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Miles Parks McCollum (born August 23, 1997), known professionally as Lil Yachty, is an American rapper, singer and songwriter. Yachty first gained recognition in August 2015 for his singles "One Night" and "Minnesota" from his debut EP Summer Songs. He released his debut mixtape Lil Boat in March 2016. On June 10, 2016, Yachty announced that he had signed a joint venture record deal with Quality Control Music, Capitol Records, and Motown Records. His mixtapes Lil Boat and Summer Songs 2 were released in 2016 and his debut studio album, Teenage Emotions in 2017. His second studio album, Lil Boat 2 was released on March 9, 2018. more »

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15 Songs That Prove Lil Yachty Can Actually Rap

The story of migos told through 10 essential songs, 15. "it takes two" (lil yachty ft. carly rae jepsen), 14. "lost files intro", 13. "up next 2" (ft. big brutha chubba and byou), 12. "hip hopper" (blac youngsta ft. lil yachty), 11. "all you had to say", 10. "peek a boo" (ft. migos), 9. "ran up a check" (cash out ft. lil yachty), 8. "neon derek jeter" (ft. riff raff and lil yachty), 7. "forever young", 5. "king of teens", 4. "up next 3" (ft. g herbo), 3. "mase in '97", 2. "from the d to the a" (tee grizzley ft. lil yachty), 1. "neon lights" (taylor bennett ft. supa bwe and lil yachty), the 20 best drake songs.

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Music Features

Lil yachty's delightfully absurd path to 'let's start here'.

Matthew Ramirez

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 29: Lil Yachty performs on the Stage during day 2 of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2017 at Exposition Park on October 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Rich Fury/Getty Images hide caption

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 29: Lil Yachty performs on the Stage during day 2 of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2017 at Exposition Park on October 29, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Lil Yachty often worked better as an idea than a rapper. The late-decade morass of grifters like Lil Pump, amidst the self-serious reign of Future and Drake (eventual Yachty collaborators, for what it's worth), created a demand for something lighter, someone charismatic, a throwback to a time in the culture when characters like Biz Markie could score a hit or Kool Keith could sustain a career in one hyper-specific lane of rap fandom. Yachty fulfilled the role: His introduction to many was through a comedy skit soundtracked by his viral breakout "1 Night," which tapped into the song's deadpan delivery and was the perfect complement for its sleepy charm. The casual fan knows him best for a pair of collaborations in 2016: as one-half of the zeitgeist-defining single "Broccoli" with oddity D.R.A.M., or "iSpy," a top-five pop hit with backpack rapper Kyle. Yachty embodied the rapper as larger-than-life character — from his candy-colored braids to his winning smile — and while the songs themselves were interesting, you could be forgiven for wondering if there was anything substantial behind the fun, the grounds for the start of a long career.

As if to supplement his résumé, Yachty seemed to emerge as a multimedia star. Perhaps you remember him in a Target commercial; heard him during the credits for the Saved by the Bell reboot; spotted him on a cereal box; saw him co-starring in the ill-fated 2019 sequel to How High . TikTok microcelebrity followed. Then the sentences got more and more absurd: Chef Boyardee jingle with Donny Osmond; nine-minute video cosplaying as Oprah; lead actor in an UNO card game movie. Somewhere in a cross-section of pop-culture detritus and genuine hit-making talent is where Yachty resides. That he didn't fade away immediately is a testament to his charm as a cultural figure; Yachty satisfied a need, and in his refreshingly low-stakes appeal, you could imagine him as an MTV star in an alternate universe. Move the yardstick of cultural cachet from album sales to likes and he emerges as a generation-defining persona, if not musician.

Early success and exposure can threaten anyone's career, none so much as those connected to the precarious phenomenon of SoundCloud rap. Yachty's initial peak perhaps seeded his desire years later to sincerely pursue artistry with Let's Start Here , an album fit for his peculiar trajectory, because throughout the checks from Sprite and scolding Ebro interviews he never stopped releasing music, seemingly to satisfy no one other than himself and the generation of misfits that he seemed to be speaking for.

But to oversell him as a personality belittles his substantial catalog. Early mixtapes like Lil Boat and Summer Songs 2 , which prophetically brought rap tropes and pop sounds into harmony, were sustained by the teenage artist's commitment to selling the vibe of a track as he warbled its memorable hook. It was perhaps his insistence to demonstrate that he could rap, too, that most consistently pockmarked his output during this period. These misses were the necessary growing pains of a kid still finding his footing, and through time and persistence, a perceived weakness became a strength. Where his peers Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti found new ways to express themselves in music, Yachty dug in his heels and became Quality Control's oddball representative, acquitting himself on guest appearances and graduating from punchline rapper to respectable vet culminating in the dense and rewarding Lil Boat 3 from 2020, Yachty's last official album.

