lil boat vs lil yachty

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How to Tell the Difference Between Lil Yachty and Lil Boat

Atlanta-based mumble rapper Lil Yachty released his debut studio album,  “Teenage Emotions,” on May 26 and reintroduced us to his alter egos: Darnell Boat and Lil Boat.

Much like in Lil Yachty’s 2016 mixtape release, “Lil Boat,”  the red-mustachioed and wigged Darnell Boat introduces listeners to his nephews, Lil Yachty and Lil Boat, in the intro of the album. “Yachty and Boat have been working so hard over this past year, and we just want to welcome y’all to ‘Teenage Emotions,’” says Darnell Boat in the first song of the album, “Like A Star.” “They both have lots to say…this time I think Yachty wants to go first.” After, Uncle Darnell effectively leads fans into a concept album that displays the two distinct rap personas of Lil Yachty.

It can be difficult to differentiate between both Lil Boat and Lil Yachty as a first time listener. There are, however, a number of distinguishing traits displayed in both of their approaches to music and lyrics that can help successfully identify who’s who.

Music Style

In an interview with Genius , Lil Yachty said that the defining characteristic of Lil Boat is aggressiveness.” That word sums it all up, as Boat is the more masculine, foul-mouthed, confident rapper of the two. Boat seems to come out and say the things that Yachty feels he couldn’t get away with, while laying down dark and dirty verses to Atlanta-style trap beats in tracks like “DN Freestyle” and “Dirty Mouth.” “It’s all in production,” says Yachty in the interview. “If the beat is like, heavy hitting, that’s Boat.”

Yachty prefers the lighter tones of music, the kind of sound that he’s dubbed as “boat music” in the past. Tracks on the album such as “Better,” which features steel drums reminiscent of Jamaican island music, as well as the heavy-synth eighties-style track, “Bring It Back,” with a sprinkle of a saxophone solo, are all Yachty creations. He tends to lean toward high-pitched, heavily auto-tuned singing, as opposed to forced attempts at mumble rapping like Boat. Positivity and good vibes are common themes in Yachty’s lyrics.

In his bars, Lil Boat is, without a doubt, the typical misogynistic rap star that displays women as sexual objects. Constantly referring to women as “b*tches,” Boat likes to brag about having multiple women that only serve the sexual needs of him and his friends. Boat is only interested in what women can give him, and in songs like “Peek A Boo,” he shows just how little he cares about having meaningful relationships with them with lines like, “F*ck her then f*ck on her sister, I’m ruthless.”

“It’s not Yachty man,” says Yachty in response to that lyric in a separate interview with Genius . “In interviews, that’s Yachty. But that on that paper, that’s Lil Boat. He’s a ruthless dude. He don’t care. Yachty is a nice dude. That’s not him. At all. That n***a Boat, he crazy, know what I’m saying? You never know what he might do.”

Romantic, monogamous, vulnerable and semi-respectful, Yachty has a different approach to love. In tracks like “Forever Young” and “Lady In Yellow,” he sings about wanting to be together forever with his only girl. Showing more awareness of a woman’s agency over her body, Yachty is more concerned with pleasing women and doing what they want.

Though put rather ineloquently, lines like “Baby can I f*ck with you?” and “Let me love on you” are examples of Yachty showing a slight concern for consent. This is in sharp contrast with Boat’s lyrics calling for multiple women to perform oral sex on him, or “Blow like a cello,” which is probably the greatest lyrical oversight in history.

In short, if someone on Tinder were to find Twizzler-hair and multicolored mouth grills attractive, then they should swipe left on Boat and swipe right on Yachty.

It’s not hard to figure out how Boat feels about fame, as Boat is an acronym for “Best of All Time,” according to a tweet from Lil Yachty’s official account. Self-assured and confident, he’s been presenting himself as the self-proclaimed “King of the Teens” since his beginnings. Riding the fame and all that comes with it, Boat likes to rap about the money, cars and diamonds that he didn’t have just a few short years ago.

In contrast, Yachty is unsure of his standing as a public figure. In “Say My Name,” Yachty redundantly sings, “I want you to say my name, say my name, say my, say my name in the crowd,” hinting at his concern for how he is received by his audience, and the popularity he amasses from his fans. Yachty claims to be a normal teenager, (as normal as a six-figure teen can be), and with the emotional years of adolescence comes an inevitable uncertainty of his place in the world.

On Family and Peers

“I didn’t ask for respect, all I care about is that check,” raps Boat on “Dirty Mouth.” Boat doesn’t care about what people think, and he definitely doesn’t care about what the haters are saying about him. He’s just there to do him, and also attempt to emasculate his rivals by acting hard and likening them to female genitalia, like in “FYI (Know Now).”

Yachty is constantly singing about the “ice” on his mother’s wrist, or alluding to the hundred pairs of shoes his sister has in her closet in interviews. He cares about his family and he attributes a lot of his success to his mom. In the intro he sings, “Look mama you made a star,” and the outro, “Momma” is completely dedicated to her, bringing the gratitude full circle.

In his music, Yachty emulates the man that his mom raised him to be, while Boat is the reflection of Yachty as he sees himself fitting into the hip-hop world.

How It Comes Together

Listening to Lil Yachty’s discography is a human behavioral experiment on the effect that constant exposure to something initially unpleasant can have on the subject’s opinion. Someone once likened it to eating vegetables; they taste terrible at first, but become pretty good after recurring exposure. Nothing else captures the initial resistance to Yachty and Boat’s dichotomy and the new sound they create together; in addition to, the acceptance and appreciation by the listener that soon follows.

In its first week, only forty-six thousand copies of “Teenage Emotions” were sold. Lil Yachty’s heavy streaming presence on sites like Soundcloud , where he originally gained his cult following, and apps like Spotify , may have something to do with low sales, but he’s going on tour and working on new music regardless of its success.

Either way, Lil Yachty and his alter egos have undoubtedly made a name for themselves in the genre, whether they’re loved or hated; there are plenty who do both.

Brittany Sodic, University of North Texas

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Brittany sodic, university of north texas journalism - digital & print.

[…] To view the featured image click here To view the above image click here […]

[…] sides of the same coins, alternative personas of the same man. Yachty himself has stated that his alter-ego Boat is “crazy”, a fact we can see in how wildly different and more aggressive the lyricism is […]

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With his debut mixtape, ‘Lil Boat,’ Lil Yachty fully shed the mumble rap label, transitioning from SoundCloud sensation to major label star.

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Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat , is one of the pre-eminent releases of the SoundCloud era. Released on March 9, 2016, it made Lil Yachty a star, spawned multiple hits, and further legitimized the DIY-style rap that emerged at the beginning of the decade.

The Atlanta MC entered the crowded rapper-singer fray with a work that’s split into two distinct sides, seeing him grapple with dueling elements of his personality and career. The first half of Lil Boat sees Yachty flex his flow, while the second half finds him crooning in AutoTune. That may be a slightly reductive way to look at the collection (in reality, he does both throughout), but there’s certainly a kind of TI vs TIP split-personality concept to the whole affair. Yachty uses his style to demarcate who is who, and, despite his glee throughout, Lil Boat is a surprisingly subtle work for the chaotic time it represents.

Listen to the best of Lil Yachty on Apple Music and Spotify.

‘Bigger and Deffer’: LL COOL J’s Triumphant Second Album

‘the definition’: ll cool j’s 2004 stunner, justin bieber, smino, and bee gees: currently trending songs, a standout work.

Yachty’s debut mixtape is a standout work for the usual reasons – great name, great cover, and two singles that will forever be associated with Yachty and the era from which he emerged: “One Night” and “Minnesota.”

As a title, Lil Boat was perfect. Serving two purposes at once, it created a fitting alt.moniker for the MC while helping a lot of people to pronounce his name (did you actually say it like “yacht”?). Nautical luxury isn’t the most commonly-evoked lifestyle in hip-hop (outside of Puffy), so that theme alone was enough to put Yachty in his own lane. And then there’s the artwork: not a yacht, barely even a boat; it’s basically a little wooden dinghy. Beautifully composed, the image looks like a classical painting, bordered in a red that matches Yachty’s hair. It’s almost Americana in tone – though Yachty’s music is anything but.

All hail “King Of The Youth”

Yachty may be poised and confident on that cover, but he’s also lost in the gloom at sea – an apt metaphor for the musical style he was leading. While not traditional in any sense, Yachty is honest with his emotions in a way that younger generations have always been, and Lil Boat found him attempting to navigate his way through the emotionally turbulent years of his late youth. Shortly after his breakout, Yachty would declare himself “King Of Teens” or, alternatively, “King Of The Youth.” This might have sounded ridiculous to adults who weren’t even sure how to pronounce his name, but those adults were no longer in charge. Lil Yachty was not part of some hip-hop assembly line; like other DIY pioneers before him, Yachty and his crew were making these songs at home, often in a matter of minutes.

Outside of the Vikings football team and Ice Cube ’s “What Can I Do?,” Minnesota doesn’t get name-checked very often in hip-hop. Simply naming a track after a state was seemingly in line with the aforementioned “half-Americana, half trolling” theme of Lil Boat – but, of course, the song isn’t actually about Minnesota. It’s more of a celebration of Lil Yachty’s arrival on the scene. The draw and significance of having both Quavo and Young Thug on a song in 2016 is hard to overstate, and their guest appearances turned “Minnesota” into a certified-gold hit. At the time, Quavo was just months away from releasing “Bad And Boujee,” while Thug was fresh off Barter 6 and in the middle of his Slime Season run. Together, he and Yachty appeared at Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 fashion show, on February 11, where The Life Of Pablo received its public unveiling. Just two days after releasing his debut mixtape, Yachty was at the epicenter of one of hip-hop’s biggest cultural shifts.

