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Let’s Start Here.

By Alphonse Pierre

Quality Control / Motown

February 1, 2023

At a surprise listening event last Thursday,  Lil Yachty   introduced his new album  Let’s Start Here. , an unexpected pivot, with a few words every rap fan will find familiar: “I really wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, not just some SoundCloud rapper or some mumble rapper.” 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. 

Rap fans, including myself, don’t want to hear it, but the reality is that in large slices of music and pop culture, “rapper” is thrown around with salt on the tongue. Pop culture is powerfully influenced by hip-hop, that is until the rappers get too close and the hands reach for the pearls. If anything, the 25-year-old Yachty—as one of the few rappers of his generation able to walk through the front door anyway because of his typically Gushers-sweet sound and innocently youthful beaded braid look—might be the wrong messenger. 

What’s sour about Yachty’s statement isn’t the idea that he wants to be taken seriously as an artist, but the question of  who  he wants to be taken seriously by. When Yachty first got on, a certain corner of rap fandom saw his marble-mouthed enunciation and unwillingness to drool over hip-hop history as symbols of what was ruining the genre they claimed to love. A few artists more beholden to tradition did some finger-wagging— Pete Rock and  Joe Budden ,  Vic Mensa and  Anderson .Paak , subliminals from  Kendrick and  Cole —but that was years ago, and by now they’ve found new targets. These days, Yachty is respected just fine within rap. If he weren’t, his year-long rebirth in the Michigan rap scene, which resulted in the good-not-great  Michigan Boy Boat , would have been viewed solely as a cynical attempt to boost his rap bona fides. His immersion there felt earnest, though, like he was proving to himself that he could hang. 

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.

And the big pivot is… a highly manicured and expensive blend of  Tame Impala -style psych-rock, A24 synth-pop, loungey R&B, and  Silk Sonic -esque funk, a sound so immediately appealing that it doesn’t feel experimental at all. In 2020, Yachty’s generational peers,  Lil Uzi Vert and  Playboi Carti , released  Eternal Atake and  Whole Lotta Red : albums that pushed forward pre-existing sounds to the point of inimitability, showcases not only for the artists’ raps but their conceptual visions. Yachty, meanwhile, is working within a template that is already well-defined and commercially successful. This is what the monologue was for? 

To Yachty’s credit, he gives the standout performance on a crowded project. It’s the same gift for versatility that’s made him a singular rapper: He bounces from style to style without losing his individuality. A less interesting artist would have been made anonymous by the polished sounds of producers like  Chairlift ’s Patrick Wimberly,  Unknown Mortal Orchestra ’s Jacob Portrait, and pop songwriters Justin and Jeremiah Raisen, or had their voice warped by writing credits that bring together  Mac DeMarco ,  Alex G , and, uh,  Tory Lanez . The production always leans more indulgent than thrilling, more scattershot than conceptual. But Yachty himself hangs onto the ideas he’s been struggling to articulate since 2017’s  Teenage Emotions : loneliness, heartbreak, overcoming failure. He’s still not a strong enough writer to nail them, and none of the professionals collecting checks in the credits seem to have been much help, but his immensely expressive vocals make up for it. 

Actually, for all the commotion about the genre jump on this project, the real draw is the ways in which Yachty uses Auto-Tune and other vocal effects as tools to unlock not just sounds but emotion. Building off the vocal wrinkle introduced on last year’s viral moment “ Poland ,” where he sounds like he’s cooing through a ceiling fan, the highlights on  Let’s Start Here. stretch his voice in unusual directions. The vocals in the background of his wistful hook on “pRETTy” sound like he’s trying to harmonize while getting a deep-tissue massage. His shrill melodies on “paint THE sky” could have grooved with  the Weeknd on  Dawn FM . The opening warble of “running out of time” is like Yachty’s imitation of  Bruno Mars imitating  James Brown , and the way he can’t quite restrain his screechiness enough to flawlessly copy it is what makes it original.

Too bad everything surrounding his unpredictable and adventurous vocal detours is so conventional. Instrumental moments that feel like they’re supposed to be weird and psychedelic—the hard rock guitar riff that coasts to a blissful finale in “the BLACK seminole.” or the slow build of “REACH THE SUNSHINE.”—come off like half-measures.  Diana Gordon ’s falsetto-led funk on “drive ME crazy!” reaches for a superhuman register, but other guest appearances, like  Fousheé ’s clipped lilts on “pRETTy” and  Daniel Caesar ’s faded howls on the outro, are forgettable. None of it is ever  bad : The synths on “sAy sOMETHINg” shimmer; the drawn-out intro and outro of “WE SAW THE SUN!” set the lost, trippy mood they’re supposed to; “THE zone~” blooms over and over again, underlined by  Justine Skye ’s sweet and unhurried melodies. It’s all so easy to digest, so pitch-perfect, so safe.  Let’s Start Here. clearly and badly wants to be hanging up on those dorm room walls with  Currents and  Blonde and  IGOR . It might just work, too. 

Instead, consider this album a reminder of how limitless rap can be. We’re so eager for the future of the genre to arrive that current sounds are viewed as restricting and lesser. But rap is everything you can imagine. I’m thinking about “Poland,” a song stranger than anything here: straight-up 1:23 of chaos, as inventive as it is fun. I took that track as seriously as anything I heard last year because it latches onto a simple rap melody and pushes it to the brink. Soon enough, another rapper will hear that and take it in another direction, then another will do the same. That’s how you really get to the future. 

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Let’s Start Here.