Which is why the buzzy, viral "Poland" from the end of 2022 hit different — Yachty tapped back into the same lively tenor of his early breakthroughs. The vibrato was on ten, the beat menaced and hummed like a broken heater, he rapped about taking cough syrup in Poland, it was over in under two minutes and endlessly replayable. Yachty has already lived a full career arc in seven years — from the 2016 king of the teens, to budding superstar, to pitchman, to regional ambassador. But following "Poland" with self-aware attempts at similar virality would be a mistake, and you can't pivot your way to radio stardom after a hit like that, unless you're a marketing genius like Lil Nas X. How does he follow up his improbable second chance to grab the zeitgeist?

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Lil yachty, 'poland'.

Let's Start Here is Lil Yachty's reinvention, a born-again Artist's Statement with no rapping. It's billed as psychedelic rock but has a decidedly accessible sound — the sun-kissed warmth of an agreeable Tame Impala song, with bounce-house rhythms and woozy guitars in the mode of Magdalena Bay and Mac DeMarco (both of whom guest on the album) — something that's not quite challenging but satisfying nonetheless. Contrast with 2021's Michigan Boy Boat , where Yachty performed as tour guide through Michigan rap: His presence was auxiliary by function on that tape, as he ceded the floor to Babyface Ray, Sada Baby and Rio Da Yung OG; it was tantalizing curation, if not a work of his own personal artistry. It's tempting to cast Let's Start Here as another act of roleplay, but what holds this album together is Yachty's magnetic pull. Whether or not you're someone who voluntarily listens to the Urban Outfitters-approved slate of artists he's drawing upon, his star presence is what keeps you engaged here.

Yachty has been in the studio recording this album since 2021, and the effort is tangible. He didn't chase "Poland" with more goofy novelties, but he also didn't spit this record out in a month. Opener (and highlight) "The Black Seminole" alternates between Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix-lite references. It's definitely a gauntlet thrown even if halfway through you start to wonder where Yachty is. The album's production team mostly consists of Patrick Wemberly (formerly of Chairlift), Jacob Portrait (of Unknown Mortal Orchestra), Jeremiah Raisen (who's produced for Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira and Drake) and Yachty himself, who's established himself as a talented producer since his early days. (MGMT's Ben Goldwasser also contributed.) The group does a formidable job composing music that is dense and layered enough to register as formally unconventional, if not exactly boundary-pushing. Yachty frequently reaches for his "Poland"-inspired uber-vibrato, which adds a bewitching texture to the songs, placing him in the center of the track. Other moments that work: the spoken-word interlude "Failure," thanks to contemplative strumming from Alex G, and "The Ride," a warm slow-burn that coasts on a Jam City beat, giving the album a lustrous Night Slugs moment. "I've Officially Lost Vision" thrashes like Yves Tumor.

Yet the best songs on Let's Start Here push Yachty's knack for hooks and snaking melodies to the fore and rely less on studio fireworks — the laid-back groove of "Running Out of Time," the mournful post-punk of "Should I B?" and the slow burn of "Pretty," which features a bombastic turn from vocalist Foushee. That Yachty's vaunted indie collaborators were able to work in simpatico with him proves his left-of-center bonafides. It's a reminder that he's often lined his projects with successful non-rap songs, curios like "Love Me Forever" from Lil Boat 2 and "Worth It" from Nuthin' 2 Prove . That renders Let's Start Here a less startling turn than it may appear at first glance, and also underlines his recurring talent for making off-kilter pop music, a gift no matter the perceived genre.

At a listening event for the record, Yachty stated: "I created [this] because I really wanted to be taken seriously as an artist. Not just some SoundCloud rapper, not some mumble rapper. Not some guy that just made one hit," seemingly aware of the culture war within his own genre and his place along the spectrum of low- to highbrow. To be sure, whether conscious of it or not, this kind of mentality is dismissive of rap music as an artform, and also undermines the good music Yachty has made in the past. Holing up in the studio to make digestibly "weird" indie-rock with a cast of talented white people isn't intrinsically more artistic or valid than viral hits or a one-off like "Poland." But this statement scans less as self-loathing and more as a renewed confidence, a tribute to the album's collective vision. And people like Joe Budden have been saying "I don't think Yachty is hip-hop " since he started. So what if he wants to break rank now?

Lil Yachty entered the cultural stage at 18, and has grown up in public. It adds up that, now 25, he would internalize all the scrutiny he's received and wish to cement his artistry after a few thankless years rewriting the rules for young, emerging rappers. Let's Start Here may not be the transcendent psychedelic rock album that he seeks, but it is reflective of an era of genreless "vibes" music. Many young listeners likely embraced Yachty and Tame Impala simultaneously; it tracks he would want to bring these sounds together in a genuine attempt to reach a wider audience. Nothing about this album is cynical, but it is opportunistic, a creation in line with both a shameless mixed-media existence and his everchanging pop alchemy. The "genre" tag in streaming metadata means less than it ever has. Credit to Yachty for putting that knowledge to use.

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Lil Yachty On His Big Rock Pivot: ‘F-ck Any of the Albums I Dropped Before This One’

With his adventurous, psychedelic new album, 'Let's Start Here,' he's left mumble rap behind — and finally created a project he's proud of.

By Lyndsey Havens

Lyndsey Havens

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Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16 .

