Right now, that person is Lil Yachty.
The Mabelton, Georgia rapper took part in Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians event recently and shockingly shared that he feels as though rap is kinda “terrible” right now.
“Hip-hop is in a terrible place,” Yachty said. “The state of hip-hop right now is a lot of imitation. It’s a lot of quick, low-quality music being put out. It’s a lot less risk-taking, it’s a lot less originality. People are too safe now. Everyone is so safe. I rather take the risk than take the L.”
One rapper that Lil Boat really likes at the moment however is JID. When asked specifically about the Dreamville artist, Yachty had nothing but praise for him.
“I love JID,” he said. “JID is such a beautiful person. He has the spirit of like a real Atlanta Negro and he’s such a good, kind person and he just always embraced me with open arms so I got nothing but respect for JID. I never heard a bad verse from JID ever.”
Elsewhere in the conversation the topic of his latest album “Let’s Start Here” arose. Released in January, the 14-track album saw Yachty flex his creative muscle with an unexpected departure from rap and experimenting with several different genres including hard rock. Praised by both fans and critics, many thought the collection would garner Yachty a Grammy nomination but the album was snubbed and he admits to being a bit disappointed but not harping on it for too long.
“I just worked really hard from start to finish. I just don’t know. I handled it way better than I thought I did. Like I thought I was gonna be like throwing shit around like mad as hell, but I didn’t care. When it came out I just honestly 0.5 seconds after deleted it out of my brain. It’s crazy because the last eight months I’ve been thinking about it but when it came out I was like, ‘Ok’ because at the end of the day it is what you love. Creating that album built such a level of confidence for me. And I’ve loved my artistry all over again on another level and I’ve become so confident in myself and knowing that was the starting point for what I can do and what I’m going to do.”
