The reign of the self-proclaimed King of the Teens is over. At 20, Lil Yachty has aged-out of that constituency and there are a host of contenders already eager to replace him. In his quest to conquer the whole yung demo, he discovered teens are fickle and manifold, creatures of varying interests prone to unpredictable changes of heart. After being heralded as the harbinger of a new era in rap, the metrics didn’t bear out his impact. His debut, Teenage Emotions, was streamed considerably less in its first week (24,000) than records by the significantly less hyped a Boogie Wit da Hoodie (54,000), the younger XXXtentacion (67,000), or Yachty’s self-professed rival, Lil Uzi Vert (100,000). He reckoned with the unimpressive showing by saying, “I disconnected with my fans because I tried to do this other stuff,” the other stuff being his straight-faced struggle raps. Based on those comments, it seemed his next release would surely return to his original model of pure, unadulterated song.
At this point, with his royal status in question, Yachty is at a crossroads. His label, Quality Control, is quietly rebranding him as a Migos understudy, a bit player in their streaming rap empire. But Yachty has other ideas, and he plans to soak up as much bandwidth as possible by fanning his own flames. On Lil Boat 2, it’s like he’s daring you not to like him. And so his sophomore album is a sequel in name only, a far cry from the candy-coated, bittersweet melodies that made him a viral sensation on the original. He’s a bruiser now, you see, trading in earworms and weightlessness for gravity and outlandish braggadocio. Maybe it’s a masterful troll that thrives off the misdirection. Maybe the most subversive thing he can do at this point is to dismantle his playhouse entirely, becoming the thing no one said he could be. It certainly is one of modern rap’s more bizarre, and fascinating, heel turns.
After opening with the on-brand crooner “Self-Made,” Lil Boat 2 becomes decidedly bar-heavy and grey. It’s made up of nearly 70 percent tuneless rap flexers with dark, creeping synths; “Boom!” embodies its title, and the Pi’erre Bourne-produced “Count Me In” is all muffled low end. This shift in tone is purposeful, almost forceful. It demands that the listener accept Yachty on his terms and shamelessly argues that he can be anything he wants to be.
The issue is that an album reliant on Yachty’s ability to rap can’t hold up to scrutiny. He is a rather spiritless writer. He only has a couple of rough song ideas. He is incapable of fitting his outsized personality into his pedestrian bars. But the sheer gall of this gambit is occasionally enough to tickle one’s curiosity: Attempted reinventions can be mesmerizing, even when they fail spectacularly. In this instance, he really goes for it. He does triplet flows. He splits punches. He packs cadences and stacks phonetic sounds. Take that, Funk Flex.
Yachty has definitely improved as a technician, making his raps more mobile and structurally sound, but most times the rhymes pass by as if on a conveyor belt. They seemingly have the same function, and the same constructions, and once they happen they’re forgotten almost instantly. His big, showy rap boasts are unimaginative, sometimes predictable, often bafflingly plain in their presentation: “Running to the money like I’m Frank Gore/This ring costs more than a Honda Accord.” He knows how to spend but not how to sell.
The central theme of Lil Boat 2 is simply how rich Yachty is and how broke you are by comparison. He is money-obsessed and really quite bratty about it. “These niggas hate ’cause I’m too rich,” he spits on “Mickey,” the implication being no one actually dislikes him or his music; they’re simply jealous. “I was buying diamonds, you was waiting for tax refunds,” he raps on “Flex,” a song that also works as a nominal diss of his longtime radio nemesis. “Tell your baby daddy I’m richer,” he raps on “Baby Daddy.” You can guess what “Whole Lotta Guap” is about. It isn’t even off-putting that he’s constantly haranguing you about the wealth gap; the real insult is that he flaunts his money in the most mundane of ways.
Duets with PnB Rock and Trippie Redd show that Yachty is still capable of flourishing in a more melodic space, but his refusal to lean into that mode is what makes Lil Boat 2 sound so leaden. Songwriting isn’t his strong suit, and while he’s taken great strides in that area, it was a mistake to build an album out of his raps. It can be entertaining to watch the gears turning, though. There aren’t any moments where he’s noticeably outpaced by his more gifted guests, as he holds his own with NBA YoungBoy, Tee Grizzley, 2 Chainz, and Offset. His best rapping gets packed into “FWM,” a free-flowing outlier that’s as natural and fun as the more whimsical songs in his catalog. His grill-bearing, chain-swinging performances on Lil Boat 2 make me a bit wistful for those—and maybe that was the point. We must suffer through the new Yachty to reassess the old one.
