Review Summary: Caring without the care.
Let me just be upfront and say it: if you need the albums you love to be above reproach, pristine and flawless and able to withhold any scrutiny,
Let's Start Here. is not the rollercoaster you're looking for. "Don't ask no questions on the ride", Yachty implores us in his inimitable wail near the beginning on the album, and that feels like as good advice as any I can give.
Let's Start Here. is messy, ridiculous, admirable in its ambition and absolutely insane in its execution. If the albums you love are loved because you get tangled in the weeds with them, be absolutely baffled by them and come out wondering what the hell you liked about them, time to go in for another spin to find out? Then, hop up on the ride and keep those damn questions to yourself.
With that out of the way, yes, Lil Yachty - took the wok to Poland, Lil Boat Lil Yachty, the very same - has made a psychedelic pop album. By the end of the opening three song-stretch, he's not-so-subtly homaged "The Great Gig in the Sky", paid generous tribute to Kid Cudi and engineered a funky neo-soul cut that wouldn't be out of place on Tyler, the Creator's
IGOR. It just gets wilder from there, until the artist we used to know as rapper Lil Yachty is referencing fucking "Pyramid Song" by Radiohead on the final track.
Let's Start Here. owes equal credit to the exploratory spirit of
The Love Below-era Andre, Pink Floyd, that one Tame Impala remix Yachty was actually on, and Cudi (the early material such as "All Along" and "love.", where the singer's technically bad performance seemed to matter less than the feeling and musical quality).
Reconciling all these laneways would be a hell of a job for the most experienced city planner, and Yachty is taking his first steps here into brave but uneven new ground. That's a pleasant way of saying
Let's Start Here. is a goddamn mess, in a way that reads as either charming or infuriating depending on how sincere you believe Yachty is with his intentions here. Songs dramatically morph shape and tone about every two minutes, something that's exciting when the song began badly (grunge offcut "The Alchemist." is a real example here) and incomprehensibly frustrating when the reverse is true. There's a syrupy spoken word interlude, clunky lyrics and offkey vocal performances.
That scrutiny I mentioned earlier is starting to seem like a withering daylight, but damn if
Let's Start Here. doesn't make me want to love it somehow. By virtue of how big a departure it is; by how much Yachty clearly does love the material he's homaging; by that stretch midway through, from "WE SAW THE SUN!" to the ungodly catchy "sHouLd i B?" where everything really does come into focus and the album briefly but beautifully clicks into place. Maybe the inevitable backlash will scare Lil Yachty back into the hallowed halls of SoundCloud fame, but I seriously doubt it. Something about
Let's Start Here. is made with such... if not quite care, than caring, that you can't help but come away believing Yachty will try it again. And next time, with a little more focus and steadier ground, he might just make something everybody can love.
