Album Review: Let's Start Here.
By: Mateo Lopez-Castro
Let’s Start Here. is not Lil Yachty’s Magnum opus.
On first listen, this project struck me as a Pink Floyd knockoff. Yachty’s writing sounded lukewarm and sloppy. His nasally vocals felt coated in an unnecessary amount of auto-tune, disrupting the impressive production supporting it. I was thoroughly disappointed, but not surprised. Yachty’s musical career had, in my eyes, become stagnant, and my first listen showed me that it would stay that way.
But good things take time.
I drove myself to insanity listening to this album, obsessively repeating each track in order to understand the hype it was receiving. After days of repetition, I can say that my conclusion has stayed the same, but my thought process has changed. As flawed as it might be, Let’s Start Here. is captivating. It is a rebirth for Yachty, convincing me to start fresh with the artist who I once only saw as a Soundcloud rapper with a static career.
Yachty’s experimentation with psychedelic rock deserves not only our attention but our praise. His vocals, though oversaturated, are so addictively unsettling that they keep me hooked. Yes, it might not mesh as well as his normal voice does, like we see in “drive ME crazy!” or “THE zone~”. Nevertheless, his howling falsettos on songs like “sHouLd i B?”, add the upper octave needed to contrast the deep undertones of his backing band.
The production is fantastic, reminding me a lot of the sonics on Wish You Were Here or Meddle. This album adopts the dragged-out buildups, expansive acoustics, and heavy synth arrangements used by its predecessors. But while the Pink Floyd influence is evident, Yachty still goes in his own direction. He allows his instrumentals to speak for themselves, letting them carry the weight of the album on their shoulders –especially on songs like “the BLACK seminole.”, “paint THE sky”, and “REACH THE SUNSHINE.”
The features, specifically Diana Gordon and Justine Skye, breathe life into their respective songs, often giving us a break from the cacophony of sound that Yachty provides. Justine delivers a soothing performance towards the end of “THE zone~”. Diana grooves with the funk beat on “drive ME crazy!” perfectly and contrasts the hostility of “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!” with her smooth vocals. Some guest appearances do fall flat, though. Daniel Caesar’s vocals on “REACH THE SUNSHINE.” are forgettable. They fade away into the background, melting into the dark, dulcet tones that almost swallow him completely.
Lyrically, Yachty’s moments of lighthearted optimism are infectious and can be easily identified throughout the album. The goofy, laid-back lines shine through on tracks like “pRETTy”, making it hard not to love the sort of playfulness he treats his words with.
However, Yachty's writing is still weak overall. His attempts to dive into more serious themes of failure and fame on cuts like “:(failure(:“ and “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!” only end up scratching the surface. He feels out of his depth, struggling to move past a superficial lyricism that bores me. On the latter song, we see this in full effect:
“I've officially lost vision / I've been sent to a mental prison / I've been forced to make some terribly bad decisions”
Yachty struggles to add a sense of intensity to his writing, one needed to match the raging sounds of the track. His words depend on their musical accompaniment to provoke emotion, not being able to hold their own in the organized chaos of this project.
That being said, Let’s Start Here. is an expression of a maturing Yachty, setting itself apart from other recent experimental projects. In past years we’ve seen mainstream rappers put out records that lazily explore new sounds (i.e. Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind) or that force them to an unintelligible extreme (i.e. Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red). I expected this album to be just like its counterparts: progress for the sake of progress. Yet, it’s here in his new experiment that Yachty finds a balance between pushing the envelope and staying true to his identity as an artist.
Let’s Start Here. is not a masterpiece. It is not even the best experimental album in recent times. But it is, for me, an undeniably powerful project, and a side of Yachty I hope to see more of in the future.