The first song on Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here. is nearly seven minutes long and features breathy singing from Yachty, a freewheeling guitar solo, and a mostly instrumental second half that calls to mind TV depictions of astral projecting. “the BLACK seminole.” is an extremely fulfilling listen, but is this the same guy who just a few months earlier delivered the beautifully off-kilter and instantly viral “Poland”? Better yet, is this the guy who not long before that embedded himself with Detroit hip-hop culture to the point of a soft rebrand as Michigan Boy Boat? Sure is. It’s just that, as he puts it on “the BLACK seminole.,” he’s got “No time to joke around/The kid is now a man/And the silence is filled with remarkable sounds.” We could call the silence he’s referring to the years since his last studio album, 2020’s Lil Boat 3, but he’s only been slightly less visible than we’re used to, having released the aforementioned Michigan Boy Boat mixtape while also lending his discerning production ear to Drake and 21 Savage’s ground-shaking album Her Loss. Collaboration, though, is the name of the game across Let’s Start Here., an album deeply indebted to some as yet undisclosed psych-rock influences, with repeated production contributions from onetime blog-rock darlings Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson and Patrick Wimberly, as well as multiple appearances from Diana Gordon, a Queens, New York-hailing singer who made a noise during the earliest parts of her career as Wynter Gordon. Also present are R&B singer Fousheé and Beaumont, Texas, rap weirdo Teezo Touchdown, though rapping is infrequent. In fact, none of what Yachty presents here—which includes dalliances with Parliament-indebted acid funk (“running out of time”), ’80s synthwave (“sAy sOMETHINg,” “paint THE sky”), disco (“drive ME crazy!”), symphonic prog rock (“REACH THE SUNSHINE.”), and a heady monologue called “:(failure(:”—is in any way reflective of any of Yachty’s previous output. Which begs the question, where did all of this come from? You needn’t worry about that, says Yachty on the “the ride-,” singing sternly: “Don’t ask no questions on the ride.”

January 27, 2023 14 Songs, 57 minutes Quality Control Music/Motown Records; ℗ 2023 Quality Control Music, LLC, under exclusive license to UMG Recordings, Inc.

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Lil Yachty’s Great Gig in the Sky

Since the release of his Lil Boat mixtape in 2016, Lil Yachty has cultivated a peculiar rap career that has benefited from versatile musical interests. The Atlanta rapper, singer, and producer’s early work juggled booming southern trap drums, gauzy synths, unclearable samples , and melodic sensibilities on loan from children’s television. Shifting listlessly between disaffected snark and sweet repose, the best songs answered the question of what Brian Wilson’s teenage symphonies might’ve sounded like if he’d grown up hanging around the Migos. On future projects, Yachty leaned into the gruff anthems of his labelmates on Atlanta’s Quality Control Music, toughening up on 2018’s Lil Boat 2 in some of the ways Drake did on Scorpion the same year, this after dividing critics and listeners with the synthpop and reggae excursions on Yachty’s 2017 debut studio album Teenage Emotions .

Restlessness saves his catalog from the pedestrian work of peers chasing the sound of a beloved early mixtape. Lil Yachty is always up to something , quietly penning an undisclosed piece of the City Girls smash “Act Up,” or producing a chunk of Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss , or logging an unlikely chart hit about sneaking promethazine through customs . He’s a lightning rod for guys who see a new wave of absurdists and crooners as a displacement of rap traditionalism (rather than a continuation of a detailed history within it); he knows what the fans are into and where they’re getting into it online, so accusations about his music ruining hip-hop are complicated by every unforeseen success. The work varies greatly in style as well as quality, but being difficult to pin down also buys him freedom to make unusual plays.

Let’s Start Here , his fifth album and first full-length excursion into psychedelic rock, didn’t spawn entirely from nowhere, and not just because it sprung a leak under the name Sonic Beach a few weeks back. His appearance on a remix for Tame Impala’s Slow Rush jam “Breathe Deeper” hits a few of the markers the new album visits: the taste for psychotropic drugs and the interaction between the shimmering sound achieved by an elaborate pedal board and raps that feel both lightly thought through and also spirited and spontaneous. The first song, “The Black Seminole,” outlines the project’s guiding ethos, from its burbling, delay-drenched analog-synthesizer sound to the trippy changes and show-stopping vocal performance by “Bad Habit” co-writer Diana Gordon — all of which amount to an attempt to jam every idea housed in Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon into a single seven-minute performance. Bolstered by memorable spots from Gordon (who gives the Clare Torry screams in “Failure” and “Seminole” her all), Fousheé (whose softCORE album served rockers like “Die” and “Bored” that share Yachty’s love of walls of noise), and Justine Skye, the new album makes more space for women in its love songs than most rappers percolating on the charts tend to care to now. (Note also the presence of one Daystar Peterson in the credits as a co-writer on “Paint the Sky.”)

Let’s Start Here journeys back in time and out to space and sometimes up its own ass. It’s a drug odyssey that delightfully defies expectations whenever it’s not overindulging, taking its adulation for its influences from pastiche to parody, pushing its sound from psych to cacophony. Much will be made of Kevin Parker’s impact here, because Tame is also a project about savvily jumbling ideas from other eras and getting synthesizers to feel as delicately enveloping as puffs of smoke. It’s also an oversimplification of the scope of Let’s Start Here to call it Lil Yachty’s Tame album. Patrick Wimberly co-produced every song, and the snap of the drum sound and the flair for gooey horn accompaniment are assets Chairlift — Wimberly’s former group with Caroline Polachek and Aaron Pfenning — used to employ. U.K. producer Jam City and Yves Tumor collaborator Justin Raisen sat in on a lot of these, too; the maximalist sonics and the mix of love songs and acid-addled horror here are both a result of its pick of personnel and an authentic re-creation of the wild fluctuations of a lurid trip.

Its intriguing bio- and band chemistry are Let’s Start Here ’s gift and curse. “Running Out of Time” kicks off with drums that feel like Thundercat’s “Them Changes” (which, in turn, feels like Paul McCartney’s “Arrow Through Me”) and a bubbly bass line evoking “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. Pushing through to a gorgeous bridge, matching vocals with Skye, Yachty pokes out from under the shadow of his forebears and delivers one of the finest bits of music he’s ever made. The blissed out “The Ride” plants the Texas rapper Teezo Touchdown into a wobbly groove that could’ve fit into last year’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. It feels like both songs could collapse at any moment, hanging a sharp turn into an unflattering section wrecking the momentum they built. Equally prone to swift tense shifts and long detours, Let’s Start Here meanders a great deal between highlights, raining sheets of sound that soak and weigh down the delicate grooves it’s trying to build. “Paint the Sky” sounds like a radio hit dropped into a flooded pit cave. These songs sink or swim on Lil Yachty’s ability to steady himself amid a maelstrom of phase-shifted guitars, delay-kissed drums, and synths shrouded in reverb. He’s a good study and a great hook man, but the novelty of some of his experiments wear off as ideas repeat and choruses get smothered. The less they tinker, the better.

