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EVENTS
Track of the month - Lil Yachty ‘66' featuring Trippie Redd
RnB/Hip Hop | Tuesday 13th March 2018 | Jake
Since Lil Yachty burst on to the scene with his bubblegum-trap opus Lil Boat a lot has changed. Not least with the rapper himself. Yachty moved away from the synthetic, incredibly catchy melodies of his debut tape and has sought recognition as a somewhat serious rapper instead.
While there has been some improvement in lyricism (not so much in flow), he’s a long way from being lauded for it. In trying to position himself as the fourth member of the Migos he shed the identity that made him such a unique artist.
However, in keeping with the remarkable pace of today’s rap scene, a throng of artists successfully imitated Yachty’s ability to carve open a niche. Ironically, more than a couple feature on Lil Boat 2, the spiritual sequel of the tape that landed him fame in 2016.
The tape mirrors the predicament Yachty currently finds himself in as an artist, it’s searching for a consistent sound but cannot manage it, experimenting with a farrago of sounds, rarely managing to convince in any particular one.
Lil Boat 2 instead offers a more than welcoming space for the features. Bizarrely, production is always geared to favour the artist featuring, a brave call considering Yachty has a notoriously rigid flow and is a fairly one-dimensional rapper. Surprisingly, this method works well on some tracks (see ‘NBAYOUNGBOAT’ featuring NBA YoungBoy, and ‘she ready’ with PnB Rock), none more so than ‘66’ featuring Trippie Redd.
During Yachty's move towards the rap style associated with his home city of Atlanta, he lost some of the cute, emotional tones to his lyrics. Fans of that sound were not left wanting for long though, a crystallised form of emotional rap exploded on SoundCloud, led by artist such as XXXtentacion and Trippie Redd. The lyrics focused on heartbreak, emotional trauma and mental health issues, with the occasional glorifying of violence and debauchery.
Trippie Redd
Trippie Redd, a pioneer of pained, mournful trap, is drafted in by Yacthy to provide the beating heart of the sorrowful 66, a song that recalls the atmosphere of the more emotional tracks on the original Lil Boat, without surrendering any individuality.
66 has a beat that begs for the crooning tone of Trippie, and Yachty adapts himself well to provide a neat chorus and a solid verse. The song is a rare instance of an experimental hit on a tape with a fair few misses.
