Lil Yachty – “Slide”

Earlier this year, Atlanta rap star Lil Yachty raised a whole lot of eyebrows when he released Let’s Start Here., a full album of Tame Impala-style psych rock. That record caused some seriously mixed feelings, and Yachty doubled down on his change of sound, disparaging all of his previous albums. A couple of months later, though, Yachty returned to a more rap-centric sound with his standalone single “Strike (Hoster).” Today, with his Field Trip tourlooming, Yachty has dropped two new songs that are just straight-up rap.

Lil Yachty is not Rakim, and his slurry and Auto-Tuned take on the Atlanta trap sound is plenty psychedelic in its own way. On the new songs “Slide” and “Solo Steppin Crete Boy,” Yachty delves back into that sound, and there’s plenty of gooey melody in there. “Solo Steppin Crete Boy” is what Yachty performed as his part in the AMP Freshman Class Cypher last month. Meanwhile, “Slide” has a video that ends with Yachty displaying what appears to be an OVO chain. (He and Drake are old friends and collaborators.) Neither of those songs approach the bugged-out, insane catchiness of “Poland,” the random viral one-off that Yachty released last year, but both of them move in that direction.