Restraint guides Let’s Start Here to a few of its most sublime moments. “Pretty” will draw comparisons to Childish Gambino’s Awaken My Love! and the hit slow jam “Redbone,” but the drum programming recalls the stuff Prince did with the LinnDrum and the vocal performances feel inspired by cloud rap, a sensibility teased out in a cocky, carefree verse by Fousheé . “Say Something” strikes gold coolly poking around the pillowy synth pads and echoing drums of ’80s pop in the same way recent albums from the Weeknd picked up where Daft Punk left off in marrying dueling interests in 20th- and 21st-century popular music. “Pretty” and “Say Something” keep things relatively simple, stacking a few complementary ideas on top of each other and allowing space to breathe. (Other producers might abuse the clav hits in the latter for the old-school feel they bring, but this group lets them drift in and out of frame, recalling the minimalist trap lullabies on the back end of Lil Boat .) The noisier and less structurally sturdy cuts that surround them feel like the jams a band works through on the way to more refined compositions, before taking them on the road where they grow new layers of sound and significance. Let’s Start Here begs to be untangled in a live setting the way artists drawn to the tactile and communal experience of music tend to, allowed to drift over warm air, playing during the sunny days and reckless nights it describes.

Maybe this album is the new beginning its title implies, a first step toward tighter songcraft on the horizon, and maybe Yachty will pop back up in six to 18 months’ time on some different shit entirely, as is often his tendency. The new record finds him sniffing around the same intersections of pop, rock, psych, and soul as “Bad Habit” or Frank Ocean’s “Pretty Sweet,” sacrificing the brevity of his hits for a purposeful sensory overload, which sometimes works in his favor but sometimes encumbers tracks that ought to seem weightless. It is important for young artists to get the space to grow and change and eat mushrooms and make weird but enthusiastic indie-rock music.

Let’s Start Here fits into a long tradition of pleasant curveballs from rappers, unheralded classics like Q-Tip’s Kamaal the Abstract, side projects like the Beastie Boys and Suicidal Tendencies offshoot BS2000 , imperfect genre excursions like Kid Cudi’s WZRD , and effortless R&B pivots like Tyler, the Creator’s Igor . Yachty is stumbling down well-trod pathways, learning lessons imparted on generation after generation of listeners ever since Pink Floyd’s international breakthrough 50 years ago and taking metaphysical journeys endeavored since humans first discovered fungi and plants that made them see sounds and smell colors. The sharpest songs here could go toe-to-toe with the best in the artist’s back catalog, and the worst ones sound like excitable demos for various guitar pedals. Let’s Start Here isn’t Lil Yachty’s greatest work, but it goes over better than the pitch — “Poland” guy does shrooms and jams on instruments — implied it might. And if shoegaze-adjacent rockers like “I’ve Officially Lost Vision” and sound experiments like the one at the end of “We Saw the Sun” drone-pill even a fraction of the audience, it was all worth it.

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Lil Yachty Ready to Get Going With New Album ‘Let’s Start Here’

• By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

Lil Yachty appears ready to release his first new album in three years later this month. 

On social media Tuesday, Jan. 17, the rapper shared what was ostensibly the weird-as-hell cover art for his next LP — a surreal image of a group of besuited adults sporting some deranged smiles — along with the title and release date: Let’s Start Here out Jan. 27. 

Lil Yachty then cryptically added, “Chapter 2,” before thanking fans “for the patience.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by C.V T (@lilyachty)

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“I met Andrew from MGMT, and I’ve been talking to a bunch of people. I met Kevin Parker [of Tame Impala], I’ve been talking to him. It’s just inspiring,” he said. “I got a bunch of side projects I’m going to drop before my next album. But what I’m trying to do on my next album, I’m trying to really take it there sonically.”

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Lil Yachty Delivers New Psychedelic Rock Album ‘Let’s Start Here.’

Lil Yachty’s new album, Let’s Start Here, continues to further the star’s reputation as an innovative savant. The new album is 15 tracks in length, delivering a new experience for fans.

Let’s Start Here was crafted in areas ranging from El Paso to Brooklyn, with Lil Yachty immersing himself in day and night sessions. The result is a Psychedelic Alternative album executive produced by SADPONY. The album is influenced by Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon and experiential psychedelic journeys.

Ahead of the album, Yachty released a skit titled “Department of Mental Tranquility.” In the skit, Yachty strolled a hallway entering what would be the first step into the rest of his life. Playing multiple roles, Yachty was introduced to his upcoming float experience in a sweltering room until it overcomes his body, and he is directed to room 10. What you hear is the result of that trip, double entendre, don’t even ask me how.

You can see the skit and hear the full album below.

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How Lil Yachty Ended Up at His Excellent New Psychedelic Album Let's Start Here

By Brady Brickner-Wood

The evening before Lil Yachty released his fifth studio album,  Let’s Start Here,  he  gathered an IMAX theater’s worth of his fans and famous friends at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City and made something clear: He wanted to be taken seriously. Not just as a “Soundcloud rapper, not some mumble rapper, not some guy that just made one hit,” he told the crowd before pressing play on his album. “I wanted to be taken serious because music is everything to me.” 

There’s a spotty history of rappers making dramatic stylistic pivots, a history Yachty now joins with  Let’s Start Here,  a funk-flecked psychedelic rock album. But unlike other notable rap-to-rock faceplants—Kid Cudi’s  Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven  comes to mind, as does Lil Wayne’s  Rebirth —the record avoids hackneyed pastiche and gratuitous playacting and cash-grabbing crossover singles; instead, Yachty sounds unbridled and free, a rapper creatively liberated from the strictures of mainstream hip-hop. Long an oddball who’s delighted in defying traditional rap ethos and expectations,  Let’s Start Here  is a maximalist and multi-genre undertaking that rewrites the narrative of Yachty’s curious career trajectory. 

