On January 27th, Lil Yachty released his new fifth studio album “Let’s start here.”. Featuring artists such as Teezo Touchdown, Justine Skye and Foushee. The sound and genre are very different compared to his other albums, especially since Yachty’s last project, “Birthday Mix 6” was a rap project. It is not really something you would expect from a Lil Yachty album. 

The project was “birthday mix 6” and if you listened to them back-to-back you would have most definitely noticed a difference in the sound and its huge change of genre. “Birthday Mix 6” has more of a hip hop/ rap sound while “Let’s start here.” has a psychedelic rock sound to it. 

During an interview with Complex, Lil Yachty had this to say about the album:  

“I’ve always wanted to [make an alternative album] but now I’ve met all these amazing musicians and producers […] It’s like a psychedelic alternative project. It’s different. It’s all live instrumentation […] I’ve changed my dynamic […] I’m creating music a whole lot differently.” 

The perception for the album has been very positive so far. Artists such as Schoolboy Q and Questlove have praised Yachty for this album. 

The production throughout the albums is great and refreshing. What makes it refreshing to listen to is that it isn’t something you would expect from a Yachty project.  

Prior to the albums release, Lil Yachty stated that Pink Floyd’s “Dark side of the moon” was a source of inspiration for the album 

The first track, “the BLACK Seminole.” Is a great opener to the album, despite it being six minutes long. As said by Lil Yachty himself, the track “feels like a Tarantino movie scene”. 

There are multiple themes throughout the album, the themes are about love, wealth, having somewhere to belong and failure. Songs like “drive ME crazy!”, “sAy sOMETHINg”, and “paint THE sky” all have themes love. “running out of time” and “THE zone-“are about having a place to belong. 

Meanwhile, there’s unique tracks like the fifth track, “:(failure(:”, which is a spoken word track. In this song, Yachty talks about, wealth, success, and dealing with failure. “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, and you never know how close you are to success”. 

Other unique tracks include the seventh and ninth tracks of the album: “WE SAW THE SUN!” and “IVE OFFICIALY LOST ViSiON!!!!”.  

What makes “WE SAW THE SUN!” unique is the Bob Ross sample at the end, and what makes “IVE OFFICIALY LOST ViSiON!!!!” unique is that while the previous song, “drive ME crazy!” is about love and has more of a pop vibe to it, the track has a completely different sound and theme.  

Overall. The album is great, seeing Lil Yachty move into a new direction is also great to see and we hope to see him make more albums with this type of sound.