Atlanta’s Lil Yachty is a pure creation of the Internet. His cult hit "1 Night" found most of its audience through a viral sketch comedy video, and before that, he was being plugged on Twitter by Ian Connor, a stylist and web curator known mostly for his connection to A$AP Rocky. He’s indebted to Lil B, too, with free-form verses that mimic Based Freestyles and a carefree energy reminiscent of the Based God’s Myspace days. In short, Yachty thrives in Rocky’s post-regionalist rap universe, a space defined by digital platforms rather than geography. One of his producers goes by Digital Nas. He is definitive proof that modern rap has no gatekeepers, and Soundcloud rap’s laziest possible copy-and-paste job.
There isn’t a single thing Lil Yachty’s doing that someone else isn't doing better, and in richer details. On Lil Boat, his debut mixtape, he makes a grating mess of these varying influences. The most obvious creative inspiration is iLoveMakonnen, which becomes especially clear on "Good Day," with its creaky falsetto and warbling melody. But Makonnen brings warmth and a feeling of ease to his tracks, while Yachty is constantly straining, as if just getting the words out of his mouth is a struggle. His rapping is jerky and his voice is so flat that Auto-Tune itself seems to buckle under the weight.
Yachty’s main selling point is "fun." This is all supposed to seem easy and unbothered, and it does on cheery tunes like “Wanna Be Us” and “Run/Running.” But everything feels unfinished or undercooked—a handful of songs are just a single verse and a hook, with no clear relationship between the two. So a song like "Not My Bro" opens with a bang and then shrinks back into nothing, a series of pitchy, singsongy whines. It's a lot of things —irritating, boring —but "fun" isn't one of them.
Yachty’s simplicity works in his favor when it comes to catchy hooks. On the better songs here, he sings/raps over bubbly, retro N64-sounding productions (mostly produced by Burberry Perry) that convey childlike wonder and amusement. But the hooks don’t do nearly enough to balance out Yachty’s painful shrieks, and many of his ideas aren’t just basic, they’re sloppily executed. Attempting to form a working model out of the flotsam of the moment is a fool’s errand. But what else is to be expected of a prisoner of shifting tides?
