King of the Teens: A Biography of Lil Yachty

Miles McCollum, professionally known as Lil Yachty, has always been a polarizing figure. His first appearance in the mainstream was his feature on DRAM’s song “Broccoli”, with his signature licorice-red braids and immensely auto-tuned vocals helping to skyrocket the Atlanta native into stardom—and even earning him a Grammy nomination. Around the same time, his previously released debut mixtape Lil Boat solidified him as a hit-maker with standout tracks such as “1 Night”, posse cuts like “Minnesota”, and hard-hitting braggadocious tracks such as “Up Next 2” that bring his rapping ability to the forefront. As he continued to gain popularity, many old-school hip-hop fans viewed Yachty as another boring, repetitive addition to the “mumble rap” and SoundCloud era of the genre that exploded in 2017. However, despite his detractors, Lil Yachty is a talented artist whose action-packed career makes him a core figure in the modern hip-hop scene. 

While it’s unclear when Lil Yachty began rapping, his career started taking off towards the end of 2015, beginning with the release of “1 Night” on SoundCloud. “1 Night” had everything a massive breakout single would need: a catchy hook, upbeat chords, and a memorable video. According to the song’s Wikipedia page, the viral YouTube video by SenseiLeFox titled “when bae asks what are we” is responsible for the song's massive success, as its usage of “1 Night” drove millions of people to Yachty’s SoundCloud page. The single peaked at #49 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list and is now certified double platinum at 325 million streams.

With all eyes on him, Yachty continued to gain momentum throughout 2016, starring as a model in Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 fashion show and featuring on Chance the Rapper’s mixtape Coloring Book. Yachty then dropped another mixtape of his own, Summer Songs 2, which featured the likes of Offset and G Herbo, and established his now disbanded rap group Sailing Team which featured rappers Byou, Kay the Yacht, TheGoodPerry, BIGBRUTHACHUBBA, Soop, JBan$2Turnt, Kodie Shane, and K$upreme. However, I consider the peak of his 2016 run his inclusion in XXL Magazine’s 2016 Freshman Class. 

Image credit: XXL

The Freshman Class is a yearly issue of XXL Magazine that began in 2007 in which 10 up-and-coming rappers are featured on the cover and participate in freestyles, cyphers, and interviews on YouTube. For smaller artists, being included in the issue is a great opportunity to gain a lot of visibility and show off their rapping ability to a wider audience, and it also creates a space for new rappers to connect with each other and subsequently work together. YouTube comments on XXL cyphers argue that recent classes have been sub-par, but the discussion under the videos made for the class of 2016 seems to suggest that in the eyes of rap fans, it was the greatest ever created. Lil Yachty’s cypher, which also included Lil Uzi Vert, Denzel Curry, 21 Savage, and Kodak Black, showcased the artists combining their different styles into what would become the most popular XXL cypher ever released, with 215 million views on YouTube to date. What makes Lil Yachty’s verse on the cypher interesting is that it was most Yachty fans’ first time hearing him rap with no auto-tune. His high-pitched, cartoonish tone of voice and high-speed flow later caught the attention of many, most notably Detroit rapper Tee Grizzley, who enlisted Yachty’s help on their epic collaboration “From the D to the A”. The song features Yachty and Grizzley viciously spitting braggadocious bars back and forth in one of Yachty’s hungriest verses to date. The intro hits like a truck, and some of my favorite bars occur right before the beat drop, where Yachty raps:

“Big ass Bimmer, big Benz, and my Bentley next
Stop playing round on my phone ho, give me sex 
Watch on my wrist out of date, but it’s Rolex 
Grizzley up next, I’m up now, strap your bullet vest”

Image credit: Amazon

In my opinion, Lil Yachty’s winning streak began slowing down in May of 2017 when he dropped his debut studio album, Teenage Emotions. While I think this project is his weakest sonically, the project’s artwork is one of my favorites from Yachty’s discography. When discussing the project with Genius, Yachty explained that on the cover of a project titled Teenage Emotions, he wanted to feature things he never saw before he was in high school. For example, the cover features a gay couple, a person with albinism, someone with vitiligo, and another with dyed green hair. Even though the content of this project was lacking, the intent behind it resonates with me: “When you realize who you are, where you’re going, who you’re becoming through teenage youth years, embrace that shit. Don’t be afraid to be who you are. Be yourself. Embrace it. That’s why I put that shit out there on the cover” (McCollum, 2017). It was clear that Yachty was taking his own advice—in that same year, he started regularly painting his nails regardless of what anyone thought of him. He only grew more into himself with the release of his next project, Lil Boat 2. 

