#let's start here.

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Lil Yachty

Collage by Brando Babini for The Grace Gazette, 2023

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Lil Yachty “sAy sOMETHINg” Let’s Start Here. January 27, 2023.

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Little Yachty - Let's Start Here. (2023)

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Lil Yachty - Let's Start Here. - Album Review

For this new album review, Lil Yachty swerves into psychedelic rock with a murderer's row of indie talent for a fascinating if under-composed album.Best Song...

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Ranting and Raving: "the BLACK seminole." by Lil Yachty

"It's like he downloaded the entire Pink Floyd discography into his mind and synthesized all of it into seven minutes. This is absolutely incredible."

That was my thought the first time I heard "the BLACK seminole.," the opener to Lil Yachty's newest album, Let's Start Here. "Lil Yachty makes psychedelic rock" is yet another surprise I can add to my growing list of "Unexpected 2023 Events."

It was the kind of song that once you hear it, you're blown away and you immediately start texting all your friends about it. I certainly did. The best way I can describe this song to people is that it's a perfect synthesis of everything Pink Floyd did in their career. It's all here. Guitars and soloing that sound like David Gilmour himself wandered into the studio. Grooves that are reminiscent of "Echoes," "Breathe," and the instrumental section of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)." Keyboard work that sounds ripped straight out of "Us and Them." An ambient section in the middle that brings to mind stuff like "A Saucerful of Secrets" and the intro to "Time." Diana Gordon's vocal runs during the second half of the song are pure "The Great Gig in the Sky." If any second of this song reminds you of something Floyd did, you aren't crazy. Yachty is very clearly a Floyd fan and he did his homework when it comes to making a track like this. It's absolutely stunning.

And yet... the more time I spent with it, the more I found the shine and the sheen had started to dull. Around my seventh or eighth listen, the flaws began to show more and more. I struggle with whether I still love this, and by extension, the rest of Let's Start Here.. I'm gonna do my best to try my struggles with this.

So, let's start here. (HA!) Musically, this song scratched just about every itch for me. With Pink Floyd being one of my favorite bands, it was easy for me to fall in love with this right from the drop. All the little moments that reminded me of Floyd songs kept me engaged and left me wondering how the hell Yachty pulled this off. But there's one problem with this song: it didn't leave me hungry for more Yachty, it just made me want to go back and re-listen to some Floyd that I hadn't gone back to in a while. "the BLACK seminole." is a great song, and it certainly did its job in terms of getting me to pay attention and listen to the rest of what Let's Start Here. offers, but I find it suffers from too much imitation. Yachty doesn't experiment or push the boundaries of psych rock, he just recreates one of the genre's most important bands. Even beyond this song, other songs on the album suffer from this too. "the ride-" sounds like a discarded Tame Impala track at points and "drive ME crazy!" has a cool disco and soul vibe to it, but in the same breath I would tell you anything by Silk Sonic or anything Kali Uchis has done herself or with Tyler, the Creator shines brighter.

When I say this song didn't leave me hungry for more Yachty, it's because I would argue he's the weakest element of this entire song. It's clear that he enjoys this music and it's clearly the music he now wants to make, but that doesn't exactly mean he's up to par when it comes to performing it. It's been a hot minute since I've encountered a song where the music absolutely outshines its performer. Yachty's stiff and heavily processed vocals end up being a detriment to him as he never really stands out. You could replace him with anybody and the song would remain the same, which is a shame because I think lyrically this song stands out and it's pretty strong and introspective, especially if you're someone who hasn't kept up with Yachty since he gained a lot of popularity back in the late 2010s.

Now, you may be wondering, "What is a Seminole? What the heck is a black Seminole for that matter?" For our purposes, all you need to know is that the Black Seminoles were a group of free blacks and runaway slaves that joined forces with the Seminole Indians in Florida from around 1700 through the 1850s. Specifically, the Black Seminoles were able to help their Native American brethren through their knowledge of the language and culture of Euro-Americans as well as their military prowess (that's what the lines "African Rambo with more ammo" and "The Black Seminole, a head general" are referencing.) If you're interested in knowing more, you can find more info here and here.

Lyrically, Yachty likens himself to the Black Seminoles and uses them as a metaphor for his own creative endeavors. The Black Seminoles escaped slavery to create their own culture, which is similar to Yachty escaping "Soundcloud Rapper" label try and create his own unique sound with psychedelic rock. Your mileage may vary on how well this works.

It's a good metaphor and it's definitely something that's out of left field for Yachty. If you're someone like him and you've been longing to be taken more seriously as an artist, writing a psychedelic rock song about an Afro-Indigenous group is a good way to go. And being taken seriously is the entire reason Yachty has taken the direction he has with this.