Unprecedented moves

Lil Boat was big enough that Burberry Perry – Yachty’s right-hand man at the time and the producer behind most of the mixtape – came under pressure from the fashion label Burberry and was forced to change his name. That wasn’t exactly an unprecedented move, but the speed with which it happened certainly was. It’s not often that an internationally renowned fashion house serves a cease-and-desist to a kid who got famous on the internet and was barely old enough to vote.

Perry’s production on Lil Boat ’s lead single, “One Night’ (Yachty’s best-known song to date), guided the way for the rest of the collection. Even the beats he didn’t produce fall right in line, all cascading bells, and whistles alongside keys that let you hear Yachty’s grin throughout.

Lil Yachty’s emergence closely resembles that of the Odd Future collective, who, years earlier, more or less launched DIY rap on the internet (depending on how you view Lil B’s rise to fame). Seemingly overnight, Yachty was partnering with Urban Outfitters and the aptly titled Nautica clothing brand. His rapid ascent would have sounded like fan fiction just a few years earlier but, after his breakout, many artists began following his path to fame on a regular basis.

Having hit it big in such a short space of time, Yachty wasn’t about to slow down. He went on to guest (and absolutely steal the show) on “Broccoli,” a DRAM song with a Yachty-perfect beat. As one of the stars in Quality Control ’s shining roster, Yachty was operating alongside some of the biggest acts in hip-hop. With Lil Boat, he fully shed the “mumble rap” label, completing the transition from SoundCloud sensation to major label star.

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The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time

From biggie to beyoncé to bad bunny, from nirvana to nas to neil young, this is the album art that changed the way we see music.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY

The album is the best invention of the past century, hands down — but the music isn’t the whole story. The album cover has been a cultural obsession as long as albums have. Ever since 12-inch vinyl records took off in the 1950s, packaged in cardboard sleeves, musicians have been fascinated by the art that goes on those covers, and so have fans. When the Beatles revolutionized the game with the cover of Sgt. Pepper , in 1967, it became a way to make a visual statement about where the music comes from and why it matters. But the art of the album cover just keeps evolving.

So this is our massive celebration of that art: the 100 best album covers ever, from Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, from SZA to Sabbath to the Sex Pistols. We’ve got rap, country, jazz, prog, metal, reggae, flamenco, funk, goth, hippie psychedelia, hardcore punk. But all these albums have a unique look to go with the sound. The most unforgettable covers become part of the music — how many Pink Floyd fans have gotten their minds blown staring at the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon , after using it to roll up their smoking materials?

What makes an album cover a classic? Sometimes it’s a portrait of the artist — think of the Beatles crossing the street, or Carole King in Laurel Canyon with her cat. Others go for iconic, semi-abstract images, like Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, or My Bloody Valentine. Some artists make a statement about where they’re from, whether it’s R.E.M. repping the South with kudzu or Ol’ Dirty Bastard flashing his food-stamps card to salute the Brooklyn Zoo.

Many of these covers come from legendary photographers, designers, and artists, like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Storm Thorgerson, Raymond Pettibon, and Peter Saville. Some have cosmic symbolism for fans to decode; others go for star power. But they’re all classic images that have become a crucial part of music history. And they all show why there’s no end to the world’s long-running love affair with albums.

CONTRIBUTORS: David Browne , Jon Dolan , Suzy Exposito , Andy Greene , Kory Grow , Maya Georgi , Maura Johnston , Gabrielle Macafee , Angie Martoccio , Mosi Reeves , Rob Sheffield , Hank Shteamer , Simon Vozick-Levinson , Alison Weinflash , Christopher Weingarten

From Rolling Stone US

Spinal Tap, ‘Smell the Glove’

There was no easy way to discuss “the issue with the cover” of (totally fictitious heavy-metal band) Spinal Tap’s (nonexistent) 1982 album, Smell the Glove, as recounted in a scene from the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap: “You put a greased, naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it,” artist-relations rep Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) says. “You don’t find that offensive?” Well, somebody did, so Spinal Tap ended up with an all-black cover. The band members equivocated it by saying it looked like black leather, a black mirror, death, and mourning. Then Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) got it: “There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like, ‘How much more black could this be?’ And the answer is, ‘None. None more black.’” The joke manifested itself in real life with Spinal Tap’s soundtrack album, a punk band called None More Black, and “Black Albums” from Metallica, Jay-Z, Prince, the Damned, and many others. Plus, Spinal Tap eventually released their original album cover, albeit toned down a little, years later on the sleeve of their single “Bitch School.” —K.G.

Grateful Dead, ‘Europe 72’

Together or separately, the San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse made sure that album art for the Grateful Dead was as trippy (1971’s Grateful Dead) or earthy (Workingman’s Dead) as the music inside. Their visuals for the band’s live triple album are among the simplest in Dead album history. The big, clumsy foot about to stomp on Europe is a witty metaphor for the Dead’s wild-eyed series of shows on that continent, and the “fool” smashing an ice-cream cone into his forehead on the back cover is just goofy Dead fun. (It may also be connected to a tale in drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s memoir about the band dumping some ice cream onto an annoying fan.) Even in the land of the Dead, where visual and musical indulgence could rule, Kelley and Mouse realized that sometimes, less is more. —D.B.

Lil Yachty, ‘Lil Boat’

The cover of Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat, finds the rapper clad in overalls, standing in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The collage is framed by a red border printed with the numbers 33.7750° N 84.3900° W — coordinates for the Five Points neighborhood in downtown Atlanta — marking the then-18-year-old rap vocalist as the latest manifestation of the city’s fast-moving and highly influential scene. Mihailo Andic, who designed Lil Boat using a photograph provided by Yachty’s management, drew inspiration from Tumblr. “I thought it’d be a great idea to pitch a cover to his management team: Yachty, on a boat, in the middle of nowhere,” he told Green Label in 2016. “My whole style uses retouching and superimposing photos to make them look as one.” —M.R.

Public Image Ltd, ‘Metal Box’

“We were turned on by the idea that it would be difficult to open the can and get the records out,” Public Image Ltd guitarist Keith Levene told author Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again. The post-punk pioneers were already blowing apart rock music with their long, repetitive, often improvisatory songs, and Metal Box rethought the album format itself — three 45 rpm LPs to be treated like 12-inch disco singles, all annoyingly crammed into an unwieldy canister. “With Metal Box, the cover came first, both mentally and physically,” frontman John Lydon told Classic Rock. “We spent most of the advance on it, so making Metal Box presented us with a real challenge because we didn’t have any money left for recording sessions.” —C.W.

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Punisher’

Phoebe Bridgers’ excellent pandemic-era album has a cover that represents everything we were feeling at the time: fear, loneliness, heartbreak, and the secret wish for extraterrestrials to scoop you up into the sky and get you the hell out of here. Bridgers and photographer Olof Grind took a 24-hour road trip through the California desert, scouting for a location. “I always love a good adventure while shooting, and driving out in a pitch-black desert at 3 a.m. on dirt roads definitely added to my excitement,” Grind said. Bridgers made the skeleton suit her signature look, wearing it on the entire Punisher album cycle and tour. And it’s still impossible not to think of Grind’s image when you listen to songs like the gorgeously devastating “Moon Song” and the strangely romantic “Garden Song.” —A.M.

Offset, ‘Set It Off’

Designed and art-directed by Amber Park, the cover image for Offset’s Set It Off shows the Atlanta rapper tumbling through the sky as the world explodes around him. The image represents modern rap’s shift toward Wagnerian-size drama, with Offset as another kind of heroic survivor, outlasting and overcoming his many controversies. He wears sequined socks and gold gloves, which nod toward his fascination with Thriller-era Michael Jackson. And the image is constructed upside down, making it appear like he’s falling into the sky, not out of it. “I wanted it to be an art piece,” he told Our Generation Music. “It’s like I’m falling down but I’m going up.” —M.R.

Slayer, ‘Reign in Blood’

Just how do you illustrate lyrics like “Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding its horror, creating my structure/Now, I shall reign in blood”? Slayer producer and label head Rick Rubin turned to political cartoonist Larry Carroll, who tapped into his inner Hieronymus Bosch to create a mixed-media representation of hell with a goatlike deity, decapitated heads, and murderous black angels. “If I remember correctly, [Slayer] didn’t like the cover I did for Reign in Blood at first,” Carroll told Revolver in 2010. “But then someone in the band showed it to their mother, and their mother thought it was disgusting, so they knew they were onto something.” Carroll subsequently created similar hellscapes for Slayer’s South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, and Christ Illusion albums, producing some of the scariest covers in music. —K.G.

Slint, ‘Spiderland’

The members of Slint were just teenagers when they came together in drummer Britt Walford’s Louisville,Kentucky, basement to make the eerily expansive indie rock they’d capture on their epochal 1991 sophomore album, Spiderland. That mix of youthful exuberance and youthful aloneness comes through in the album’s black-and-white cover, which shows them smilingly treading water in a local quarry. The photo was taken by their friend Will Oldham, who’d soon be making his own name with Palace Brothers and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. “We’re just all being youthful and happy,” guitarist Dave Pajo told Rolling Stone’s Hank Shteamer years later, describing the band’s attitude at the time. “When you’re younger, everything is so life-and-death and huge.” —J.D.

