rapper DMX.

Hip hop artists Jay Rock, Denzel Curry and Reason also weighed in on the action.

Meanwhile, Death Row Records music mogul Suge Knight (who is currently serving a 28-year-sentence for voluntary man slaughter ) said Lamar had won "Round 1" but questioned how he insulted Drake's mixed race identity on the track.

"How many more black features do you final feel like you're black enough?" Lamar spits on the track, an approach Knight says "creates division" amongst the rap community.

Here's some more of the best memes and reactions we've found so far.

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