ALBUM REVIEW: Lil Yachty - Let's Start Here.

    Let me get something out of the way here - prior to this album, I was pretty dismissive of Lil Yachty. To me, he was nothing more than a meme rapper, whose success hadn't fail to baffle me on some level, and with last year closing out with "I took the wock to Poland," it only cemented that thought in my mind. So when I heard that not only was Lil Yachty's next album a psychedelic rock album, but that it was good, I was skeptical - I went in expecting some sort of infamous Speeding Bullet 2 Heaven disaster. I was pretty quick in realizing that it was not what I was getting, and that was certainly for the better. Generally speaking, Let's Start Here. is a fascinating release, with some truly excellent instrumental moments and peculiar vocals painting over the soundscapes. It's pretty damn good, too, and while I'm not significantly familiar with Yachty's back-catalog, I'd wager this new release is his most unique and best yet.

    It's immediately obvious upon listening to this album that Lil Yachty put a great amount of care and interest in making this sound like a bona fide psychedelic rock experience - the production throughout, handled mostly by Yachty himself, is lush and spacious, but also with a decisively muddy feel to a lot of the tracks that certainly contributes to the overall vibe and aesthetic of the project. For the most part, Yachty's dive into psychedelia is not surface-level, and I'm sure help from the likes of Jacob Portrait, Jam City, Magdalena Bay, and Justin Raisen certainly helped along the way. It's not all psyche rock either, as moments like "drive ME crazy!" take a sudden turn towards disco influence - it's not bad, either. For all of Yachty's experimentation, it's all fluid, concise, dreamy, and with some truly excellent hooks - "running out of time" is one of my personal favorite songs of the year so far with its excellent instrumentation, great hook, and solid vocal performance form Yachty and Justine Skye. A Lil Yachty song as my favorite thing of the year - I certainly wouldn't have thought it possible.

    There's plenty more where that come from, too - Yachty's foray into psychedelic rock has some runoff to it. The monumental opening track "the BLACK seminole." leans heavily into progressive rock if you can believe it or not, or the blissful "WE SAW THE SUN!" venturing into expansive space rock. With "REACH THE SUNSHINE." book-ending the album with its progressive rock sound, it doesn't take too much imagination to see Let's Start Here. as a psychedelic/prog album, although that is certainly up for some debate. It helps that the flow of the album is truly excellent - every moment runs neatly from one to the other, such as the motivational ":(failure(:" being immediately followed by the powerful and soaring energy of "THE zone~." In an age where it seems album sequencing is becoming a bit of a lost art, Yachty has made a damn good album with a proper ebb and flow of the ideas and material from one moment to the next. Really only a few moments miss the mark - ":(failure(:" doesn't really work outside the album, and "paint THE sky" and "sAy sOMETHINg" lack a proper hook to make up for the already lacking instrumentation in comparison to the rest of the album.

    Well, I'm certainly impressed. Not only has Lil Yachty made a surprising genre shift with Let's Start Here., but he's done it so creatively and fully in the process. Filled with trippy instrumentation, lush soundscapes, space-y moments, and a good amount of memorable song hooks, Let's Start Here. has thoroughly blown away every preconception I've had of Yachty or his work - it's just as surprising to me that Lil Yachty of all people has made an album that I would be comfortable calling one of the best releases of the year so far. A truly out of nowhere album that left me thoroughly captivated at points, and perhaps it may even be a signal of future purveying music trends. Yachty has taken the wock to the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and the results are worth hearing.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to Let's Start Here.