Lauryn Hill, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’

The wood carving at the center of Lauryn Hill’s only official studio album to date is both inspired by artwork for the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’ and by the album title itself. “She already had some great ideas that were inspired by the album title,” Columbia art director Erwin Gorostiza told Okayplayer in 2021. The two developed a plan to arrange a photo shoot at Hill’s alma mater, Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. After photographer Eric Johnson snapped images of her, they decided to select one of them as source material for an illustration that resembles something made by a wayward, “miseducated” student on a school desk. The result vividly reflects Hill’s rustic melding of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae sounds, and her journey to find clarity in a world riven by relationships and desire. —M.R.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, ‘Cheap Thrills’

Counterculture cartoonist Robert “R.” Crumb drew the cover for the 1967 debut by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic comic strip that tells the album’s story in each of its songs. The artist laid down the cover after watching the band from backstage at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom: “He really wasn’t into our music, but it didn’t matter,” drummer Dave Getz recalled. It really didn’t: Crumb still captured the wild, woolly spirit of Janis Joplin and her bandmates, even if he’d intended for what became the front cover to serve as its back sleeve. —M.J.

Ani DiFranco, ‘Up Up Up Up Up Up’

Modern folk-music icon Ani DiFranco built her enduring success on a mix of anti-capitalist commitment, aesthetic ingenuity, DIY community, and her electric charisma. You can see all of those elements in the multidimensional cover image for her 1999 album. It’s a statement of playful substance over predictable image, but even with her face pointed to the ground she still completely commands your attention. The cover photo was taken by her friend and longtime manager Scot Fisher, who helped DiFranco found the Buffalo, New York-based label Righteous Babe. “We were a mom-and-pop operation,” she recalled in a 2016 interview. “Scot was the photographer and the dude who answered the phone, and I was the graphic designer who would paint the album covers.” —J.D. 

Silkk the Shocker, ‘Charge It 2 Da Game’

The garish, maximalist, larger-than-life album covers of Pen & Pixel defined the late-Nineties CD era, when Southern rap labels like No Limit, Cash Money, and Suave House began to topple the East Coast/West Coast monopoly. Brothers Aaron and Shawn Brauch covered hundreds of album covers with their Photoshop wonderlands of luxury cars, sparkling gems, and bottles of champagne. The cover of Silkk the Shocker’s second album — jeweled lettering, gleaming pinky ring, skewed perspective, gold “Ghetto Express” card — is a classic of the form. “The longer you hold that CD cover in your hand, the more possession-oriented you become,” Shawn told Red Bull. “People would comment later, ‘Yeah, man, the album wack, but the artwork was cool.’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s my job done, right?’” —C.W.

Neil Young, ‘On the Beach’

“Album covers are very important to me,” Neil Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace. “They put a face on the nature of the project.” This is especially true of 1974’s On the Beach, Young’s devastating rumination on Watergate, the recent breakup of his marriage, his recent albums’ commercial failure, and the overall dissolution of the Sixties dream. It’s all evident on the cover, where he’s seen standing on the Santa Monica shore, his back turned away from the camera. The tail light of a 1959 Cadillac emerges from the sand, surrounded by gaudy yellow patio furniture. The headline from a local L.A. paper reads “Sen. Buckley Calls for Nixon to Resign.” Young spontaneously purchased the items with art director Gary Burden while stoned on “dynamite” weed. —A.M.

Devo, ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!’

“What we focused on was inane, mundane, dumb, mass stuff,” said Devo’s Gerald Casale to NBC. “We liked to go to Kmart and Gold Circle because it had all this discount stuff. That’s when I found, in an aisle of discontinued sports goods, the Chi Chi Rodriguez golf-ball package.” For its debut, the band wanted to use the image of the flamboyant golfer they found on a $1.99 box of balls; however, Warner Bros. lawyers intervened. They quickly found a composite photo of four U.S. presidents that Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh called “perfectly hideous” and had it airbrushed onto Rodriguez’s face. —C.W.

Frank Ocean, ‘Blonde’

The now-iconic photograph of Frank Ocean in the shower as he cups his hand over his face, his hair dyed in lime green, was the result of a lengthy 2015 collaboration between him and German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The image plays to both men’s interest in otherness, not only as a sign of queer identity, but also as a method of presenting a distinctly iconoclastic yet public self. Ocean and Tillmans were brought together for a photo shoot by the fashion magazine Fantastic Man. Blonde introduced Tillmans, who had been documenting underground culture since the Eighties, to a new generation. It also introduced a defining image of the singer, one both invitingly mysterious and alluringly unknowable. —M.R.

Minor Threat, ‘Minor Threat’

Minor Threat epitomized American hardcore punk at its most fiercely independent. You see that spirit in the classic image of singer Ian MacKaye’s brother Alec sleeping on the steps of Dischord House, where so many of the D.C. punk kids lived and where the band ran their label. Alec’s shaved head, his scuffed work boots, his rumpled clothes, his folded arms, his punked-out exhaustion — it summed up the whole ethos of Minor Threat. The image has been a symbol of DIY realness ever since, inspiring many tributes, most famously the cover of Rancid’s 1995 …And Out Come the Wolves. No wonder corporate America wanted a piece — Nike tried to appropriate it for their bizarre 2005 “Major Threat” ad campaign, until public outrage shut it down. —R.S.

Jay-Z, ‘The Blueprint’

For The Blueprint, Jay-Z turned to Jonathan Mannion, a photographer who had shot all of Jay’s covers since his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. Mannion took inspiration from Jocelyn Bain Hogg, a British photographer who snapped South London gangster Dave Courtney giving a lecture at Oxford Union, for his book The Firm. Mannion’s shot replicates the aerial framing, finding Jay-Z looking away from the camera, holding court over a group of minions only identified by their shoes. Designer Jason Noto of Def Jam’s in-house creative department the Drawing Board cast the entire image in faded blues and grays. In 2021, Jay sued Mannion over prints the photographer sold from their many sessions. The two settled out of court in 2023. —M.R.

Taylor Swift, ‘Folklore’

Taylor Swift stepped back from her songs on her eighth album: “I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t,” she posted upon Folklore’s release in 2020. Its striking monochromatic cover — a departure from the candy-coated Lover front, and the first collaboration between Swift and photographer Beth Garrabrant — is similarly situated in the wide world, with the coat-clad singer seeming tiny amid mist-cloaked trees and mossy terrain, gazing upward with a pondering expression. —M.J.   

Shakira, ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’

After wrapping up her 1997 Pies Descalzos Tour, Shakira landed in Bogotá, Columbia, to discover her briefcase had been stolen … and in it, the songs she’d written for her next album. She’d decidedly named her 1998 record “Dónde Están los Ladrones?” or “Where Are the Thieves?” — and conceptualized the theft as an allegory for thefts of all kinds, including that of Columbia by corrupt politicians, drug lords, and paramilitaries, during what’s since been described as the “Dirty Wars.” Shot against a statement hot pink, Shakira posed for her album cover donning edgy purple braids, with extended dirt-covered palms. “The dirty hands represent the shared guilt,” she said of her cover. “No one is completely clean.… In the end, we are all accomplices.” —S.E.

King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’

King Crimson knew they were onto something big when they pieced together “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the snarling, sweeping portrait of an unraveling collective consciousness that would open their 1969 debut LP. And when artist Barry Godber dropped by London’s Wessex Studios to show them the cover painting that lyricist Peter Sinfield had commissioned, they knew they’d found the perfect visual counterpart. “This fucking face screamed up from the floor, and what it said to us was ‘schizoid man’ — the very track we’d been working on,” bassist-vocalist Greg Lake later recalled. Pairing the image with lyrics like “Blood rack, barbed wire/Politicians’ funeral pyre/Innocents raped with napalm fire,” it’s hardly a leap to imagine the cover figure looking on in horror at the atrocities the song describes. —H.S.

Weyes Blood, ‘Titanic Rising’

On the cover of Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering — the California singer-songwriter who records as Weyes Blood — appears inside an eerie deep-sea installation, hovering between a brass bed and a white wicker desk, with posters adorning the walls. The image perfectly captures the themes of Titanic Rising: millennial doom, the climate crisis, the isolation of technology, and water itself. “This bullshit initiation into culture — for most young people in the Westernized world, it’s their bedroom,” she told Rolling Stone. “They hang up posters of their favorite celebrities and their favorite movies, and they formulate these ideas about life and what life should be like, and what they want. And it’s all an incubation of capitalist bullshit. But it’s still very sacred.” —A.M.

Lil Wayne, ‘Tha Carter III’

“I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know Tha Carter III, Tha Carter II, Tha Carter One from Tha Carter IV. And that’s just my God’s honest truth,” Lil Wayne told RS last year. “I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing shit.” Fair enough. But the cover of Tha Carter III, Wayne’s best album, is unforgettable. Rappers have made iconic album artwork using baby photos before — think Ready to Die, Illmatic — but Wayne took it a step further, giving Baby Weezy a diamond pinky ring and some facial ink, for an image that summed up the unstoppable, no-fucks-given charm that made him a superstar. “We wanted to bring something new to it,” art director Scott Sandler said. “What if we put the tats on the baby?” —A.M.

