The 21-year-old Bay Area artist Yatta Bandz, known for straddling rap and R&B with his melodic style reminiscent of PnB Rock, recently released his Acrylic EP. He spoke with Rolling Out about the project.
Who were your musical inspirations?
Well I’m gonna say this off the rip. My pops. But besides him, I have to say, Drake definitely was like a big person I used to listen to, especially when I was younger. He was on a run. Lil Wayne, for obvious reasons. Definitely him. Them two right there, if I’m being honest.
“A L O N E” sounds different from the rest of the tape, but is one of the best songs on it. Why did you make this song?
So it was really just one of those days. I was sitting down in the car, smoking, doing my little freestyling type stuff. But it was like it’s one of those days where nothing’s going right, nothing’s working … I just started praying. When I’m by myself, this is the only time I ever get this kind of vibe. And that’s the only person I can sit there and talk to about how I’m feeling. Like he knows things, the Man above, things I never told a soul. And this song came out of one of those moments when I was just talking to God.
What inspired “My Mistake” and why did you pick Lil Bean as the feature?
The inspiration behind that was really just relationships that you have with people that you might not have thought would go a certain way, but it ended up going that way anyway. And for Bean, funny enough … when I was listening to the song, I was already telling my engineer, like, damn Bean be loving to hop on these kind of beats and next thing you know, Bean calls while we in the studio and he’s in the studio. We play him the beat and he was like, I’m gonna pull up right now. Pulled up, got in the booth, laid down his whole verse. Same night, swear to God.
How did “Work Of Art” come together?
So TNT hit me, he produce a lot of songs for Rod Wave. So he hit me like bro, you tough, let me send some beats … Soon as he sent that beat pack through, “Work Of Art” was the first one out of the pack he sent me. I was like, oh, yeah, we got one. I knew it. Honestly, bro, with that one, I really wasn’t even thinking too much when I was writing, I just let my mind just go. As soon as i heard the beat I kind of knew where or the direction I wanted to take the song.