Admittedly, it’d be easy to write off the album as Tame Impala karaoke, a gimmicky record from a guy who heard Yves Tumor once and thought: Let’s do  that . But set aside your Yachty skepticism and probe the album’s surface a touch deeper. While the arrangements tend toward the obvious, the record remains an intricate, unraveling swell of sumptuous live instruments and reverb-drenched textures made more impressive by the fact that Yachty co-produced every song. Fielding support from an all-star cast of characters, including production work from former Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Justin Raisen, Nick Hakim, and Magdalena Bay, and vocals from Daniel Caesar, Diana Gordon,  Foushée , Justine Skye, and Teezo Touchdown, Yachty surrounds himself with a group of disparately talented collaborators. You can hear the acute attention to detail and wide-scale ambition in the spaced-out denouement on “We Saw the Sun!” or on the blistering terror of “I’ve Officially Lost Vision!!!!” or during the cool romanticism of “Say Something.” Though occasionally overindulgent,  Let’s Start Here  is a spectacular statement from hip-hop’s prevailing weirdo. It’s not shocking that Yachty took another hard left—but how exactly did he end up  here ?

In 2016, as the forefather of “bubblegum trap” ascended into mainstream consciousness, an achievement like  Let’s Start Here  would’ve seemed inconceivable. The then 18-year-old Yachty gained national attention when a pair of his songs, “One Night” and “Minnesota,” went viral. Though clearly indebted to hip-hop trailblazers Lil B, Chief Keef, and Young Thug, his work instantly stood apart from the gritted-teeth toughness of his Atlanta trap contemporaries. Yachty flaunted a childlike awe and cartoonish demeanor that communicated a swaggering, unbothered cool. His singsong flows and campy melodies contained a winking humor to them, a subversive playfulness that endeared him to a generation of very online kids who saw themselves in Yachty’s goofy, eccentric persona. He starred in Sprite  commercials alongside LeBron James, performed live shows at the  Museum of Modern Art , and modeled in Kanye West’s  Life of Pablo  listening event at Madison Square Garden. Relishing in his cultural influence, he declared to the  New York Times  that he was not a rapper but an  artist. “And I’m more than an artist,” he added. “I’m a brand.”

 As Sheldon Pearce pointed out in his Pitchfork  review of Yachty’s 2016 mixtape,  Lil Boat , “There isn’t a single thing Lil Yachty’s doing that someone else isn’t doing better, and in richer details.” He wasn’t wrong. While Yachty’s songs were charming and catchy (and, sometimes, convincing), his music was often tangential to his brand. What was the point of rapping as sharply as the Migos or singing as intensely as Trippie Redd when you’d inked deals with Nautica and Target, possessed a sixth-sense for going viral, and had incoming collaborations with Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen? What mattered more was his presentation: the candy-red hair and beaded braids, the spectacular smile that showed rows of rainbow-bedazzled grills, the wobbly, weak falsetto that defaulted to a chintzy nursery rhyme cadence. He didn’t need technical ability or historical reverence to become a celebrity; he was a meme brought to life, the personification of hip-hop’s growing generational divide, a sudden star who, like so many other Soundcloud acts, seemed destined to crash and burn after a fleeting moment in the sun.

 One problem: the music wasn’t very good. Yachty’s debut album, 2017’s  Teenage Emotions, was a glitter-bomb of pop-rap explorations that floundered with shaky hooks and schmaltzy swings at crossover hits. Worse, his novelty began to fade, those sparkly, cheerful, and puerile bubblegum trap songs aging like day-old french fries. Even when he hued closer to hard-nosed rap on 2018’s  Lil Boat 2  and  Nuthin’ 2 Prove,  you could feel Yachty desperate to recapture the magic that once came so easily to him. But rap years are like dog years, and by 2020, Yachty no longer seemed so radically weird. He was an established rapper making mid mainstream rap. The only question now was whether we’d already seen the best of him.

If his next moves were any indication—writing the  theme song to the  Saved by the Bell  sitcom revival and announcing his involvement in an upcoming  movie based on the card game Uno—then the answer was yes. But in April 2021, Yachty dropped  Michigan Boat Boy,  a mixtape that saw him swapping conventional trap for Detroit and Flint’s fast-paced beats and plain-spoken flows. Never fully of a piece with his Atlanta colleagues, Yachty found a cohort of kindred spirits in Michigan, a troop of rappers whose humor, imagination, and debauchery matched his own. From the  looks of it, leaders in the scene like Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, and YN Jay embraced Yachty with open arms, and  Michigan Boat Boy  thrives off that communion. 

 Then “ Poland ” happened. When Yachty uploaded the minute-and-a-half long track to Soundcloud a few months back, he received an unlikely and much needed jolt. Building off the rage rap production he played with on the  Birthday Mix 6  EP, “Poland” finds Yachty’s warbling about carrying pharmaceutical-grade cough syrup across international borders, a conceit that captured the imagination of TikTok and beyond. Recorded as a joke and released only after a leaked version went viral, the song has since amassed over a hundred-millions streams across all platforms. With his co-production flourishes (and adlibs) splattered across Drake and 21 Savage’s  Her Loss,  fans had reason to believe that Yachty’s creative potential had finally clicked into focus.

 But  Let’s Start Here  sounds nothing like “Poland”—in fact, the song doesn’t even appear on the project. Instead, amid a tapestry of scabrous guitars, searing bass, and vibrant drums, Yachty sounds right at home on this psych-rock spectacle of an album. He rarely raps, but his singing often relies on the virtues of his rapping: those greased-vowel deliveries and unrushed cadences, the autotune-sheathed vibrato. “Pretty,” for instance, is decidedly  not  a rap song—but what is it, then? It’s indebted to trap as much as it is ’90s R&B and MGMT, its drugged-out drums and warm keys able to house an indeterminate amount of ideas.