New York Dolls, ‘New York Dolls’

Rolling Stone’s review of the New York Dolls’ 1973 self-titled debut refers to the punk pioneers as “mutant children of the hydrogen age.” This comes across perfectly on the album cover, which shows the androgynous quartet slumped together on a couch, slathered in makeup and hairspray. It was created by Vogue photographer Toshi Matsuo after the Dolls nixed a plan by their label to shoot them near vintage dolls in an antique shop, sans makeup. “That couch we were sitting on, we found that on the street and brought it up,” said guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. “We put the white fabric on it — I remember tacking it on.” The look was so ahead of its time that imitators wouldn’t come along until hair metal arrived a decade later. —A.G.

The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’

Throughout the Smiths’ feverishly productive run in the mid-Eighties, lead singer Morrissey selected photo stills depicting midcentury movies and pop-culture moments for their singles and albums. His pick for the Smith’s third album, The Queen Is Dead, may be their most iconic: an image of French superstar Alain Delon in the film L’Insoumis, lying in distress. The concept of this beautifully handsome yet controversially macho star — the Brad Pitt of the Sixties — as a “queen” nods toward Morrissey’s subversive sense of humor. The layout, handled by Rough Trade’s Caryn Gough, casts the photo in shades of dark green, making Delon appear as a doomed royal in their death throes. —M.R.

Tyler, the Creator, ‘Igor’

The cover for Tyler, the Creator’s fifth solo album is striking in its minimalism: a pained close-up of the California-born polymath combined with a typewriter-font assertion that he was responsible for all the album’s sonics, and a salmon backdrop that feels aggressive despite its pastel hue. Igor further established Tyler as an artist willing to push himself into new realms, and the cover announces that to anyone flipping through a collection. “We work well together because I believe in what he wants to create,” photographer Luis “Pancho” Perez, who worked with Tyler to create the cover, told Complex in 2019. “Nothing has really changed his confidence in himself.” —M.J.

Radiohead, ‘Kid A’

At the close of the 20th century, Radiohead were an acclaimed British rock band desperate to be anything else. That jittery unease fueled the artwork that Thom Yorke created with his old friend Stanley Donwood, riffing on ancient mythology and paranoid dreams in late-night sessions. “There was an air of chaos suddenly, and that was really fun,” Yorke told Rolling Stone years later. The cover they chose for Kid A has all the unsettling intensity of the music Yorke was making with his bandmates: an icy, forbidding mountain range, like something out of a digital nightmare. “It was almost a dark fairyland,” Donwood said. “A very lonely, cold, and quiet place, apart from the punctuations of terrible war.” —S.V.L.

Blur, ‘Parklife’

Designers Rob O’Connor and Chris Thompson took to London’s streets for inspiration as they were brainstorming a cover for what would go on to be Blur’s era-defining 1994 album. While peering in the window of a betting lounge for sports-related ideas, they found a concept that had bite: “We centered in on the greyhounds,” Blur guitarist Graham Coxon told Brit-pop chronicler Dylan Jones in 2022’s Faster Than a Cannonball, “because they had an aggressiveness we liked. We chose the ones with the most teeth. They look deranged, just longing to kill, and there’s a bizarre look in their faces. You just don’t get that look with a footballer — well, maybe a little bit.” The image of racing dogs underscored the hunger of the best Brit-pop, and set Blur apart from their more glam-minded peers. —M.J.

Willie Nelson, ‘Red Headed Stranger’

On his legendary 1975 opus, Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson tells the tale of a preacher on the run after killing his own child and unfaithful wife. Nelson stepped into the role of an outlaw on the cover (designed by Monica White), which showed his unruly image framed in the style of a ‘Wanted’ poster. Red Headed Stranger was country music’s first concept album, a watershed for the outlaw-country movement that included Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, and its cover went a long way toward creating the subgenre’s rough-hewn iconography.  —G.M.

Billie Eilish, ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’

Just like the music, the cover of Bille Eilish’s classic debut drops you right into her creepy-crawly teenage nightmares. Photographer Kenneth Cappello collaborated with Eilish on a 12-hour shoot, ending up with a deeply unsettling shot of Eilish sitting on bed, her eyes entirely white, pupils obscured. Eilish brought in sketches of her inspirations for the cover, which included the Babadook. (“I got so much inspiration from The Babadook,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019.) “She’s all in,” Cappello told MTV News. “Those wide eyes? Those aren’t in post, those are contacts. She goes all in on everything.”

FKA Twigs, ‘LP1’

The hauntingly plastic visage of British musician FKA Twigs dominates the cover of LP1, a bizarre representation of her disturbingly mutant electronic pop. It was constructed by Jesse Kanda, who met her via his longtime friend and collaborator Arca. “We did the front cover for her album in my room, with my shitty lights, and no people running around. I have the most control when I do everything myself,” he told Dazed in 2014. He sculpted a photograph of her using 3D technology, manipulating and warping the image, then painted over the results. Longtime XL Recordings art director Phil Lee and Twigs collaborated on the aquamarine blue design that spotlighted Kanda’s imagery. In 2015, the cover earned a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. —M.R.

Grace Jones, ‘Nightclubbing’

The famous Nightclubbing photo of Grace Jones dressed in an Armani suit, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was the culmination of a tempestuous personal and professional relationship between her and photographer Jean-Paul Goude. The image seemed as much a cheeky New Wave commentary on corporate Eighties style as an exercise in gender-bending fashion. But despite observers’ claims (and criticism) of how Goude crafted and manipulated her image, Jones has always asserted that she was in control of the process. “Jean-Paul would say, later…that he had created me,” she wrote in her 2015 autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs. “I knew that wasn’t the case, that I was creating myself before I met him.”–M.R.

R.E.M., ‘Murmur’

Lots of Southern bands had used pastoral imagery on their album covers to underscore their music’s down-home difference. R.E.M. flipped the script with the cover of their debut, Murmur. The front image shows a goth-y woods overrun by kudzu — a weed that grows so fast it covers and kills any plant in its way. The back image is of a disused train trestle near the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia. Taken together, it was a perfect reflection of the band’s mysterious, enveloping sound. The “Murmur Trestle” immediately became part of local lore, defended by R.E.M. fans when it was approved for demolition in 2019. “Why do they need to preserve it?” said photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps, who took both photos. “It was just done randomly. Somehow it ended up mattering to people.” —J.D.

Van Halen, ‘1984’

When Warner Bros. designer Margo Nahas heard Van Halen’s original concept for the cover of their sixth LP — four dancing women made out of chrome — she quickly passed. (Already a seasoned illustrator of chrome, she “couldn’t imagine doing all the reflections,” she later said.) But when her husband, fellow designer Jay Vigon, brought her portfolio to the band, they were instantly drawn to her now-iconic painting of an angelic baby grinning and holding a smoke, which she’d modeled off a friend’s son. “I took a picture of him, took him candy cigarettes, which he proceeded to eat, every single one, after a brief tantrum, of course,” Nahas recalled in 2020. The impish yet innocent image encapsulated the lovable mischief of the band’s “Hot for Teacher” era. —H.S.

Lorde, ‘Melodrama’

For her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Lorde crafted a delicate cover that evoked Melodrama’s emotional heft. Painted by the Brooklyn artist Sam McKinnis — whom Lorde connected with via a fangirling email — and inspired by an image that McKinnis had made riffing on the cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, the cover is based on a photograph McKinnis took of Lorde as she lay in bed. Drenched in the shadows of a moody, electric blue that could swatch a dance floor or the walls of a club bathroom, with warm cracks of daybreak creeping on Lorde’s cheek, the image depicts her in the morning after a night of dancing with “all the heartache and treason” she sang about on the album. —M.G.

Marvin Gaye, ‘Here, My Dear’

There are breakup albums, and then there’s Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye’s brutally honest unpacking of his in-progress divorce from his first wife, Anna Gordy. The serene front cover shows Gaye depicted as a Roman statue, standing in front of a lavish temple — its cornerstone bearing the inscription “Love and Marriage” — next to a sculpture of embracing lovers. But by the time you see the back-cover image, the sculpture and the temple have caught fire and are actively crumbling, and the inscription on the building now reads “Pain and Divorce.” If all that weren’t bleak enough, on the inner sleeve, we see a couple’s hands engaged in a Monopoly-like board game, with all their earthly possessions at stake between them, and the scales of justice looming ominously in the background. —H.S.

DJ Shadow, ‘Endtroducing’

DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut LP was constructed almost entirely out of samples, a love letter to funky, crackly old vinyl that was released into a world where most record stores only sold CDs. The cover image shows two of Shadow’s buddies from the Bay Area hip-hop label SoulSides, producer Chief Xcel and rapper Lyrics Born, going through the stacks at Records, a local institution (now closed) that billed itself as “a speciality shop dealing in out-of-print phonograph records.” As Shadow said of the store in the documentary Scratch, “Just being in here is a humbling experience because you’re looking through all these records, and it’s sort of like a big pile of broken dreams, in a way.” —J.D.

Sonny Rollins, ‘Way Out West’

“I was really living out my Lone Ranger thing,” Sonny Rollins said in 2009, reflecting on his Western-themed classic Way Out West. He wanted a cover that evoked the Westerns he grew up on, so photographer William Claxton suggested they pick up a ten-gallon hat, a holster, and a steer’s skull and head to the Mojave Desert, where he shot Rollins holding his saxophone and staring down the camera like a hardened cowboy. Some were critical of what they saw as the photo’s hokey premise and incorrectly assumed that Rollins was pressured into it. “Many people thought wrongly over the years that I was asked to pose that way or that the material was forced on me, because California was thought to be a movie place and a commercial place,” he said. “Not true. I was given complete control.” —H.S.