At a surprise listening party for the album, Alphonse Pierre's review on Pitchfork quoted a statement Yachty had made: “I really wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, not just some SoundCloud rapper or some mumble rapper.” Pierre then writes, "This is the speech rappers are obligated to give when it comes time for the drum loop to take a backseat to guitars, for the rapping to be muted in favor of singing, for the ad-libs to give it up to the background singers, and for a brigade of white producers with plaque-lined walls to be invited into the fold."

What's clear to me, is that Yachty wants what Tyler, the Creator got when he made Flower Boy, Igor, and Call Me If You Get Lost. All of them successful albums made by a guy who got big making weird, offputting, almost silly rap (early 2010s/Odd Future era) only to later transition into a more genuine and more experimental artist. Playboi Carti also ended up getting that same acclaim with Whole Lotta Red. The difference between these men and Yachty, however, is that neither Tyler nor Carti completely abandoned the sounds they had already made. Rather, Tyler and Carti were simply pushing the envelope of their previous sound into new and more experimental avenues. Neither sacrificed their identity, Yachty does and it's very obvious. Then again, Tyler and Carti have also enjoyed more respect than Yachty ever got, as Yachty was often pointed at and blamed for everything wrong with modern rap (Pierre cites guys like Pete Rock, Joe Budden, Anderson .Paak, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole as guys who criticized and singled him out).

Pierre nails exactly what makes me feel conflicted about what Yachty has done on this song and the rest of the album when it comes to what kind of "respect" Yachty is after:

The respect Yachty is chasing on Let’s Start Here. feels institutional. It’s for the voting committees, for the suits; for Questlove to shout him out as the future, for Ebro to invite him back on his radio show and say My bad, you’re dope. Never mind if you thought Lil Yachty was dope to start with: The goal of this album is to go beyond all expectations and rules for rappers.

Everything about "the BLACK seminole." starts to change when you begin looking at this song and the album as Yachty attempting to chase acclaim and respect he's never gotten. I can't be angry about it, because it worked. Here I am, writing a post about Lil Yachty, somebody who doesn't really interest me as an artist but found a way to make something that feels like it was tailor made for me and get my attention. It worked, but I don't think it'll work for much longer. Like I said before, the shine and the sheen had started to dull after more listens and Yachty's flaws and weaknesses began to creep in more and more.

I already spoke about how lyrically, the song's topic and focus on the Black Seminoles makes for an interesting song, but it doesn't feel like it was really a Yachty idea beyond the initial metaphor. This is to say that I think the words sound a bit disingenuous, because I don't believe Yachty penned them. The guy who is infamous for stupid bars like "All my bitches come in pairs like balls in my nutsack" or, even more infamously, "My new bitch yellow / She blow that dick like a cello." I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Yachty was confused about that because, "I fucked up. I thought Squidward played the cello. He don’t. That’s a flute. I fucked up. But it do sound good." It would... if Squidward didn't play the c l a r i n e t !

I don't want to come across too mean, especially because people grow and change and are always capable of getting better at writing, but forgive me if I find it a bit hard to believe that the lyrics to this song came from the mind of Yachty. I want to be optimistic and believe that he penned the lines, especially because if he wrote the line, "Love is not a lie, it just feels like a Tarantino movie scene," he should be damn proud of that one.

Do I still like this song? Yes. Very much. I can recommend it and I can say that the rest of Let's Start Here. might end up surprising you in some fun ways. Yachty is clearly trying to go for something different with this song and the album. I always appreciate an artist stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something new, but sadly, I think Yachty ends up missing the mark by a hair and ends up coming off as more of an imitator than an innovator. But if this is where we're starting, I can at least happily say I'm interested in where we're going. This song and this album ended up surprising me and while I'm not 100% head over heels for it, it certainly was unexpected and that's something that makes following modern music fun for me.

At the close of the spoken word piece ":(failure(:," Yachty offers this gem of wisdom that I think is worth keeping:

Oh, man, failure, that took time to understand, you know? Like, failure doesn't mean defeat, more so, like, "Try again, shit, try even harder" Revise your steps and rewrite your future Failure to me isn’t, like, always a negative thing, more so, more so, like, just a way to relook at things You know, you never know how close you are to success

"Revise your steps and rewrite your future." That's good advice for any artist. If you find something isn't working, revise your steps and rewrite your future. If Lil Yachty can do it, there's hope for all of us.

Ride on against the tide, lil boat. Let's start here and let's keep going.