Yachty didn’t need to abandon hip-hop to find himself as an artist, but his experimental impulses helped him craft his first great album. Perhaps this is his lone dalliance in psych rock—maybe a return to trap is imminent. Or, maybe, he’ll make another 180, or venture deeper into the dystopia of corporate sponsorships. Who’s to say? For now, it’s invigorating to see Yachty shake loose the baggage of his teenage virality and emerge more fully into his adult artistic identity. His guise as a boundary-pushing rockstar isn’t a new archetype, but it’s an archetype he’s infused with his glittery idiosyncrasies. And look what he’s done: he’s once again morphed into a star the world didn’t see coming.

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• Album Reviews

Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here. (Album Review)

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This might be the one for Lil Yachty.

Honorable mention. reach the sunshine., “reach the sunshine.” is a five-star track. why didn’t it make my top 5 because i’m stupid, that’s why..

From a quality standpoint, no other song on this album is touching “REACH THE SUNSHINE.” It is gorgeously structureless, extremely hypnotizing, and impressively organic. The song blends hip-hop elements, rock elements, and classical elements ingeniously. “REACH THE SUNSHINE.” doesn’t have a future in nightclubs; it has a future in Fantasia 2.

5. sAy sOMETHING

Remember when we used to make fun of high school simps that listened to music like this who are the fools now.

So, Lil Yachty’s vocals in “sAy sOMETHING” aren’t amazing, but I think that his passion (Which everyone should respect) carries him to the finish line of the song. He really does a good job of creating a sound that brings out his vulnerable, youthful, and charming side. Yachty literally gives all of his heart to his woman here; let’s pray that she doesn’t have Dak Prescott’s throwing arm.

4. running out of time

Who knew yachty had some childish gambino in him (please don’t take this sentence literally).

“running out of time” just feels like the kind of track Childish Gambino would slaughter. It features Kaytranada-like production (Which Gambino loves) and a vintage sound that the Atlanta actor flirted with quite a bit in the past. While Yachty doesn’t quite sound like Gambino vocally in the song (That’s probably an understatement), I do think that the flair he sings with is comparable. I also think he fully understood the kind of melodies and bridges the production needed. Yachty understood the assignment here.

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3. the ride-

My soul went for the greatest f**king cruise ever while i was listening to “the ride-.”.

You can’t call yourself a true music fan if you don’t appreciate all of this song’s elements (Besides Yachty’s vocals). “the ride-” is a trippy, crafty, utopian, slick, romantic, Homeboys in Outer Space-Esque experience that you will need 3D glasses for to fully enjoy. Your Tesla can’t take you for a ride like this!

2. The Alchemist

Remember when we used to make fun of emo-white kids that listened to music like this who are the broccoli-with-cheese-eating dummies now.

Remember when we were kids and would jump on our parent’s bed while they were at work, but immediately ran to our rooms and acted like we were peacefully doing our homework when they got back home? This song feels like the musical version of that situation. “The Alchemist” has two sounds: A tumultuous/stormy one courtesy of Lil Yachty, and a sparkly/gentle one courtesy of Fousheé. The way the two sounds meld, creating an experience that only folks who do HIIT workouts can relate to, is f**king rad (Yes, I used the word rad here).

I don’t know why, but this song made me a little emotional. Underdog, give this f**king song 5 stars!

1. drive ME crazy!

Remember when we used to make fun of our parents when they would almost tear their acls dancing to music like this who are the prune juice-drinking fools now.

“drive ME crazy!” is my kind of s**t! Y’all can keep the “smoking on that *insert name* pack” music. First and foremost, kudos must go to the unbelievable performance featured guest Diana Gordon puts up on the song. It sounds replenishing, invigorating, and nostalgic in the most youthful way possible. Kudos must also go to the bloomy/funky/synth-heavy production and Yachty’s slick, I-am-only-doing-this-because-my-girl-told-me-I-had-to contributions.

SONG BY SONG BREAKDOWN

1. the BLACK seminole. (4/5)

2. the ride- (4.5/5)

3. running out of time (3.5/5)

4. pRETTy (3.5/5)

5. :(failure(: (N/A)

6. THE zone~ (4/5)

7. WE SAW THE SUN (3.5/5)

8. drive ME crazy! (5/5)

9. IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!! (4/5)

10. sAy sOMETHINg (4/5)

11. paint THE sky (4/5)

12. sHouLd i B? (4/5)

13. The Alchemist. (5/5)

14. REACH THE SUNSHINE. (5/5)

Wow, Lil Yachty went left field with this album and succeeded.

I absolutely love it when artists refuse to be shoved in boxes. When Lil Yachty first emerged onto the music scene, he was dropping hard-hitting rap verses here and there, but he always made it a mission to show the world that he was into numerous genres. While he never went full-blown with his experimenting in the past, I always had an inkling that he wanted to at some point. In this album, Yachty does just that.

Let’s Start Here is more psychedelic rock than trap hip-hop. More daring than safe. More vintage-sounding than trendy. More elaborate than basic. More Patrick Mahomes than game manager. More Chrisean Rock with Blueface than Chrisean Rock with nobody. While I wouldn’t say that Yachty’s vocal performances on the album are anything close to Mariah Carey’s level (His voice still makes me a little queasy), I do applaud him for finding the most complex/fearless routes singing-wise to make it to the finish line of tracks.

You can’t tell me that Yachty wasn’t cooking up these tracks with Tame Impala, Kaytranada, and Beethoven. I love how intimately rebellious, multi-layered, hazy, intoxicating, romantic, and/or nostalgic each song sounds. The album forces your ears to both engage and think beyond your workout playlists. If we’re going to praise Shaq for making jump shots, your relatives for making steak instead of Turkey for Thanksgiving, and Joe Biden for learning how to use Twitter, we need to praise musicians when they tap into sounds that are really f**king hard to conquer.

Quincy is the creator of Ratings Game Music. He loves writing about music, taking long walks on beaches, and spaghetti that fights him back.