Janet Jackson, ‘The Velvet Rope’

With its themes of self-care, depression, and the then-taboo exploration of Black female queerness, The Velvet Rope may be Janet Jackson’s most intimate full-length work. Ironically, its cover depicts her clothed, not topless as on the Patrick Demarchelier-photographed shot on her previous album, 1993’s Janet. Photographer Ellen von Unwerth captured Jackson dressed in a black turtleneck with her head pointed downward. Meanwhile, the deep-red background tipped her audience to the burning emotions inside Jackson, as if she’s struggling to get it all out. (The interior photographs, shot by von Unwerth and Mario Testino, are more risqué.) “You know people they still ask me about it,” said von Unwerth of the enigmatic cover. “It became more iconic in a way.” —M.R.

My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’

Swoosh-y abstraction was a go-to look for turn-of-the-Nineties shoegaze bands like Ride, Slowdive, and Swervedriver. But those bands usually worked in moody blues and grays. My Bloody Valentine’s choice of hot pink (a color you were more likely to see on a Poison record) for the cover of their 1990 masterpiece Loveless grabbed your eye with a look as undeniably loud as the band’s stomach-rattling guitar swells. MBV mastermind Kevin Shields and visual artist Angus Cameron collaborated on the image, taking a screengrab of Shields’ hands on his guitar from the band’s Cameron-directed “Too Shallow” video and turning it into a blur of radiant abstraction. —J.D.

Beastie Boys, ‘Licensed to Ill’

The cover of the Beastie Boys’ debut is as brash and playfully referential as the Beasties’ sound. Producer Rick Rubin got the idea for the cover — a Boeing 727 with a Beastie Boys logo and a tail number that, viewed in the mirror, says “eat me” — while reading through the Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods and spying a photo of the band’s private jet. “I wanted to embrace and somehow distinguish,” he said in the book 100 Best Album Covers, “in a sarcastic way, the larger than life rock & roll lifestyle.” Artists Stephen Byram and World B. Omes crafted the gatefold cover with a surprise in mind — at first it looks almost majestic, but when seen in full, the plane is revealed to have crashed, its front end crumpled. The resulting image provides another layer of irony: The plane, many have noted, looks like a joint smashed in an ashtray.

Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’

Joni Mitchell wrote Hejira while traveling cross-country, so she could have slapped a photo of an open road on the cover and called it a day. Instead, it was only the beginning. The sleek road sits inside a black-and-white Norman Seeff portrait of Mitchell, “haunted, like a Bergman figure,” wearing a beret and holding a cigarette. Around 14 photos were used for the cover and sleeves — including figure skater Toller Cranston out on the ice, to complete the wintry vibe — and an airbrush was used to make the images on the cover look like one cohesive illustration. The effort paid off, creating a beautifully intricate album cover to represent delicate tracks like “Amelia” and “Song for Sharon.” Looking back, Mitchell said it’s her favorite cover of hers: “A lot of work went into that.” —A.M.

Sonic Youth, ‘Goo’

Sonic Youth’s long run as the official band of America’s avant-garde art scene means that their catalog is full of iconic images, like Daydream Nation’s Gerhard Richter candle painting and Dirty’s Mike Kelley rag doll. But none are as enduring as the black-and-white sketch that SoCal punk legend Raymond Pettibon contributed to Goo. The pair of impossibly cool young sociopaths and their neo-noir tale of sex and death have been endlessly memed since then, but back in 1990, they made execs at the band’s new major-label home nervous — which was kind of the point. “That was so important at the time,” Lee Ranaldo later told biographer David Browne. “In a way, we were still in that world … that our ‘scene’ was making.” —S.V.L.

Rosalía, ‘El Mal Querer’

Rosalía tapped a longtime internet friend, the Spanish Croatian artist Filip Ćustić, to conceive what he’s described as a “visual universe” for her 2018 flamenco-pop masterwork, El Mal Querer. The two chatted over Whatsapp to devise an image for each track that would “update Spanish imagery to the 21st century.” In consistency with the record’s theme, Ćustić depicts Rosalía as an ethereal queen of the seraphs, a symbol of the divine feminine, liberated from the tyranny of a controlling man. “She emerges naked from the heavens, as if she were a goddess more than a virgin, saying, ‘This is me, and this has been my learning process,’” explained Ćustić in Spanish newspaper El Pais. —S.E.

Lana Del Rey, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’

On the cover of her sixth album, Lana Del Rey seems to be pulling us into her world of deconstructed American myths, as she clings to the Kennedy-esque figure of Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke Nicholson. From its oil-painted blue sky to Del Rey’s bright-green nylon jacket, the image’s retro-modern feel perfectly reflects the way the music inside offers her own 2010s vision of fading Laurel Canyon glory. The cover photo was taken by Del Rey’s sister, Caroline “Chuck” Grant, who has collaborated with the singer on a number of music videos and photo shoots (including a 2023 cover of Rolling Stone UK). “She captures what I consider to be the visual equivalent of what I do sonically,” Del Rey said in a 2014 interview. —G.M.

T. Rex, ‘Electric Warrior’

Few rock sleeves feel as purposefully barren as the Electric Warrior cover, which finds glam god Marc Bolan suspended, along with his guitar and amp, in what might as well be an interstellar void. Using a live-image shot by Kieron Murphy, Hipgnosis designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell added a striking gold halo that helped turn Bolan into a visual icon at precisely the point when he was completing his metamorphosis from flower-child folkie to consummate rock & roll dandy. “Black and gold, the metal guru in full force,” Beck once wrote of one of his favorite album-art specimens. “This is what we want a rock cover to look like.” —H.S.

A Tribe Called Quest, ‘The Low End Theory’

The cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album features an unnamed model photographed by Joe Grant. She’s kneeling in black shadows, her body covered in green and red paint. It’s partly inspired by Ohio Players’ memorable 1970s run of covers that depicted women in freaky and suggestive positions. “I wanted a white background for the shot, but they flipped it and made it black,” said group leader Q-Tip in the 2005 book Rakim Told Me. All of the Low End Theory’s visual elements, from the woman in body paint to the red-black-green color scheme reminiscent of the Pan-African flag, became defining elements for Tribe moving forward, and a signature for their deep-rooted and jazz-inflected bohemian sound. —M.R.

Björk, ‘Homogenic’

The making of Homogenic was a fraught time for Björk, as she adjusted to a new level of global fame and the suicide of Ricardo López, a disturbed fan who mailed a letter bomb to her London home. After spotting a striking fashion photo created by photographer Nick Knight and designer Alexander McQueen, she enlisted them to sum up the various emotional currents in her life in an arresting hyperreal portrait. The blend of cultural elements — a Japanese kimono, a European manicure, Maasai neck rings, and a Hopi “butterfly whorl” hairstyle — reflected Björk’s perception of herself as a global citizen. As she later said: “We were trying to make this person that was under a lot of restraint, like long manicure, neckpiece, headpiece, contact lenses — still trying to keep the strength.” —H.S.

Judas Priest, ‘British Steel’

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton put in his time at the British Steel Corporation, working for the steel producer for five years before his band — who produce a different kind of heavy metal — decided to name their sixth album, British Steel. The title clicked with art director Rosław Szaybo and photographer Bob Elsdale, who created a giant razor blade out of aluminum with the band’s logo on it. Szaybo volunteered to hold it for the shot. “A lot of people looked at it and were really quite horrified,” Elsdale told Revolver. “The edges of the blade seemed to be cutting into Rosław’s flesh, because he was really gripping it quite hard. But that wasn’t the case — it actually had blunt edges. It wasn’t bloody, but it had an element of drama.” —K.G.

Sleater-Kinney, ‘The Hot Rock’

“It’s a labyrinthine record,” Carrie Brownstein wrote of Sleater-Kinney’s fourth LP, The Hot Rock, in her memoir, “sad, fractious, not a victory lap, but speaking to uncertainty.” Following up on their 1997 breakthrough, Dig Me Out, Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss were working through interpersonal struggles while facing more scrutiny than ever before. The cover photo by Marina Chavez, showing the band standing on a Portland, Oregon, street corner, captures that heavy energy: Tucker and Weiss each stare toward the curb, the drummer looking almost trepidatious, while Brownstein holds up her hand, hailing a cab, her face bearing a disgruntled expression. Like the jewel thieves in the 1972 heist film that gave the album its name, the trio had no choice but to get a move on and meet their moment. —H.S.

David Bowie, ‘Diamond Dogs’

David Bowie closed out his glam era with the decadent apocalyptic excess of Diamond Dogs, a concept album set in a crumbling America of the future. “When we got to Diamond Dogs,” he later said, “that was when it was out of control.” The deranged spirit extended to its cover, designed by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, which depicted Bowie as a grotesque half-man/half-dog, including genitals on his twisted body. Bowie’s pose on the cover was inspired by a 1926 photo of singer Josephine Baker. Just as the album was ready to get shipped to retailers, Bowie’s record label pulled the cover and had it airbrushed into something less offensive. Some copies did make it out, and Diamond Dogs remains the most provocative album cover of Bowie’s career. —G.M.

