Lil Yachty — Lil Boat 3: Review
Lil Yachty goes to prove like everything else in the world the long endured culture can’t be different for older people. At one point he was the definition of “OK BOOMER” when he proclaimed his happiness on a podcast with New Jersey Rapper Joe Budden for Complex. It’s as hip hop has a limit where it can be discredited, but that’s a topic for any other day.
The HAPPY Atlanta rapper, Lil Yachty comes this weekend with an album full of intriguing directions and cheesy mixtape production at its lowest of points.
His new album, Lil Boat 3, comes with an ominous atmosphere, like a Travis Scott clone that came out with a deformed voice and tried to recreate similar style of beats from scratch.
At least It stays consistent on that for the most part.
Most of the tracks on Lil Boat 3 sound either — delivered at 75% strength or Yachty seems like he doesn’t belong, like on “T.D.” Unlike them, “Till the Morning,” plays off both of Yachty and Young Thug’s strengths to deliver a solid banger.
“T.D.” delivers one of the most interesting uses of a sample from a song by the Teriyaki Boyz. Yachty’s posse cut has him pitting against some of the better contemporaries. Along with A$AP Rocky, Tyler, the Creator, and Tierra Whack, everyone delivers verses oozing with big dick energy. But Lil Yachty is extremely lost in the midst of three rappers who rap circles around him.
Lil Yachty makes strides to mature his sound, but there comes a time in a man’s life where they need to switch it up. Having to read lyrics on genius while listening because of the autotune, further proves that there is a bigger problem at hand. It’s why he gets lost in an astute lyrical building on “T.D.” or “Demon Time.”
At times when Lil Yachty shows signs of maturity there are moments where he falls back on his bullshit. “Westside,” tries so hard to show us he can truly flex and rap but it never takes it anywhere interesting. It’s just adding glamour to some of our wildest dreams of the west coast. It sounds so forced that it loses itself to mediocrity.
Rapping about the lavish style one lives and their successes of all ranges is great because it comes from the hype and ignant style of hip hop. But sometimes they have to get clever with their allegories. Lil Yachty raps “Tough on the ‘net, but in person, a new Gandhi / Stand on my racks and I’m Mo Bambi / I mean Mo Bamba,” on “Black Jesus” which is a way he sometimes keeps it interesting on the album. Though it may come off as comical.
For most of Lil Boat 3 it sounds like Lil Yachty list of 100 problems where 99 of them being what Jay-Z’s problem wasn’t, bitches. Tracks like “Can’t Go” and “Don’t Forget,” are a pure snooze fest, while the latter sounds like Lil Yachty just being petty.
Ironically, some of the best output on this album is when Yachty takes some darker tones and weaves them into these uniquely melancholic tracks. There are tracks like “Up There Music,” that grabs all of his strengths into something new. But alas it doesn’t escape the black hole that is basic lyrical content with no weight.
Lil Boat 3 caps at a pretty crazy song to length ratio with 19 songs in 54 minutes. It disembowels its core with filler-sounding tracks that is mirrored by some one dimensional production.
3/10
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