Lil Yachty: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.

It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”

For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here . For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.

It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.

Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”

His desire to move on from his past is understandable. When Yachty entered the industry in his mid-teens with his 2016 major-label debut, the Lil Boat mixtape, featuring the breakout hit “One Night,” he found that along with fame came sailing the internet’s choppy waters. Skeptics often took him to task for not knowing — or caring, maybe — about rap’s roots, and he never shied away from sharing hot takes on Twitter. With his willingness and ability to straddle pop and hip-hop, Yachty produced music he once called “bubble-gum trap” (he has since denounced that phrase) that polarized audiences and critics. Meanwhile, his nonchalant delivery got him labeled as a mumble rapper — another identifier he was never fond of because it felt dismissive of his talent.

“There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references,” he continues. “They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.”

Let’s Start Here is proof. Growing up in Atlanta, the artist born Miles McCollum was heavily influenced by his father, a photographer who introduced him to all kinds of sounds. Yachty, once easily identifiable by his bright red braids, found early success by posting songs like “One Night” to SoundCloud, catching the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder/COO of Quality Control Music, now home to Migos, Lil Baby and City Girls. In 2015, Coach K began managing Yachty, who in summer 2016 signed a joint-venture deal with Motown, Capitol Records and Quality Control.

“Yachty was me when I was 18 years old, when I signed him. He was actually me,” says Coach K today. (In 2021, Adam Kluger, whose clients include Bhad Bhabie, began co-managing Yachty.) “All the eclectic, different things, we shared that with each other. He had been wanting to make this album from the first day we signed him. But you know — coming as a hip-hop artist, you have to play the game.”

Yachty played it well. To date, he has charted 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 , including two top 10 hits for his features on DRAM’s melodic 2016 smash “Broccoli” and Kyle’s 2017 pop-rap track “iSpy.” His third-highest-charting entry arrived unexpectedly last year: the 93-second “Poland,” a track Yachty recorded in about 10 minutes where his warbly vocals more closely resemble singing than rapping. ( Let’s Start Here collaborator SADPONY saw “Poland” as a temperature check that proved “people are going to like this Yachty.”)

Beginning with 2016’s Lil Boat mixtape, all eight of Yachty’s major-label-released albums and mixtapes have charted on the Billboard 200 . Three have entered the top 10, including Let’s Start Here , which debuted and peaked at No. 9. And while Yachty has only scored one No. 1 album before ( Teenage Emotions topped Rap Album Sales), Let’s Start Here debuted atop three genre charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums , Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums .

“It feels good to know that people in that world received this so well,” says Motown Records vp of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani. “I think it’s a testament to Yachty going in and saying, ‘F-ck what everyone thinks. I’m going to create something that I’ve always wanted to make — and let us hope the world f-cking loves it.’ ”

Yet despite Let’s Start Here ’s many high-profile supporters, some longtime detractors and fans alike were quick to criticize certain aspects of it, from its art — Yachty quote-tweeted one remark , succinctly replying, “shut up” — to the music itself. Once again, he found himself facing another tidal wave of discourse. But this time, he was ready to ride it. “This release,” Kluger says, “gave him a lot of confidence.”

“I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other sh-t,” Yachty says. “It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the sh-t I was making did not add up to the sh-t I listened to.

“I just wanted more,” he continues. “I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.”

Last spring, Lil Yachty gathered his family, collaborators and team at famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch.

“I remember I got there at night and drove down because this place is like 30 miles outside El Paso,” Coach K says. “I walked in the room and just saw all these instruments and sh-t, and the vibe was just so ill. And I just started smiling. All the producers were in the room, his assistant, his dad. Yachty comes in, puts the album on. We got to the second song, and I told everybody, ‘Stop the music.’ I walked over to him and just said, ‘Man, give me a hug.’ I was like, ‘Yachty, I am so proud of you.’ He came into the game bold, but [to make] this album, you have to be very bold. And to know that he finally did it, it was overwhelming.”

SADPONY (aka Jeremiah Raisen) — who executive-produced Let’s Start Here and, in doing so, spent nearly eight straight months with Yachty — says the time at Sonic Ranch was the perfect way to cap off the months of tunnel vision required while making the album in Brooklyn. “That was new alone,” says Yachty. “I’ve recorded every album in Atlanta at [Quality Control]. That was the first time I recorded away from home. First time I recorded with a new engineer,” Miles B.A. Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist.

Yachty couldn’t wait to put it out, and says he turned it in “a long time ago. I think it was just label sh-t and trying to figure out the right time to release it.” For Coach K, it was imperative to have the physical product ready on release date, given that Yachty had made “an experience” of an album. And lately, most pressing plants have an average turnaround time of six to eight months.

Fans, however, were impatient. On Christmas, one month before Let’s Start Here would arrive, the album leaked online. It was dubbed Sonic Ranch . “Everyone was home with their families, so no one could pull it off the internet,” recalls Yachty. “That was really depressing and frustrating.”

