Lil Boat 3 - Lil Yachty
Intro:
Lil Yachty is a pioneer of the generational shift in Hip-Hop music. Initially getting popular during 2015, Yachty has been and continued to be one of QC’s premiere artists. I never really enjoyed his music at first, but has style has grown on me throughout the years. I can’t call myself a fan but I 100% am not a hater anymore. Furthermore, the 2 lead singles for Lil Boat 3 (along with it being another installment) had me extremely excited for this album.
Strengths:
Anyone looking for Yachty to lean more into his older sound, the production is somewhat the closest to it. Mainly due to most of these trap beats having really fun & bright melodies, along with sounding high budget. “Till The Morning” is a standout in the tracklist as the beat carries a tropical vibe with a very punch kick & bouncy drum pattern (no heavy 808 bass).
Yachty himself goes back to being more melodic with his delivery. This leads to come catchy moments like the 2 lead singles (I really enjoyed both). His unique vocal inflection adds to this & he sounds a lot more boastful and confident on this album than usual (to me at least). The features do an incredible job here. Tierra Wack, Tyler & Rocky all SNAP on the posse cut “TD” which samples the Tokyo Drift melody. I also really enjoyed Lil Keed & Future’s appearances on both of their tracks.
Weaknesses:
I feel like Yachty sounded like WAY too many other rappers on this album. Examples: His flow and delivery sound exactly like Playboi Carti’s on the first two songs. Some others are on “Demon Time” (reminds me of Uzi’s flow) & “Lemon Head” (similar to Chief Keef’s). His voice does add uniqueness to this critique, but it was still very distracting for me.
The production on the album is pretty good for the most part, but there are still some samey/generic ones present. I mean, the song “From Down Bad” sounds EXACTLY like “Oprah’s Bank Account”. Additionally, a lot of the melodies on here reminded me of Pierre Bourne’s despite him only producing one song.
Last, this album is unnecessarily long. A lot of filler songs could’ve been taken out because after Track 10/11, the album really starts to drag on. The lack of unique topics and subpar lyrics really make this issue so much worse. I find that the first half had a lot better songs than the last half. There is variation from having features & some of the beats, but ultimately the album gets extremely repetitive in a lot of areas.
Other Thoughts:
I can tell that he really tried to recapture some of the magic that blew him up. It’s not his fault, but I think too many have ran with his style & done a lot more with it. His demeanor is also very different & more mature. I do find it really weird and hard to take serious whenever he raps about street stuff though. I also think the features, singles & cover art made me set my expectations way too high, to be fair.
Overall: 3/10
I really wanted to go higher with the score but this album just did not grow on me at all with each listen. I think if he cut it down to the 10-12 best songs, it at least would’ve felt like a more complete album to me. I feel like Yachty genuinely enjoys making music & there were songs on here that I did enjoy over the rest. I’m just not sure how this album will be received by others outside of his core fanbase. Thank you all for reading and you can listen to the album for yourself with the link below.