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Review: Lil Yachty a Better Crooner Than Rapper on ‘Lil Boat 2’

By Mosi Reeves

Mosi Reeves

Lil Yachty ‘s 2016 debut and New Atlanta classic Lil Boat gave rise to a cherubic pop gamine with Twizzler-colored hair beads and a candy-coated Auto-Tune voice. But on its lesser sequel, the kid whose otherworldly Eeyore-ish melodies sparked hit appearances with Billboard champs like Calvin Harris and D.R.A.M. is mostly absent. Instead, Lil Yachty wants to rap . “Got a white bitch but I call her Coco,” he boasts on “Talk to Me Nice.” “Canary yellow diamonds in my mouth like I bit a daisy,” he chants on “NBAYoungBoat.” There are wasted cameos from 2 Chainz, Tee Grizzley and Migos’ Quavo. It might all work better if Yachty could speak his lines as well as he croons them. But he can’t, at least not on Lil Boat 2 .

Yay, another deluxe album… I mean, Lil Yachty is a 23-year-old rapper from Atlanta, Georgia. After releasing his classic mixtape  Lil Boat  in 2016, things have been downhill for the rapper as albums like  Teenage Emotions  and  Nuthin’ 2 Prove  were borderline unlistenable. Earlier this year, he dropped the third installment of his Lil Boat series, and despite being a slight improvement, it was still nothing to write home about. Last weekend, Yachty gave us a new entry in the series titled  Lil Boat 3.5 . With features from Playboi Carti , Vince Staples , and more, will Lil Yachty be able to reclaim his once-prominent status?

Opposed to some of the other deluxe albums this year,  Lil Boat 3.5  at least has a bit of creativity sprinkled within. From the bold but satisfying high pitch delivery on “Lil Diamond Boy” to the in-n-out flow on “Certified”, there’s a fair share of moments that are at the minimum fun to absorb. Still, this is nothing remotely near the Atlanta trapper’s peak artistry as most of the songs are either extremely dull or horribly structured. “Charmin'” forefronts these disasters with its awful team-up between Lil Boat and Colorado rapper Cochise who both give awful Playboi Carti impersonations. Speaking of Playboi Carti, his high energy mixed with Future’s memorizing hook and Yachty’s fierce vocals make “Flex Up” the record’s ultimate highpoint. Unfortunately, this is about as good as it gets, with the only other cut coming anywhere near its level being the Tik Tok trendsetter, “Coffin”. The most frustrating songs through these eight tracks are easily “Just How I’m Feelin'” and “In My Stussy’s”, which throw away solid verses from Lil Baby and Vince Staples , respectively. Best seen on the collaboration with singer/comedian Oliver Tree, “A****e”, a decent guest performance is completely butchered by the limited range and skill in Lil Yachty’s arsenal. While the vocal component of this record is savored through brief moments of greatness and rare occurring guest appearances, it’s a mess overall that offers nothing beyond its super shallow surface. 

Sonically, there’s a soundtrack more integral than most current trap albums, but the basic four-beat instrumentals can only do so much. Going against the current industry standards with songs like the glamorous “Lil Diamond Boy” and the warping “Certified” is something surely worth appreciating, but it doesn’t do much without a competent MC backing it up. To our luck, a handful of these well-crafted instrumentals are more than enjoyable due to the previously stated verses and features. No instrumental plays its part better than “Flex Up” as its chaos builds up with each artist coming, and with its booming but simple trap drum, this cut embodies all the requirements for one unforgettable mosh anthem. Even the glitchy “In My Stussy’s” and tropical “A*****e” do well at holding together these messy moments’ atmosphere. The surefire sonic standout is the hard-hitting “Coffin”, as its catchy chord pattern and rapid drum fragments make for one memorable banger. Despite Lil Boat 3.5’s soundtrack doing nearly everything right, it’s not enough to make the album anything above average.

In conclusion, Lil Boat 3.5 is another mediocre entry under Lil Yachty’s slowly deprecating name. Although there are some standout performances, there is not nearly enough of them to make this album worth coming back to more than once. Going forward, its honestly sad to watch a once bright trap prodigy fall into irrelevancy, but if Lil Yachty keeps releasing LP’s of this level, he will be there sooner than later.

Rating: 4.3/10

• High profile features don’t disappoint
• Interesting production choices
• Some bangers
• Lil Yachty doesn’t add anything new/innovative to his arsenal
• Yachty continues to show his inferiority to his contemporaries 
• No strong force making the album feel like a full-fledged experience 

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Lil Yachty Links With Teanna Trump for “Let’s Get On Dey Ass” Video

Lil Boat's new song and video follows his joint album with James Blake, 'Bad Cameo.'

View this video on YouTube

Lil Yachty has dropped off his latest song and accompanying music video for “Let’s Get On Dey Ass.”

The Zhamak-directed visual features the Atlanta native hanging out with his Concrete Family, dripped out in various fits, and features a cameo from Teanna Trump , as Lil Boat raps in distorted vocals and over heavy 808s.

“Let’s Get On Dey Ass” follows Yachty’s 10-track, featureless joint album with James Blake, Bad Cameo . The pair most recently shared the visualizer for the song, “Save the Savior.”

Watch the video for “Let’s Get On Dey Ass” up top and revisit his conversation with James Blake for Complex below.

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Styles: jouissance, “New Atlanta,” arena pop, flex music Others: Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Soulja Boy, Coldplay

W hen Lil Yachty was a kid, Coldplay was his favorite band. “Clocks,” “Yellow,” and who could forget “The Scientist”? Coldplay was a malleable, populist giant; a collision of cozy, Belle and Sebastian indie sensibilities with the panoptical liquid crystal of the arena, with songs readymade for jumbotron renditions. They were Thom Yorke on a faraway Northern England hillside meets Bono screaming “Yeah” 16 times in a row at the Super Bowl. They were the musical equivalent of the fair trade = movement. Coldplay sold fucktons of CDs and were generally eviscerated by critics, and they were the object of my utmost ire as a 16 year-old authenticity-obsessed aesthete.

When I was 16, Lil Yachty was 9. When you’re a kid, you just like what you like. There are no platonic ideals, no basic vs. next level, and pleasure is not guilty until someone tells you it is. Why do kids like Apple Jacks so much? We Eat What We Like! Childhood is not so much a state of innocence as one of extreme neuroplasticity. Pathways that will grow to be well-trod first materialize in a blaze of freestyle joy.

Sparkly, video game-lullaby productions from Burberry Perry, Ducko McFli, and a host of relative unknown Soundcloud producers carry Lil Boat through a yawning midafternoon daydream, feeling translucent on a barred-out tip, cheesing too hard to care about their own poor mastering, their total void of compositional rigor, just repeating themselves like someone learning to speak for the first time, bubbling over, spawning a cool equilibrium of eternal ad-lib: clothes, hoes, bros, racks, sacks, stacks, packs, gangs, things, and the occasional nautical reference bubble through the atmosphere with equanimous berth atop Yachty’s lazy, somnambulant delivery, by turns an aloof, lisping drawl or an emphatic Chris Martin falsetto, all filtered through warbling vacillations of sugary-ass autotune.

Songs drift in and out of the listener’s awareness, unaware of where they’re supposed to be headed, where they’re supposed to stop or start. “Interlude” lays threadbare its own hasty composition when, at the end, the beat drops out and Yachty suddenly swallows his words, cutting off his doodling, impressionistic freestyle just as the half-formed blossom of an image begins to form in his mouth. Despite the fact that Yachty can spit in the conventional sense, as his laconic, campy bars on “Intro” and “Up Next 2” suggest, Lil Boat is more about that spontaneous, ambiguous moment of sonic poetry that occurs when the mouth vocalizes beyond the scope of practical communication.

Welcome to a celebration of extra : the unnecessary, the over-the-top, the is you rolling?? Even the most basic particles of Lil Boat ’s are extra: the Finding Nemo intro, the way many of the tracks shift into a “0 to 100”-style reprise at the halfway point, the way Yachty mouths out the broad and assonant tonality of “ Roley ” and “ Brodies ” over the stupid-simple gait of “Wanna Be Us,” the way Quavo incants “ Big sack of Molly golf balls ” twice and “ I love my Motorola ” four times on the New ATL flex-fest that is “Minnesota Remix,” just because it sounds so delightfully tacky and obscene the first time. Yachty himself best sums up Lil Boat ’s irreverent attitude on “Not My Bro”: “ Jimmy Chang lemon pepper wings for my black bitch/ New ring cost 30 thou/ I did it just cause I like to do shit .” Again, We Eat What We Like! Lil Boat is pure play, but it’s branded play. Like when Souja Boy hopped up out the bed, took a look in the mirror, and said “ What’s up? ” It is the sublimation of surplus, extra selfhood into cash flow. Making the soul do flips.

Like the works of its humble forebears Lil B and the venerable Soulja Boy, Lil Boat is the kind of music that does not need to make a case for its own value, only judged on the intangible, absurdist metrics of its self-contained universe. Listening to Lil Yachty is a lot like standing on a train platform in a Polo sweatsuit, one earbud in, interpreting the raps from your phone into personal theme music through exaggerated, off-the-cuff gesticulations, bobbing and weaving, articulating the rhythmic prose of the beats with rolling, fluid movements tempered by a forward-falling, emphatic swagger. It’s like you’re shooting a music video, except you’re not; it’s just you on the platform — that is, you and the nine other people who are doing exactly what you are doing, all attuned to the same frequency but atomized in your execution of it. Everyone is performing as if everyone is watching, but really everyone is watching themselves through the imaginary lens of everyone else.