Then, weeks later, the album art, tracklist and release date also leaked. “My label made a mistake and sent preorders to Amazon too early, and [the site] posted it,” Yachty says. “So I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” He says the biggest loss was various videos he made to introduce and contextualize the project, all of which “were really weird … [But] I wasn’t introducing it anymore. People already knew.” Only one, called “Department of Mental Tranquility,” made it out, just days before the album.

Yachty says he wasn’t necessarily seeking a mental escape before making Let’s Start Here , but confesses that acid gave him one anyway. “I guess maybe the music went along with it,” he says. The album title changed four or five times, he says, from Momentary Bliss (“It was meant to take you away from reality … where you’re truly listening”) to 180 Degrees (“Because it’s the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever done, but people were like, ‘It’s too on the nose’ ”) to, ultimately, Let’s Start Here — the best way, he decided, to succinctly summarize where he was as an artist: a seven-year veteran, but at 25 years old, still eager to begin a new chapter.

Taking inspiration from Dark Side , Yachty relied on three women’s voices throughout the album, enlisting Fousheé, Justine Skye and Diana Gordon. Otherwise, guest vocals are spare. Daniel Caesar features on album closer “Reach the Sunshine.,” while the late Bob Ross (of The Joy of Painting fame) has a historic posthumous feature on “We Saw the Sun!”

Rouzbehani tells Billboard that Ross’ estate declined Yachty’s request at first: “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean. They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.” But Yachty was adamant, and Rouzbehani played the track for Ross’ team and also sent the entire album’s lyrics to set the group at ease. “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call,” she says. “Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”

From the start, Coach K believed Let’s Start Here would open lots of doors for Yachty — and ultimately, other artists, too. Questlove may have said it best, posting the album art on Instagram with a lengthy caption that read in part: “this lp might be the most surprising transition of any music career I’ve witnessed in a min, especially under the umbrella of hip hop … Sh-t like this (envelope pushing) got me hyped about music’s future.”

Recently, Lil Yachty held auditions for an all-women touring band. “It was an experience for like Simon Cowell or Randy [Jackson],” he says, offering a simple explanation for the choice: “In my life, women are superheroes.”

And according to Yachty, pulling off his show will take superhuman strength: “Because the show has to match the album. It has to be big.” As eager as he was to release Let’s Start Here , he’s even more antsy to perform it live — but planning a tour, he says, required gauging the reaction to it. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he says. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”

While Yachty’s last full-length studio album, Lil Boat 3 , arrived in 2020, he released the Michigan Boy Boat mixtape in 2021, a project as reverential of the state’s flourishing hip-hop scenes in Detroit and Flint as Let’s Start Here is of its psych-rock touchstones. And though he claims he doesn’t do much with his days, his recent accomplishments, both musical and beyond, suggest otherwise. He launched his own cryptocurrency, YachtyCoin, at the end of 2020; signed his first artist, Draft Day, to his Concrete Boyz label at the start of 2021; invested in the Jewish dating app Lox Club; and launched his own line of frozen pizza, Yachty’s Pizzeria, last September. (He has famously declared he has never eaten a vegetable; at his Jersey City listening event, there was an abundance of candy, doughnut holes and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.)

But there are only two things that seem to remotely excite him, first and foremost of which is being a father. As proud as he is of Let’s Start Here , he says it comes in second to having his now 1-year-old daughter — though he says with a laugh that she “doesn’t really give a f-ck” about his music yet. “I haven’t played [this album] for her, but her mom plays her my old stuff,” he continues. “The mother of my child is Dominican and Puerto Rican, so she loves Selena — she plays her a lot . [We watch] the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez a sh-t ton and a lot of Disney movie sh-t, like Frozen , Lion King and that type of vibe.”

Aside from being a dad, he most cares about working with other artists. Recently, he flew eight of his biggest fans — most of whom he has kept in touch with for years — to Atlanta. He had them over, played Let’s Start Here , took them to dinner and bowling, introduced them to his mom and dad, and then showed them a documentary he made for the album. (He’s not sure if he’ll release it.) One of the fans is an aspiring rapper; naturally, the two made a song together.

Yachty wants to keep working with artists and producers outside of hip-hop, mentioning the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even sharing his dream of writing a ballad for Elton John. (“I know I could write him a beautiful song.”) With South Korean music company HYBE’s recent purchase of Quality Control — a $300 million deal — Yachty’s realm of possibility is bigger than ever.

But he’s not ruling out his genre roots. Arguably, Let’s Start Here was made for the peers and heroes he played it for first — and was inspired by hip-hop’s chameleons. “I would love to do a project with Tyler [The Creator],” says Yachty. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”

Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW ; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.

This story originally appeared in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.

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Washington Square News

‘Let’s Start Here’ is a reset for Lil Yachty’s sound

Lil Yachty reinvents his sound in “Let’s Start Here,” but his lyrics show that old habits die hard.