5 thoughts on “ Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here. (Album Review) ”

Respectfully, pRETTy is probably my favorite song in the album

So many people like that track. I do think it’s very good too. I’m not mad at it!

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Let’s Start Here.

“something ether”.

Flex Up (with Future and Playboi Carti)

Strike (Holster)

sAy sOMETHINg

Lil Yachty made a psychedelic rock album and it’s pretty good

Lil Yachty is pressing restart. “Let’s Start Here” is his fifth studio album and as the name implies, it marks the beginning of a new era — one that came out of nowhere. Last autumn, Yachty released his hit single “Poland,” which he described as “just trolling.” “Poland” is addictively jarring and hypnotically catching — and it leaves the listener wanting more. But “Let’s Start Here” is a departure from “Poland,” infusing psychedelic rock with soul. The end result is an abrupt pivot away from “Poland” or “Lil Boat,” and, despite a few rough edges, was a genre-transcending mishmash that shows off Yachty’s versatility. 

The album starts off with a bang with “the BLACK seminole.,” featuring lush guitars and Yachty’s autotuned singing. While Auto-Tune sometimes gets a bad rap, I found that it complimented the instrumentals of the song. Yachty uses his vocals to paint a picture of the Black Seminoles, an Afro-Indigenous group comprised of descendants of Seminole people and freed slaves. Yachty meticulously crafts this scene as a metaphor to discuss his coming-of-age, which is paralleled by the gradual evolution of his sound. It’s a soulful start to the album, setting itself apart from Yachty’s past work right away.

Yachty continues his metaphorical storytelling on “the ride-” where he likens his fame to a terrifying ride, singing on the chorus “Don't ask no questions on the ride/ Making eye contact is suicide/ When I'm alone with my thoughts, I'm terrified/ that's why I need you here, just by my side.” The guitars once again carry the song to enormous heights, and the chorus makes for a catchy earworm. The following song “running out of time” sees Yachty and Justine Skye opt for a more pop-oriented sound. Except for the anthemic chorus, Yachty’s vocals here don’t mesh particularly well with the guitars.

My favorite song on this album, hands down, is “pRETTy.” As soon as you press play, the most magical instrumentals leave your speakers, granting free real estate for one of the most euphoric songs to reside in your head for life. The chorus capitalizes on the trippy autotuned vocals that distinguished “Poland,” with Fousheé’s hypnotic vocals complementing it in the end.

It should be clear that this album’s greatest strong suit is its instrumentals. That’s not to say that the vocals or lyricism are bad, because nothing could be further from the truth. However, the tracks where the instrumentals take a backseat are the weaker tracks of the album. For example, “:(failure(:” operates more as a spoken word piece, despite being produced by as accomplished a musician as Mac DeMarco. What Yachty says on the track isn’t particularly groundbreaking; he speaks about the power of perspective in one’s own situations: “When someone broke into my house I felt like someone certainly needed more than I did, these things are replaceable,” he croons. I think poverty is a little more complicated than that.

He concludes the track by preaching that failure is not a negative thing, but rather something that should motivate you. That sounds like the type of thing you’d see on a poster at your grandma’s house. There are many factors of failure and setbacks that go beyond wealth and fame, so I’m not sure that this message is necessarily universal. 

So I do think that the album grinds to a halt when Yachty lets the instrumentals take a backseat. Luckily, however, that rarely happens. “Let’s Start Here” allows itself to experiment, resulting in energizing songs like “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!” and psychedelic-soul bangers like “sAy sOMETHINg.” Daniel Caesar’s vocals fit perfectly on the final track, “REACH THE SUNSHINE,” allowing the album to end on a definite high note.

I love when artists go outside of their comfort zone because such projects allow artists to create their most impactful work. Being largely unfamiliar with the genre of psychedelic rock, “Let’s Start Here” provides me with the perfect starting point, and I’m sure the same can be said about many other listeners. Yachty truly created something special with this project, and if “Let’s Start Here” is just the beginning, then I am very excited to see where he ends up.

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Questlove Has High Praise for Lil Yachty’s New Album ‘Let’s Start Here’: ‘I Really, Really Love This Record’

"I love when artists pull off a good departure record," The Roots' frontman said.

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Diplo, A-Trak, and more music enthusiasts shared their excitement in the comments, as the project also wowed them. 

Last week, Yachty held a listening for Let’s Start Here in New Jersey and New York City, where Drake, Lil Baby, and Offset showed support. The 14-track effort includes features from Foushee, Diana Gordon, Teezo Touchdown, and more. 

Check out Quest’s post below.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Questlove (@questlove)

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Lil Yachty Brings the Hits, and His Psychedelic Rock Adventure, to Central Park: Concert Review

By Jordan Moreau

Jordan Moreau

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Lil Yachty ‘s latest album, “Let’s Start Here,” did just that: It gave the rapper’s career a new starting point by setting aside his hip-hop origins and rebooting into psychedelic rock. Yachty 2.0 stopped by Central Park’s SummerStage and showed off his new sound, while also giving original fans a healthy dose of his classic bangers.

He started last year with “Poland,” a simple, yet massively viral rap hit that put him back on everybody’s radar. With his new album, though, Yachty defied expectations and released a completely non -rap record that had more in common with the classic psychedelia of Pink Floyd and Funkadelic (or more recent iterations like Tame Impala) than anything in his previous discography.

The new chapter of Yachty had begun with this surreal, spacey production, and fans flooded into New York’s Central Park on Friday night to see it for themselves. Yachty’s band and singers appeared on stage first, all dressed in white, while trippy, dream-like visuals projected onto a huge screen behind them. The funky tunes of “drive ME crazy!” opened the show, with Yachty gliding in singing the soft vocals of “the ride” and “pRETTy.”