01. Intro (Just Keep Swimming) [Prod. Burberry Perry] 02. Wanna Be Us (Feat. Burberry Perry [Prod. Colby Crump & Burberry Perry] 03. Minnesota Remix (Feat. Quavo, Skippa Da Flippa, & Young Thug) [Prod. Grandfero] 04. Not My Bro [Prod. Ducko McFli] 05. Interlude [Prod. Slade] 06. Good Day (Feat. Skippa Da Flippa) [Prod. Big Lo$] 07. Up Next 2 (Feat. BIGBRUTHACHUBBA & Byou) [Prod. Digital Nas] 08. Run:Running [Prod. Earl & E-Bundles] 09. Never Switch Up [Prod. 1Mind] 10. One Night (Extended) [Prod. Burberry Perry] 11. Out Late [Prod. Earl Bangs] 12. Fucked Over [Prod. Ducko McFli] 13. I’m Sorry (Feat. Burberry Perry) [Prod. Burberry Perry] 14. We Did It (Outro) *Positivity Song* [Prod. Burberry Perry]

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April 28, 2021

There has never been a bag Lil Yachty won’t shamelessly chase. Since the Atlanta rapper arrived in 2016 with his melodic mixtape Lil Boat , he has been equally known for brand shilling as his music. He hit a two-step with Carly Rae Jepsen in a Target ad . He reworked the lyrics for his grating breakout single “Minnesota” for a Sprite commercial . He devised a cursed Chef Boyardee jingle with Donny Osmond. He might have recorded the worst television theme song of all time. Currently he’s working on a movie based around the card game Uno. It’s a reflection of the current climate, where almost any rapper eligible to appear on the top three lines of a Rolling Loud bill is a brand.

It’s because of all this that I was initially skeptical of his longtime intermingling with the shit-talking characters of Michigan’s thriving street rap scene . Was he using them to make his music cool again? Or was this a genuine connection with a fast-growing movement that has long been underappreciated? Likely it was a bit of both. Songs like last year’s “Flintana” (with the animated Flint rappers RMC Mike , YN Jay , and Louie Ray ) and “Not Regular” (with Detroit’s robot-dancing Sada Baby ) not only revived Yachty as a rapper but also raised the profile of Michigan rap.

Yachty’s new mixtape, Michigan Boy Boat , is an earned celebration of this fruitful relationship. Though it’s important not to position Yachty as Michigan’s rap savior—the music in both Detroit and Flint is so singular that it would have ended up in Atlanta anyway—Yachty has undeniably helped speed up the process. The chemistry Yachty has built with many of the scene’s rappers is real. Yachty sounds comfortable on the posse cut “This That One,” among the patented darkly funny punchlines, grim piano melody, booming drums, and ominous church bells, but he is not the center of attention. He’s more like a host that paves the way for his compelling guests: KrispyLife Kidd beat a dude so bad he thought he got jumped, and YN Jay is selling dope to a customer who has a bald head like Bobby Lashley . Similarly on “Plastic,” Yachty takes a backseat to Eastside Detroit’s Icewear Vezzo and Flint’s Rio Da Yung OG : “My shooter got ADHD, he’ll kill you for a script of Addys/I was finna fuck my bitch mom, but I can hit the granny,” raps Rio, maybe the most unnecesarily batshit consecutive lines on a mixtape full of them.

But the mixtape struggles when the focus shifts to Yachty. He doesn’t have Mike’s commanding voice or Rio’s recklessness, the laid-back swag of Babyface Ray or the out-of-pocket insanity of YN Jay. It’s less noticeable when he’s bouncing off of them, but glaring on solo songs like “Final Form” and “Concrete Goonies,” which are tolerable only because of dynamic beats from mainstays of the scene Helluva and Enrgy. When Yachty invites Swae Lee into this world on “Never Did Coke,” it goes about as badly as when a melodic teenage rapper shows up on a radio freestyle show and they play a DJ Premier beat.

Sprinkled across the 14 tracks are moments where Yachty sounds at home: “How the hell is niggas gangsters graduatin’ from St. John’s?” he asks on “Hybrid,” and on “Dynamic Duo,” he raps “My old bitch was really old, born in ’86,” sending all the ’80s babies into an early mid-life crisis. His best performance of all is on “G.I. Joe,” which coincidentally is the only track on the tape not rooted in the Michigan style.

If you’re already familiar with the state’s street rap movement, Michigan Boy Boat doesn’t add anything new. It’ll be a real success if it leads new fans toward superior modern mixtapes like Babyface Ray’s MIA Season 2 , Rio Da Yung OG’s City on My Back , Drego and Beno ’s Sorry For the Get Off , Los ’ G Shit Vol. 1 , BandGang Lonnie Bands ’ KOD , and more. But for anyone searching for an entry point, it’s a fun introduction to the fast-paced instrumentals, unpredictable flows, and demented punchlines synyonmous with Detroit and Flint.

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Lil Yachty, the self-proclaimed “King of the Teens,” has carved a unique lane for himself in the world of hip-hop. With his infectious energy, melodic flows, and vibrant personality, Yachty has become one of the most polarizing figures in the rap game. And what better way to dive into his artistic journey than by exploring his discography?

From the early days of “Lil Boat” to his most recent releases like “Lil Boat 3.5,” Lil Yachty has consistently pushed the boundaries of his sound, creating a catalog that is as diverse as it is experimental. Each album offers a glimpse into his ever-evolving creative mind, showcasing his ability to seamlessly blend elements of trap, pop, and alternative rap.

At the forefront of our Lil Yachty Album: Top 9 List is his debut mixtape, “Lil Boat.” Released in 2016, this project introduced the world to Yachty’s signature style, filled with joyful melodies and youthful exuberance. It was a breakout moment for the young artist, setting the stage for his subsequent releases.

As we journey through his discography, we encounter gems like “Summer Songs 2,” a project that solidified Yachty’s status as a hitmaker. With tracks like “Minnesota” and “Wanna Be Us,” this album showcased his knack for crafting catchy hooks and anthems that resonated with his young fanbase.

Then there’s “Teenage Emotions,” an album that delves deeper into Yachty’s personal experiences and emotions. With tracks like “Better” and “Forever Young,” he explores the complexities of youth and the struggles of growing up in the spotlight.

Moving forward, we have “Lil Boat 2,” a project that sees Yachty embracing a more aggressive and trap-influenced sound. He proves his versatility as an artist while collaborating with heavyweights like Quavo, Offset, and 2 Chainz.

Yachty’s discography also boasts albums like “Nuthin’ 2 Prove,” “Michigan Boy Boat,” and “Let’s Start Here,” each representing different phases in his career and showcasing his growth as an artist.

So let’s get into it. From the early days of “Lil Boat” to the latest offerings like “Lil Boat 3.5,” here are Lil Yachty’ Albums:

9. Lil Boat ( Jul 2016 )

This album, filled with youthful exuberance and catchy melodies, introduced the world to Yachty’s unique style and playful persona. Tracks like “Minnesota” and “One Night” showcased his ability to craft infectious hooks that had fans singing along and hitting that replay button. “Lil Boat” was a breath of fresh air in a genre often dominated by gritty lyricism and aggressive beats. Yachty brought a sense of joy and fun back to hip-hop, with his carefree delivery and whimsical production. While some critics dismissed Yachty’s sound as “mumble rap,” the album’s impact cannot be denied. It opened doors for other artists to explore different sounds and paved the way for a new wave of melodic rap. Though “Lil Boat” may not be a classic in the traditional sense, its cultural significance and influence on the genre cannot be overlooked. It was a defining moment for Lil Yachty and marked the beginning of his meteoric rise in the industry.

8. Summer Songs 2 ( Jul 2016 )

Released in 2016, this project showcases Yachty’s ability to craft catchy hooks and deliver charismatic verses that perfectly embody the carefree spirit of summer. From the bouncy anthem “For Hot 97” to the dreamy vibes of “Life Goes On,” “Summer Songs 2” is a collection of catchy and addictive tracks that will have you bobbing your head and singing along in no time. Yachty’s unique vocal style, characterized by his playful flow and sing-song delivery, shines throughout the project, making every song feel like a party. While “Summer Songs 2” may not have received the same commercial success as some of Yachty’s other projects, it remains a fan favorite and a testament to his ability to create infectious and memorable music. So if you’re looking for a soundtrack to your summer adventures, be sure to add “Summer Songs 2” to your playlist.

7. Teenage Emotions ( May 2017 )

With its vibrant production and playful melodies, Yachty delivered an album that resonated with the experiences and struggles of adolescence. Tracks like “Forever Young” and “In My Feelings” showcased his ability to tap into the universal feelings of love and heartbreak. However, the album faced mixed reviews, with some critics highlighting a lack of lyrical depth and cohesiveness. While “Teenage Emotions” may not have been a commercial or critical triumph, it still served as an important statement of Lil Yachty’s artistry and willingness to explore new sonic territories. This album solidified Yachty’s place as a voice for the youth, blending catchy hooks with relatable lyrics, and reminding us of the complexities of growing up in a fast-paced world.

6. Lil Boat 2 ( Mar 2018 )

As the sequel to his breakout mixtape, “Lil Boat,” this album showcased Yachty’s growth as an artist while staying true to his signature style. With its trap-heavy beats and catchy hooks, “Lil Boat 2” proved that Yachty could hold his own in the rap scene. Tracks like “Boom!” and “66” showcased his ability to ride the beat effortlessly, while “NBAYOUNGBOAT” featuring NBA YoungBoy brought a captivating collaboration that had fans craving more. While some critics argued that the album lacked the depth of Yachty’s earlier work, “Lil Boat 2” solidified his place as a force to be reckoned with in contemporary hip-hop. This project served as a testament to Yachty’s ability to evolve and adapt while maintaining his unique style, further establishing him as an influential figure in the rap game.