Aaliya Luthra

Lil Yachty’s newest psychedelic-rock album features 14 tracks including “the BLACK seminole.” and “The Alchemist.”(Illustration by Aaliya Luthra)

Sandy Battulga , Music Editor February 2, 2023

Since the release of hit singles “One Night” and “Minnesota,” Lil Yachty has based his lucrative musical career on mumble rap, a genre often defined by its simple rhymes and prevalence on SoundCloud . Lil Yachty — whose real name is Miles Park McCollum — has maintained that being known as a SoundCloud rapper is not enough for him. 

“I’m not a rapper — I’m an artist,” he said to The New York Times in a 2016 interview . “And I’m more than an artist. I’m a brand.” 

In his new album “Let’s Start Here,” Lil Yachty breaks out of the constraints of SoundCloud mumble rap once and for all. Sound-wise, the album is rooted in psychedelic rock. The first track, “the BLACK seminole.,” has a reverberating bass line that sweeps across the entire song, providing a syrupy tone that coats the rest of the album. Lil Yachty has cited Pink Floyd as a major inspiration for this album. This influence is especially evident in “the BLACK seminole.,” which features a virtuosic guitar solo, fast-paced synthesizer melody and epic vocal aria. 

This album experiments with composition and ambient soundscapes in an intriguing way. The fifth track, “:(failure(:,” showcases cavernous drones and guitar chords, over which Lil Yachty speaks, ruminating on failure and what it’s like to be “rich and famous.” The song was written in part by Alex G and Mac DeMarco, so it has a psychedelic and almost spiritual sound. For every serene moment in “Let’s Start Here,” however, “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!” is a track filled with the chaos to match. The song touches on classical music, glitch music, hard rock and R&B — all within its runtime of just over five minutes. The song ends with an air of calm though, with a minute-long recording of a person walking outside, while a string section plays a meditative composition. “Let’s Start Here” leaves no stone unturned, exhibiting varying levels of intensity and pacing that make the album a feast for the ears.

Although the diversity of sound in the album is exciting and original, its lyrical content doesn’t break away from the mumble rap mold nearly as much as it could. Lil Yachty is known for his music’s refreshingly youthful and goofy perspective, but this lyric construction strategy seems out of place amid the more mature and developed sonic environment he established in “Let’s Start Here.” The album has the beginnings of a more introspective and thoughtful reflection on his life compared to his previous work, but Lil Yachty’s muscle memory of writing simple rhymes that revel in adolescence seems to overtake the full realization of a truly contemplative tone. 

“The Alchemist,” for example, is the second to last track, and it depicts two different characters: one cocky and one vulnerable. Lil Yachty returns to his background in mumble rap, energetically delivering lines like, “No need to brag, but I knew that I was built for this / I know now that most men would kill for this / Seamlessly, I walk around infamous” and “Papa made a young pimp, I’m outside / Southside, tote a shank, I’ma up rank / Lemonade pink seats in a fish tank.” These verses ooze the positivity that Lil Yachty is known for, providing a familiar tone to fans that were originally attracted to the artist because of his easy confidence. In between the rapper’s verses, though, R&B singer Fousheé provides a different attitude, softly singing, “It feels good / Don’t need no harm, this for shits and giggles / My taxes in on time” and “​​Up on my cloud / My feet don’t touch the ground / Don’t try to shoot me down / I’m only a human / It’s my first go ’round in this thing.” She articulates sentiments that Lil Yachty doesn’t usually associate himself with such as sensitivity and domesticity. This song offers listeners insight, if brief, into the Lil Yachty behind the curated brand he has built around himself. 

Most of the songs on the album revolve around a boyish infatuation with women, like in “WE SAW THE SUN!” Once again, the instrumentation is what keeps the listener’s attention. A hypnotic guitar introduces the track, and Lil Yachty’s voice is fragmented into a rhythmic accompaniment. The song ends with a snippet of Bob Ross speaking: “Just let your imagination run wild, let your heart be your guide / In the time you sit around worrying about it and trying to plan a painting, you could’ve completed a painting already.” But the lyrics of this track don’t measure up against the complexities of its composition. Lil Yachty’s verses are juvenile, still reflecting his past projects: “Few more drops up on your tongue / At night, too many that can’t be undone / Head spun, meanwhile, you’re done / Had a little too much fun / I cannot stop touching you / This just took my high to the moon.” 

Despite the lack of development in his lyricism, Lil Yachty has showcased incredible dexterity in shaping this album’s sonic landscape. The last track of “Let’s Start Here” indicates that more complex lyrics may be on the way. “REACH THE SUNSHINE” features Daniel Caesar, who starts the song off with an interpolation of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song.” “Staring in the mirror and what do I see? / A three-eyed man staring back at me / Two for the flesh and one for the soul / But where did man go? I’m tryna fill that hole,” the song drones. The track ends on the fourth note of the scale instead of the tonic, so it leaves the track — and the album — unresolved. The listener walks away craving more, but thankfully — as the title of this album suggests — this new era of Lil Yachty is just getting started.

Contact Sandy Battulga at [email protected] .

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The Rebirth of Boat

Between his high-profile bro-ship with Drake and a decidedly non-rap album in ‘Let’s Start Here.,’ Lil Yachty may have been the most talked-about hip-hop artist of 2023. The question is: What comes next?