The typical 808s and bass of a normal rap concert wouldn’t be heard for a few more songs, as the band played an electric guitar-assisted rendition of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” before Yachty transitioned into the hip-hop portion of the night. It was as if the concert was divided into Act I and II, and finally the old Yachty came out to play some of his bangers. After the indie rock start, fans opened up the crowd to mosh along with “Yacht Club,” “Flex Up” and “Coffin.” Strobe lights and lasers illuminated the stage as Yachty jumped around screaming his lyrics as his braids and beads danced wildly in the air.

After the release of “Let’s Start Here,” Yachty got a shoutout from Questlove for “pushing the envelope” and being an example of “music’s future,” beyond just the rap genre. Whatever may come next, (he’s supposedly developing an action movie based on Uno — yes, the card game ) fans will want to keep an eye on where Yachty sails to next.

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Lil Yachty's Label Concrete Boyz set to release their first collaboration project 'It's Us Volume 1' this April

A ccording to NFR Podcast, Lil Yachty's record label, Concrete Boys (also known as Concrete Boyz), is set to release their first collaboration project titled It's Us: Volume 1 on all streaming platforms this April.

NFR's official X account posted on March 25, confirming the release date of the Concrete Boyz project as April 5, 2024. The post also revealed the featured artists, including Lil Yachty, Karrahbooo, Draft Day, DC2Trill, and Camo. The tweet read:

"LIL YACHTY, KARRAHBOOO, DRAFT DAY, DC2TRILL, CAMO!"

The tracklist for the upcoming album is yet to be confirmed, but based on the artists involved in this project, it's likely to showcase a fusion of alternative rock, R&B, and rap.

Lil Yachty and Concrete Boys Discography

Yachty (Lil Boat), who is currently signed to Quality Control, incorporated his own Record Label Concrete Boyz, a few years ago in an attempt to bring upcoming artists in his genre to the spotlight.

Over the years, Yachty and his team have been slowly recruiting rappers and artists from across the music industry, from 31 Camo to Karahbooo, all of whose music appears to have been inspired by Boat's discography.

Lil Yachty has also collaborated with his signees on some of his previous work. Below are two songs officially released alongside Artist Draft Day:

• Demon Time (Feat. Draft Day)
• POPOVICH Freestyle (Feat. Draft Day)

On May 29, 2020, Yachty released his fourth studio album, titled Lil Boat 3 , across all DSPs (Digital Streaming Platforms) via Quality Control Music and Motown Records. The 19-track project included a track titled Concrete Boys .

This track acted as the official introduction to the "Concrete Crew" he was building with his record label. The song includes a shout-out to the Concrete Boys in the chorus when Yachty implies that when his "back is against the wall," he can always rely on his crew to come through for him.

Another notable bar from Lil Yachty's song has been listed below:

"I just woke up, dreamin' 'bout the rose (Oh my God) / They had ni**as 'round me who don't stand on toes (Hell nah) / Barely ever do I think about my foes / How much longer will I live? Only God knows."

On December 16, 2023, a song titled Mo Jams was released on the official YouTube channel for Concrete Boys, alongside a music video that featured most of the CB roster, except for 31 Camo. Mo Jams was produced by Rawbone and acts as the first official collaboration between the members of Concrete Boys.

This track, although not being released on DSPs, has garnered significant attention for an upcoming collaboration project by racking up almost 4 million views on YouTube.

As fans await a Concrete Boys collaboration album, Lil Yachty continues to impress fans by following up on his widely acclaimed 2023 project Let's Start Here, which found the rapper delving into a more experimental sound with his music.

Notably, Yachty has been releasing a string of singles, which include his collaboration with Fred Again.. on stayinit. The rapper was also featured on Lyrical Lemonade's debut studio album, All Is Yellow , which dropped two months ago in January 2024.

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Lil Yachty Has a Wild Clapback to Fans Saying He Stole Playboi Carti’s Flow

Lil Yachty is clapping back at fans who accused the rapper of stealing Playboi Carti 's flow on a new song.

Lil Yachty Has a Wild Clapback to Fans Saying He Stole Playboi Carti's Flow

On Wednesday (March 20), Yachty responded to chatter online surrounding his flow on an unreleased song Kai Cenat previewed  during a livestream last Monday (March 18). Fans were quick to call out Lil Boat's cadence on the track, with many of them comparing it to Carti's.

"Biting him? How did I bite him?" Yachty wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in response to a critic. "If that's the case i been workin with cardio since 2019-2020 on record yall fans be smoking the strongest d**k."

Cardo is known for producing all of Carti's most recent releases : "H00dByAir," "Ketamine," "EvilJ0rdan" and "Backr00ms." So fans were quick to clap back at Yachty's clapback.

"The song is terrible," the user @hadmyback replied . "The beat is a ‘H00DBYAIR’-type beat. Your flow is an obvious attempt at a Carti flow, and you used a ‘what’ ad-lib in the same cadence [that] Carti uses.”

Read More: Lil Yachty, Dr. Umar Disagree on Reason Why Black Women Get BBLs

Lil yachty announces new album.

Boat had previously announced in an  Instagram  post on Feb. 13 that he is dropping a  new album with James Blake .

"I mean, granted, I think James has worked with a quite substantial amount of hip-hop  artists. But this project is so left for both of us," the  Quality Control  rapper said in the video clip. "And then, aside from the one picture that James posted, which—he doesn’t have many followers actually—I don’t think people know that we know each other exist. So it’s just gon’ be like, 'What the f**k? When they do this?'"

Lil Yachty had previously dropped off "A Cold Sunday" on Feb. 2.

Read More: Playboi Carti Accused of Copying Classic Slipknot Mask

See Lil Yachty's reaction to biting Playboi Carti's flow below.

See Lil Yachty's Reaction to Being Accused of Stealing Playboi Carti's Flow

See which rappers are touring in 2024, more from xxl.

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Lil Yachty on Claim He Copied Playboi Carti's Sound: 'Y'all Fans Be Smoking the Strongest Dick'

Yachty also pointed out that he's been working with producer Cardo for several years.

Lil Yachty has a message for those he believes are "smoking the strongest dick" when it comes to assessing his music .

