Mum, Lil Yachty’s gotten even weirder – and I love it.
It’s fair to say absurdity has marked the career of Lil Yachty: rising to prominence on the
wave of SoundCloud ‘lil’ rappers blowing up on bedroom beats, featuring on 2016’s goofy
summer banger ‘Broccoli’, building a career on pop-rap’s scorned new love for autotuned
vocals and basic flows, and memeing his way to 80 million Spotify streams and chart success with his latest single “Poland”, which is loved simultaneously ironically and genuinely.
In a bizarre new turn, following his remix of Tame Impala’s ‘Breathe Deeper’, Yachty has
thrown himself into the psychedelic rock genre with ‘Let’s Start Here’. This album marks not
his ability to ride the weird waves of mainstream pop rap, but a bold creative stance that
pulls no punches.
The album opens spectacularly with ‘the BLACK seminole.’ As sweeping drum rolls and Pink
Floyd-esque guitar riffs accompany Yachty’s auto-tuned vocals and tripped-out but
revelatory lyrics to let us know straight away what we’re in for: this will be a chaotic dive
into psychedelic rock. Guitar solos crescendo and crash into a moment of synth-based
reflection, leaving both fans of Yachty and the psych rock genre to catch their breath and try to understand what on earth has just happened. Yachty whispers “now” and Diana Gordon’s beautifully twisted vocals complete a fairly batshit dive into the madness of ‘Let’s Start Here’ as we exit the first track.
Batshit bravery is the theme of this album, as Yachty’s divisively unique vocals lend
themselves intriguingly to the change of genre, melting into the cauldron of sound and
preserving psychedelic ambiguity. ‘The ride-‘ does feel jarring in patches, some pretty
washed out lyrics landing poorly among decent choruses. The interlude ‘:(failure(:’ also lives up to its name as a bit of a pop-motivational preach to nothing. Yet his vocals provide some of the shining highlights of the album – ‘WE SAW THE SUN!’ perfectly showcasing how
Yachty’s robotic vocals can luxuriously melt into waves of dreamy synths, in my highlight of
the album. Intense, drugged-out wails on the euphorically angry “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST
ViSiON!!!!” really add to the disorienting tone, and his verse on ‘The Alchemist.’ drives the
track and keep energy levels up on the back end of the record. Crucially, Yachty is confident in staying true to his vocal style, and it makes for a fresh and intriguing new sound in a rock context.
Despite the relentlessness of the album, aided by seamless track-to-track transitions, it
remains fresh. Pace dips such as the dreamy ‘paint THE sky’ and sexually-charged ‘pRETTy’
are wholly welcome, and allow the climactic moments to remain impactful. These climaxes
are nothing short of scintillating, crackling with Tame Impala-esque energy in a mix of
wobbling synths, powerful guitars and punchy analogue drums. The album is not just
influenced by rock artists, but produced by them, as Yachty departs entirely from his pop-rap origins.
‘Let’s Start Here’ is helped by a huge host of collaborators, Mac Demarco, Alex G
and Jacob Portrait to name just a few. Guest vocalists provide huge flavour too: Daniel
Caesar’s strained melancholic feature freshens up the close of the album with “REACH THE
SUNSHINE.”. Diana Gordon is in empiric form throughout; Teezo Touchdown, Fousheé and
Justine Sky providing great contributions too. As a result, how much of the album’s positives are Yachty’s to claim is up for debate, but as a creative curator of a new genre, his willingness to let other elements shine is testament to his avoidance of being a “genre
tourist”.
Yachty’s swerve into the psychedelic seems logical in many ways. Born from an awareness
of the craziness of his influence that undoubtedly influenced the absurdity of ‘Poland’,
placing himself in the intangible of psych rock just expresses his implausibly elevated status.
Yachty finds himself in an even stranger place following ‘Let’s Start Here’ a pioneer and
archetype of the rapid mingling of rap and psych rock genres; a figure of even more deeply
divided opinions from across the music scene, but undoubtedly a brave creative force to be
reckoned with. This album deserves a listen purely for the clash of genres it represents, the
intrigue it creates, and the bravery in its conviction; but it’s a euphoric musical success in its own right. In a time where hedonist megastars have shifted from rock stars to rappers,
Yachty may just have laid the foundation for the opposite trajectory.
8/10