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It’s easy now to forget how we thought of Tyler, the Creator before 2017, but it’s worth recounting. As the leader of the Odd Future clique, he was considered something of a juvenile prankster, more known for his (admittedly offensive) provocations than his (admittedly many) talents. Taken at face value, he was a jester in a Supreme cap, Bart Simpson trading his slingshot for a cracked copy of Fruity Loops.

That changed, however, with the release of Tyler’s fourth album, Flower Boy . It was a revelation: candid, confessional, mature—all without losing its sense of adventurousness. Flower Boy was daring and at times gorgeous. Maybe that version of Tyler was lurking inside all along, but it came as somewhat of a shock to the larger listening public. (Including us here at The Ringer , who called the album “radiant” and said it seemed to be made with “more purpose” than anything he had tried previously.)

Tyler’s journey to Flower Boy feels relevant when discussing the most important figure in rap music of this year: Lil Yachty. Once dismissed as a “mumble rapper” or a red-braided featherweight, the rapper born Miles McCollum has undergone something of a transformation the past 12 months. The one-time King of Teens is grown now, and at 26 years old, he finds himself at a crossroads similar to the one where Tyler was at that age.

Yachty’s metamorphosis has included several facets, from becoming something of a spiritual North Star for Drake to going viral with the most addictive song of his career, “Poland.” But when we talk about the renewed sense of artistry Yachty found in 2023, it begins with one thing: Let’s Start Here. , his LP from January, which does away with the “bubblegum trap” of earlier in his career and embraces vibey guitar music. It’s possibly the best album of his career—and almost certainly the biggest pivot any mainstream artist has made in the past few years. But more importantly, it’s a statement of intent that was, like Flower Boy , made with more purpose than anything he had previously attempted. “Fuck any of the albums I dropped before this one. … I wanted to show people a different side of me—and that I can do anything,” the two-time Grammy-nominated artist told Billboard last spring.

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As the end of the year approaches, The Ringer is celebrating the best in movies, TV, music, and more. Follow along with all our coverage here .

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Let’s Start Here. is the multiplatinum-selling artist’s fifth studio album and first official full-length in three years . From the outside looking in, it seemed like Yachty was at peace with doing more of the same musically (save for “Poland”; more on that in a minute) and that his influence had plateaued. He had obviously branched out and stacked up wins in other areas—his 2021 mixtape Michigan Boy Boat is a cult favorite—but when it came to his own music, the progression felt stagnant.

LSH , which is heavily inspired by Pink Floyd–esque psychedelic rock, replaces Yachty’s sticky refrains, trap production, and tongue-in-cheek rhymes with reverberating vocals, drawn-out live instrumentation, and very little wordplay. It’s also important to mention that he had a hand in producing 12 of the 14 tracks . Many of Yachty’s past projects have been predominantly feature-heavy, enlisting high-profile names ranging from Future to Vince Staples, but LSH is noticeably stripped back. The album has a seven -minute intro whose back half is completely devoid of lyrics. This is planets away from the repetitive earworms of his early career like “Minnesota” and “Peek A Boo.” That said, he doesn’t totally leave his trademark intoxicating melodies behind on LSH . “sAy sOMETHINg” and “paint THE sky,” a pair of back-to-back highlights, show what’s possible when he finds the right balance between his distinctly stretchy, auto-tuned riffs and the multilayered, slowed instrumentals.

Conversely, “drive ME crazy!” exemplifies one of the many moments when Yachty takes the back seat and lets his supporting cast take center stage. The love song opens with a groovy bass line and Diana Gordon’s voice gliding over a bed of high-pitched strings. Yachty matches her energy with his own crooning before his verse is hijacked by a kaleidoscope of synths that drown him out. He returns on the back end, closing out the song with a rare bit of rapping over a laid-back, snare drum–laced beat. It’s some of his most thoughtful work to date.

LSH is by no means a perfect album, and Yachty’s shortcomings are exposed on tracks where it sounds like he’s wearing his influences a little too much on his sleeve. Upon multiple spins, both “running out of time” and “THE zone~” feel closer to Tame Impala cosplay than anything groundbreaking.

Yachty’s always been known for being versatile and chameleonic, but not to the degree of making full-on, drug-inspired rock music, so to describe this as a creative risk is quite apt. However, the calculated gambit ended up marking a series of career bests for Yachty. LSH debuted at no. 1 on three separate Billboard charts , became his highest-rated album on Metacritic , and earned endorsements from sources as varied as Questlove and Anthony Fantano . But while a lot has been written about LSH and Yachty’s intentional move away from raps, the heat check that came next is equally as interesting.

Starting in April with “ Strike (Holster) ,” Yachty converted tracks from an already recorded rap album into a handful of singles he released over the next five months. The songs in question—“ Slide ,” “ Solo Steppin Crete Boy ,” “ Tesla ,” and “ The Secret Recipe. ”—range from a freestyle with online superstar Kai Cenat to going bar for bar with one of hip-hop’s finest, J. Cole. These weren’t just a few loosies he was trying to pump out before his next album, either; each song had a corresponding music video to match and felt aesthetically different from the last.