As seen below, Kai Cenat recently previewed an unreleased Yachty track during a stream, prompting some listeners to start comparing the clip to the work of Playboi Carti , who's expected to drop his long-teased Whole Lotta Red follow-up at some point this year.

kai cenat just previewed a new lil yachty snippet on stream pic.twitter.com/wi75w15snr — isaiah✰ (@tlop444) March 19, 2024

One tweeted response in particular ultimately caught Yachty's attention, with a listener arguing that Carti "can't try 1 new sound without rappers immediately biting him." Yachty disagreed, as did other listeners.

“[B]iting him? how did i bite him?” Yachty asked. “[T]he beat? if that’s the case i been workin with cardo since 2019-2020 on record yall fans be smoking the strongest dick.”

Cardo’s production discography is extensive and notably includes several recent Carti releases, " H00DBYAIR " among them. He’s also worked with Drake , Travis Scott, Kendrick Lamar, and more. Just last month, he was enlisted for Yachty's " Something Ether ."

As fans will recall, Yachty urged Akademiks to " stop drinking " in July of last year after a claim about Carti inspiring his then-recent artistic output.

"He said he’s in the studio with Carti and Carti made him change his entire sound. Facts," Akademiks claimed at the time, swiftly spurring a response from Yachty, who called him "so insane" for making the remarks.

"I didn’t tell u this at all,” Yachty added.

Next for Yachty is a run of tour dates including previously announced performances at the Dreamville Festival in Raleigh and Coachella in Indio, both slated for April. As for more new music, Yachty recently spoke out about a full-length collaborative project with James Blake, tentatively titled Bad Cameo .

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The Best Rising Artists of Spring 2024

Get to know 9 artists who are leading the next generation of music..

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As Spring breathes new life into us once again, we’re introduced to a new selection of rising artists making their marks in music. This season, Hypebeast is focusing on nine artists who are creating and exploring their unique sounds in the realms of Afrobeats, indie rock, rap, bedroom pop, trap and more, further underscoring the notion that genres no longer serve as confines for the next generation of musical artists.

For fans of: Montell Fish, Toby Mai, Isabel LaRosa

Midas The Jagaban

Seafood Sam

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Drake Talks ‘For All the Dogs,’ Life on Tour, and Taking a Health Break

Listen to his show only on SiriusXM.

“How can I describe this album [ For All the Dogs ] to you?” Drake said last night during a new episode of his exclusive SiriusXM Sound 42 show, Table for One . “I’ll keep it short and sweet: Please don’t ask me what I feel if you can’t handle the real … That’s probably the alternate album title, too.”

Listen to Drake’s new episode of  Table for One  exclusively on the SiriusXM App

“I just got out of the studio. Fourth quarter magic, me and [J.] Cole going crazy,” Drake said as he began his live broadcast from Ristorante Sotto Sotto in Toronto.

“I’m very, very proud. I’m very, very grateful that any of you are still interested in even listening to what the boy’s got to say,” he continued. “And I hope that we’ll find common ground once again. I do think you’re going to really enjoy this. I think I did my f****** job, if I do say so myself.”

For All the Dogs , Drake’s eighth studio album following 2022’s  Honestly, Nevermind , dropped today (October 6). The album’s 23 tracks include the two previously-released singles “Slime You Out” and “8AM in Charlotte.”

“I hope that these songs are songs that you can enjoy, and you can tell people that they’re about somebody else,” Drake told listeners.

Drake Gives a Health Update

Now that  For All the Dogs is out, Drake slipped in a warning for fans that he “probably won’t make music for a little bit” — but for an important reason.

He explained, “I got some other things I need to do for some other people that I made promises to. I’m going to be real with you, I need to focus on my health, first and foremost … I’ve been having the craziest problems for years with my stomach.”

Therefore, he’s planning to “lock the door on the studio for a little bit” so he can take the time “get right.”

“I don’t even know what a little bit is. Maybe a year or something, maybe a little longer,” Drake added.

How the It’s All a Blur Tour Affected Drake

Drake and 21 Savage wrap up their co-headlining tour this month, which started back in July and consisted of over 50 dates across North America.

“I have a tough time understanding it. I think I’m overwhelmed by the love from tour,” Drake continued on  Table for One . “I have a tough time understanding why my mind, when it’s overworking itself, why my mind is something that’s intriguing to any of you. But damn, I’m so happy that it is.”

The tour featured guests like J. Cole and Travis Scott, with support acts including Skillibeng, Sleepy Hallow, Central Cee, Sexyy Red, Zack Bia, and Lil Yachty — the last of whom even called in to Drake’s show last night.

“I’m nothing without all of your opinions, all of your critiques, and all of your feelings and emotions,” Drake told his fans. “When I’m right or when I’m wrong, or when you’re right or when you’re wrong, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just, we’re a merger.”

Lil Yachty Thinks Drake’s Drunk

Lil Yachty, one of the support acts on Drake’s It’s All a Blur Tour, called in to Table for One to congratulate Drake on For All the Dogs, citing how important it is for brothers to support each other.

“I’m proud of you always,  For All the Dogs , man,” Lil Yachty said.

He was hilariously surprised at how Drake sounded over the phone and assumed his struggles to form a sentence were due to alcohol, not emotions.

“I won’t lie, I’ve never heard you this drunk, ever,” Lil Yachty told Drake.

“I’m really not drunk, I’m just in a great mood,” Drake insisted.

Sound 42 (Ch. 42) is the vision of multi-platinum recording artist and OVO Sound Co-founder Drake. A radio experience reflecting his interests in music and culture from all walks of life. Expect boundary-pushing hip hop and R&B alongside global vibes from the Caribbean, Latin America, The U.K. and beyond. The channel’s flagship show is OVO Sound Radio a weekly, “musical art gallery” hosted and curated by OVO Co-Founder Oliver El-Khatib.

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Listen to u2’s final sphere concert on their siriusxm channel, kacey musgraves performs live during her ‘howard stern show’ debut, music to sleep to, from ambient and downtempo to white noise and nature sounds, music, sports, news and more.

All in one place on the SiriusXM app