Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty recently came out to speak about hip-hop and has stated that the culture as a whole is in a “terrible place” and isn’t satisfied with it currently. The red-haired emcee has often been targeted for his outlandish style and low-quality music. However, he doesn’t believe he is the problem.
In a speech at Rolling Stone magazine’s Musicians on Musicians event in Brooklyn, the Teenage Emotions artist directly addressed the current landscape of hip-hop and highlighted his frustration at the lack of risks his counterparts are willing to take concerning music.
Speaking about the current state of the culture, the emcee (real name Miles McCollum) asserted, “Hip-hop is in a terrible place. The state of hip-hop right now is a lot of imitation. It’s a lot of quick, low-quality music being put out.”
He continued, “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.” Speaking about whose music he does enjoy, McCollum cited his Atlanta counterpart JID as a rapper who is content taking risks, declaring, “I love JID! JID is such a beautiful person. He has the spirit of like a real Atlanta Negro.”
He continued, “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.” McCollum took a lot of risks concerning the sonics of his latest album, Let’s Start Here, on which he experimented with several sounds outside of hip-hop, including psychedelic rock.
Speaking about the effort he put into the project, Yachty stated, “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.”
He concluded, “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.”