More importantly, the songs felt fresh, and his writing felt much more polished than in many of his earlier rap efforts (the less we talk about “COUNT ME IN,” the better). The decision to return to his roots in between non-rap projects is smart for a few reasons. It holds over his day-one fans by playing the hits, it sustains the buzz he generated from LSH without oversaturating the market, and it gives him a chance to move the needle on the long-standing narrative that he isn’t a “serious” rapper (a notion that’s plagued his career). There will always be those who question Yachty’s lyrical ability, but if nothing else, these drops showcase a noticeably refined pen game without losing his special knack for generating legitimate bangers .

This is a sharp shift from a few years back, when Yachty was (wrongly) seen as more of a mushed-mouth interloper than a capital-A Artist. His rapid rise was met with harsh backlash almost immediately due to some combination of Yachty’s perceived allergy to lyricism in his music and an indifference to rap’s history and the legends who came before him. After Yachty revealed that he didn’t take the storied art form seriously during a Hot 97 interview , the floodgates opened and many of the genre’s veteran gatekeepers (the old heads ) stepped up to take their shots. Funkmaster Flex took to the airwaves to disparage Yachty’s lack of bars, Ebro Darden, who conducted said interview, went back and forth with him online, and Joe Budden said point-blank that he isn’t hip-hop.

Fast-forward to November of this year and Yachty is still ruffling the feathers of rap traditionalists , but this time—in an ironic turn of events—from the other side of the aisle. “The place that hip-hop is in right now is a terrible place … it’s a lot of imitation. It’s a lot of quick, low-quality music being put out. It’s trendy. It’s a lot less risk-taking. It’s a lot less originality,” he said at a Rolling Stone event .

How did Yachty—the same artist who was once maligned for “ruining the culture”—reach a point where he feels empowered enough to act as a spokesperson and critique the very same genre that tried to reject him?

Well, having influence over the biggest artist rap has ever seen certainly bolsters his credibility on the subject.

“This lil Drizzy reppin’ Crete.”

Those are the opening words on “Another Late Night,” a memorable cut from one of the most popular albums of the year, Drake’s For All the Dogs . On the surface, the lyric is a simple hat tip from the Canadian megastar to Lil Yachty (and his blossoming label Concrete Boyz ), who spits the song’s infamous second verse and is credited as a coproducer. But after you dig deeper and reflect on the past 12 months for Yachty, that line—and, by extension, the song—serves as a fitting microcosm of his 2023 run, which is inextricably linked to a fruitful friendship turned partnership with Drake.

lil drizzy reppin crete pic.twitter.com/WstTwnDjbb — CONCRETE BOY BOAT^ (@lilyachty) October 25, 2023

Rewind the clock back to the end of 2022, and two important developments occur: the accidental virality of hit single “Poland” and the start of that Drake alliance. Last October, a snippet of a new Lil Yachty song leaked online and rapidly took over TikTok , so much so that he was all but forced to drop it. Yachty even admitted that he recorded it as a joke and never planned to have it come out. Just days later, “Poland” became his only solo release of that year. The song’s catchy hook and extraterrestrial beat set the internet ablaze almost immediately upon its streaming arrival. “Poland” is now up to more than 130 million streams on Spotify ( The Ringer ’s parent company) and over 30 million views on its accompanying Lyrical Lemonade music video . Not bad for an accident.

Not even a month removed from the “Poland” takeover, Yachty showed up all over Drake and 21 Savage’s surprise collab album, Her Loss . He appeared not as a featured act but instead as an executive producer of sorts, receiving coproduction credits on a fourth of the tracklist. He also supplied a handful of ad-libs on “BackOutsideBoyz” and “Jumbotron Shit Poppin” and even claimed to have chosen the project’s cover art as well. (At least he didn’t go with an AI image, like he did for nightmare fuel on Let’s Start Here .)

Yachty’s involvement on the album felt like a test run from Drake to see if their budding bromance could evolve into a prosperous musical union as well as prove that their past chemistry on “Oprah’s Bank Account” wasn’t a fluke. And boy, did Yachty pass with flying colors. Their collaboration on Her Loss launched a close working relationship between the two, as evidenced by his influence pouring over onto For All the Dogs .

The Concrete Boyz CEO and October’s Very Own boss linked back up for seconds on Drake’s eighth studio album. Yachty’s fingerprints are all over the project, with five coproduction credits as well as his verse on “Another Late Night,” which is the first time he’s been listed as an official feature on one of Drizzy’s songs. And this doesn’t even include two more coproduction nods on Drake’s Scary Hours 3 , a six-pack EP doubling as a FATD deluxe edition. Dating back to last November, that brings the total number of Yachty-produced Drake songs up to 12. Simply put, Her Loss and FATD don’t exist without Lil Yachty. The frequent collaborators have formed an inseparable bond over the past year-plus, which has simultaneously impacted the 6 God’s output and elevated Yachty’s commercial ceiling.