Image credit: Amazon

Lil Boat 2 dropped in March of 2018, and to me, it contains songs that are some of his best. In my opinion, what makes Yachty’s projects amazing is his ability to shift the sound of his voice to fit whoever he wishes to collaborate with. The project’s 11th track, “NBAYOUNGBOAT”, follows a similar structure to “From the D to the A”, as Lil Yachty and Baton Rouge native YoungBoy Never Broke Again go back and forth, building off each other’s energy and never breaking from YoungBoy’s signature themes of violence and weaponry. In “66”, a melodic track with fellow rapper Trippie Redd, Yachty sings the chorus and second verse with a sung, heavily auto-tuned voice that matches Trippie’s vocals, while in “MICKEY”, his track with former Migos member Offset, he switches off the autotune and focuses mainly on his flow to match Offset's skills. Lil Boat 2 made it clear that Yachty shines most through big name collaborations, which he further established in his third project Nuthin’ 2 Prove, dropped later that year. The project features many other Atlanta artists such as Offset, Lil Baby, Gunna, and Young Nudy, but the one song that outshines every other moment on Nuthin’ 2 Prove is “Get Dripped”, a bass-boosted track featuring the high-pitched energy of Playboi Carti. Both Carti and Yachty were extremely popular in the mainstream at the time, leading to the song immediately blowing up and ultimately becoming one of Yachty’s most popular songs with 134 million streams on Spotify to date. After an epic year, Yachty took a step back from the spotlight in 2019, but eventually returned for the rollout of Lil Boat 3. 

Image credit: Amazon

Lil Boat 3 was the beginning of an era for Lil Yachty marked by a new nickname: Concrete Boy. The name stems from his record label that was founded the same year, Concrete Boyz, which has since released music from frequent Yachty collaborators like Draft Day and Dc2trill. The Concrete Boy era is one of my favorites of Yachty’s, as this is when he started relying less on the auto-tuned singing heard on his breakout hits and more on his flow and rapping ability. In my opinion, tracks 3 through 6 off of Lil Boat 3 (“Split/Whole Time”, “T.D”, “Pardon Me”, and “Demon Time”) are some of the best in Yachty’s entire discography and all have incredible verses from both Yachty and his features. The project received such high praise from his fanbase that Yachty subsequently dropped Lil Boat 3.5, a deluxe edition with 8 new songs.

Image credit: Amazon

Yachty continued to develop his Concrete Boy persona with the release of his mixtape Michigan Boy Boat, an homage to Michigan’s vibrant music scene. Throughout the project, Lil Yachty holds his own on tracks with Michigan rap veterans such as Rio Da Yung OG, Babyface Ray, and Babytron. Personally, as a fan of Michigan rap, I was excited that Lil Yachty was experimenting with new styles—however, nothing could have prepared me for his latest project, Let’s Start Here.

Let’s Start Here. is a psychedelic adventure through Yachty’s complex mind. In my opinion, it’s a triumphant feat for him, as it explores the sounds of alternative rock, a genre with many differences to rap. The flawless production and alternative vibe of the project separate it from everything he’s done previously. Yachty sets the tone of the project with its opening track, “the BLACK seminole.”, a rock-inspired ballad that stays relaxed for the majority of its runtime before launching into a wild crescendo in its final moments, carried by singer Diana Gordon’s vocals. Later in the project, Yachty and Gordon perfectly capture the feeling of both love and desperation on the feel-good anthem “drive ME crazy!”. What makes this track even more impressive is that it transitions into “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!”, a high-energy headbanger with incredible live instrumentation. 

In my opinion, since the release of the project, Lil Yachty has been on a non-stop winning streak, releasing hard-hitting singles that return to his rap roots and have found immense popularity as a result. The song “Strike (Holster)” caused yet another viral moment on TikTok, as fans had been waiting for it to drop ever since Yachty hosted an Instagram livestream in which his sister sang along to the song’s catchy chorus. Yachty then appeared in the immensely popular content creation team AMP’s annual Freshman Cypher, and later turned his verse into an individual song titled “SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY” and dropped it alongside the track “Slide” as part of a two-song EP. Most recently, he released the song “TESLA” which included a music video shot by popular music video director Cole Bennett, and most recently, “The Secret Recipe”, a sample-heavy song featuring J. Cole.

To me, Lil Yachty is a force in hip-hop to be reckoned with. With each project he’s proven that he can both shine on his own and adapt himself to allow both him and a featured artist to make amazing tracks. He’s made a name for himself in his home state and earned the respect of the city of Detroit through Michigan Boy Boat and his several collabs with Tee Grizzley. He’s proven that he’s not just a rapper, but a multitalented artist capable of adventurous projects such as Let’s Start Here. He’s currently on tour with the members of his very own record label. On “The Secret Recipe”, Yachty raps some bars about those who refuse to acknowledge all of his accomplishments: 

“The standards have collapsed, they wrote me in with lames 
They treat me like I’m them, they hate I overcame 
Refuse to pat my back, refuse to shake my hand 
Refuse to give me props when I am not around 
Refuse to act like I ain’t shift the sound, like I ain’t push the culture 
Like several vultures ain’t come after me”

Yachty has proven his detractors wrong throughout his career, accomplishing all of his goals with ease. He does this while remaining a teen at heart, and unapologetically himself.