5. Nuthin’ 2 Prove ( Oct 2018 )

This album showcases Yachty’s growth as an artist, proving that he’s got the skills to back up the hype. From the infectious beats to the clever wordplay, “Nuthin’ 2 Prove” puts Yachty’s talent on full display. On this project, Yachty collaborates with heavyweights like Cardi B, Offset, and Playboi Carti, adding extra firepower to an already impressive lineup. Tracks like “Who Want the Smoke?” and “Get Dripped” hit hard, combining Yachty’s signature melodic flow with hard-hitting beats that make you want to turn up the volume. But it’s not all about party anthems. Yachty digs deep on tracks like “Forever World” and “Worth It” to reflect on his journey and the challenges he’s overcome. It’s a testament to his growth as an artist and his ability to craft meaningful lyrics. “Nuthin’ 2 Prove” solidifies Lil Yachty’s place in the rap game and cements his status as one of the most exciting artists of his generation. With this album, Yachty proves that he’s got the skills and the staying power to continue making waves in the hip-hop world.

4. Lil Boat 3 ( May 2020 )

With this album, Yachty delivers an electrifying mix of trap beats and melodic flows, showcasing his growth as an artist and his ability to effortlessly ride different waves within the rap game. Lil Boat 3 is a sonic journey that explores Yachty’s confidence, creativity, and versatility. Filled with catchy hooks, infectious melodies, and high-energy bangers, the album boasts a star-studded lineup of features from some of the biggest names in the industry, including Drake, Future, and Young Thug, adding an extra layer of excitement to the project. While Yachty stays true to his signature playful and carefree style, Lil Boat 3 also reveals a more introspective side, with Yachty sharing personal anecdotes and reflecting on his journey in the music industry. Tracks like “Pardon Me” and “Westside” showcase his vulnerability and provide a deeper glimpse into his mindset. Overall, Lil Boat 3 is a testament to Lil Yachty’s evolution as an artist, showcasing his growth and solidifying his place in the rap game. With its infectious beats, catchy hooks, and captivating lyricism, this album is a must-listen for any fan of Lil Yachty and the modern hip-hop scene.

3. Lil Boat 3.5 ( Nov 2020 )

With its groovy beats and catchy hooks, this album showcases Yachty’s growth as an artist while still staying true to his signature sound. The project features a slew of high-profile collaborations, including Future, Lil Baby, and Playboi Carti, adding a dynamic energy to the tracks. Yachty’s clever wordplay and playful delivery shine throughout the album, making it a standout in his discography. From the introspective “Concrete Boys” to the bouncy anthem “Coffin,” Lil Boat 3.5 demonstrates Yachty’s versatility as he effortlessly navigates between introspective storytelling and club-ready bangers. It’s a testament to his ability to evolve within the ever-changing landscape of hip-hop.

2. Michigan Boy Boat ( Apr 2021 )

This album showcased Yachty’s versatility and his love for his home state of Michigan. With a mix of bangers and introspective tracks, he took listeners on a journey through his experiences and the culture he grew up in. Featuring collaborations with fellow Michigan natives like Tee Grizzley, Sada Baby, and Babyface Ray, “Michigan Boy Boat” captured the essence of the state’s rap scene. The production was top-notch, with hard-hitting beats and infectious melodies that kept heads nodding from start to finish. Yachty’s signature melodic flow shined on tracks like “Dynamic Duo” and “SB 2021,” while he flexed his storytelling abilities on introspective cuts like “Royal Rumble” and “Never Did Coke.” This album solidified Yachty’s place as a versatile artist who could hold his own on any type of beat. “Michigan Boy Boat” proved that Lil Yachty was not only a hitmaker but also an artist with depth and substance. With its catchy hooks, impressive features, and personal storytelling, this album was an undeniable banger and a testament to Lil Yachty’s talent and growth as an artist.

1. Let’s Start Here. ( Jan 2023 )

This album is a testament to his growth, both lyrically and sonically. With infectious beats and catchy hooks, Yachty effortlessly navigates through a range of topics, from his rise to fame to personal struggles. Tracks like “the BLACK seminole.” and “drive ME crazy!” resonate with his core fan base. It’s a cohesive project that demonstrates Lil Yachty’s maturation as an artist, while still providing those playful vibes that made him a standout in the first place.

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

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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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/LilYachty

Yachty originally gained attention in 2015 for his meme-worthy early singles, with "One Night" getting used in a viral video on YouTube and "Minnesota" becoming a meme following its appearance on Drake 's OVO Sound Radio show.

The two singles were followed by his mixtape Lil Boat , which codified his early style as being defined by Autotuned crooning over dreamy trap beats. Subsequently, he found success as a featured artist on a pair of US Top 5 hits in 2016 — "Broccoli" by DRAM and " iSpy " by Kyle — before releasing another mixtape, Summer Songs 2 , which was followed by his major-label debut album, 2017's Teenage Emotions .

From there, Yachty's music began to shift into more traditional hip-hop styles, as reflected in his next three albums, Lil Boat 2 , Nuthin' 2 Prove and Lil Boat 3 . In 2020, he began collaborating more heavily with an underground scene of rappers in Michigan, mostly centered around the cities of Detroit and Flint, and released an entire project with them in that style, 2021's Michigan Boy Boat . Then, in 2023, he released Let's Start Here. , which unexpectedly eschews hip-hop entirely in favour of Psychedelic Rock of all sounds.

As an entertainment personality, Yachty has appeared in commercials for Sprite, Nautica and Urban Outfitters, as well as a Target commercial for which he covered "It Takes Two" note  The '80s hip-hop song by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, not the '70s R&B song by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston with Carly Rae Jepsen . He also performed the theme tune for the 2019 revival of Saved by the Bell and voiced Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies .

Discography:

• Summer Songs (EP; 2015)
• Honey, Let's Spend Wintertime On A Boat (with Wintertime) (EP; 2015)
• Lil Boat (mixtape; 2016)
• Summer Songs 2 (mixtape; 2016)
• Teenage Emotions (Album, 2017)
• Lil Boat 2 (album; 2017)
• Nuthin' 2 Prove (album; 2018)
• A-Team (with Zaytoven, Lil Keed and Lil GotIt ) (mixtape; 2020)
• Lil Boat 3 (album; 2020)
• Lil Boat 3.5 (EP; 2020)
• Michigan Boy Boat (mixtape; 2021)
• Let’s Start Here. (album; 2023)

Lil Yachty and his work provide examples of the following tropes:

• Alter-Ego Acting : Lil Yachty (the emotional singer) vs Lil Boat (the boastful rapper) vs Darnell Boat (the fictional uncle of both Boat and Yachty, who appears in various skits in his early work).
• Artistic License – Music : Yachty infamously confused his musical instruments in the track "Peek a Boo", which contains the line "She blow that dick like a cello ", a stringed instrument. Yachty has since copped to how dumb of a mistake this was , claiming that he was thinking of the instrument that Squidward plays note  ( Which he further confused as being a flute , and was further corrected that it was a clarinet ) , blaming his A&R for having supposedly listened to the song multiple times and never calling out this mistake.
• Autotune : Most of his singing, and a defining part of his Signature Style .
• Boastful Rap : The majority of his lyrical content when rapping.
• The Cameo : Yachty makes one in the music video for "Life is Good" by Future and Drake .
• Epic Rocking : "The Black Seminole" runs at 6:51, being his longest song to date.
• Longest Song Goes First : The aforementioned "The Black Seminole" (6:51) opens his 2023 album Let's Start Here .
• Michigan Boy Boat , which takes its cues from underground Michigan hip-hop rather than the mix of Pop Rap and Trap Music in most of his other work.
• Let’s Start Here. eschews hip-hop entirely in favor of a spacier neo-psychedelia sound.
• Out-of-Genre Experience : "Bring It Back", which is an '80s-esque synthpop song in the vein of Carly Rae Jepsen .
• Record Producer : His was originally Burberry Perry (who later changed his stage name to TheGoodPerry ), before they split following Summer Songs 2 .
• "T.D." samples (and is named after) "Tokyo Drift" by the Teriyaki Boyz, from the soundtrack to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift .
• "All Times" samples the main theme from Rugrats .
• "Bentley Coupe" is built around a vocal sample of Minnie Riperton 's "Lovin' You".
• "Forever World" samples "Soon As I Get Home" by Faith Evans .
• "Fight Night Round 3", appropriately enough, samples "Going the Distance" by Bill Conti, from the soundtrack to Rocky .
• "WE SAW THE SUN!" ends with a spoken-word sample of Bob Ross from The Joy of Painting .
• Lil Nas X sampled Yachty's "NBAYOUNGBOAT" for his own "Sonic Shit".
• Self-Titled Album : In a variant, arguably all three note  four counting the Lil Boat 3.5 EP of his Lil Boat projects, which are named after his alter ego.
• Shout-Out : "Oprah's Bank Account" to both Oprah Winfrey and her namesake show , with Yachty appearing in drag as her hosting a parody of it in the music video.
• Word Salad Lyrics : His amateurish approach to songwriting often results in his lyrics sounding disjointed.
• Lil Uzi Vert
• MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)
• Southern Rap
• Lenny Kravitz
• Psychedelic Rock
• Love and Rockets
• Music of 2017–2019
• AmericanMusic/Southern United States
• Little Richard
• African-American Creators
• Music of 2013–2016
• Music of the 2020s
• Limp Bizkit

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