Yachty is no stranger to stardom, having featured on a couple of top-five Billboard Hot 100 hits (“Broccoli” and “iSpy”), being named to the now-iconic 2016 XXL Freshman Class , modeling for Yeezy Season 3 , and racking up millions of streams, all before he was legally old enough to drink. Additionally, he had cemented his status among rap fans and critics alike as a SoundCloud favorite born out of the so-called “mumble rap” era. His influence can be seen in the likes of Juice WRLD , Trippie Redd , Lil Tecca , and Yeat —all artists who shaped the past half decade of rap music in their own right.

Still, there’s nothing quite like the Drake stimulus package. According to Hip Hop by the Numbers , Yachty’s appearance on FATD subsequently boosted his monthly listeners on Spotify by a whopping 40 percent .

Over the years, Drake’s become notorious for attaching himself to the coattails of various artists—adopting the Weeknd’s moody aesthetics, Playboi Carti’s flow, Bad Bunny’s language, Skepta’s U.K. slang, the list goes on—as they just so happen to be peaking in their respective lanes. He’s pretty much got it down to a science at this point: He’ll seek out the hottest sound, find an artist who’s spearheading it, and pair up with them so it doesn’t come off like he’s fully biting their style. In Yachty’s case, it doesn’t hurt that he and Drake seem to be genuine BFFs outside the booth, but it’s also an endorsement of his musical worldview. Drake said it best on “ Wick Man ”: “Boat say he the recipe, I must be the key ingredient.”

Now it’s up to Yachty to use that recipe for himself. His past year hasn’t been without its blemishes— awkwardly minimizing rapper Sexxy Red’s trauma on his podcast, singling out a Pitchfork critic for simply doing his job, calling internet trolls “gay,” and getting sued by the SEC among them—but Yachty is operating on a different plane now. He’s got more visibility, and it’s reasonable to expect that he’ll be more in demand as a producer. (His work with City Girls on “Act Up” shows that he’s more than just a Drake-hit wonder.) The Aubrey cosign has a mixed track record on helping the artist he’s borrowing from—ask Earl Sweatshirt his opinions on that—but given Yachty’s history and stature, he’s more likely to end up a Lil Baby than a BlocBoy JB. And he seems intent on making sure of it—as he told Variety , he’s already planning another non-rap LP for the new year, which could explore sounds beyond what he experimented with on Let’s Start Here .

It’s similar to the situation Tyler, the Creator found himself in coming out of 2017. Tyler could’ve easily rested on his laurels after Flower Boy , but instead he doubled down. (His fifth full-length, IGOR , was an even bolder artistic risk than Flower Boy and won him a Grammy; it’s a perfect album.) He’d later return to a more conventional approach with his 2021 Gangsta Grillz homage, Call Me If You Get Lost , but he did so from a position of power: having changed the trajectory of his career and earned the respect of even his most vehement doubters. Yachty took note: “He’s [Tyler, the Creator] the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has,” he said in March .

If the past 12 months have done anything for Yachty, they’ve made it clear we should take him as seriously as Tyler takes him—and he takes himself. But if he’s learned anything from Tyler, 2023 simply could be a launchpad into yet another transformation. Yachty titled his big pivot Let’s Start Here. because to him, it’s just the beginning of something. What happens next is arguably more interesting, even if the ending remains a question mark.

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Let’s Start Here. Album Lyrics by Lil Yachty

Taylor Swift draws backlash for 'all the racists' lyrics on new 'Tortured Poets' album

Lyrics from 'i hate it here' on taylor swift's 'the tortured poets department: the anthology,' have drawn attention for the songwriter's line about living in the 1830s 'but without all the racists.'.

Taylor Swift released a new album Friday , but not all listeners are loving a controversial line from her new song, "I Hate It Here."

In the track off of "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology," a deluxe version of her new album, the Eras Tour singer sings about discontent and the way our recollections are distorted by nostalgia. In it, she says she wants to return to an era that ended more than a century before her career began.

"My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade we wished we could live in instead of this / I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid," Swift sings in the track .

What we know about Taylor Swift's 'The Tortured Poets Department' album so far

The Civil War began in 1861, more than 30 years after the decade Swift references in the song. Slavery was still active in the United States during this time.

"Everyone would look down 'cause it wasn't fun now seems like it was never even fun back then / Nostalgia is a mind's trick if I'd been there, I'd hate it," she sings. "It was freezing in the palace."

'So many wrong things about this:' Social media users react to Taylor Swift's 'I Hate It Here' lyrics

The controversial line has drawn the ire of the internet and fueled conversations around Swift's lyricism. Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, reacted to Swift's " I Hate It Here" lyrics .

"y’all .. there are so many wrong things about this," one user wrote, while posting a screenshot of the song's lyrics from Genius .

Slavery's explosive growth, in charts: How '20 and odd' became millions

"'I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists' now Taylor …" another user commented .

Other fans on X defended Swift's songwriting capabilities as historical analysis.

"It's an interesting commentary on how we sometimes idealize certain eras without fully considering the realities of living in them," one commenter said .

'The Tortured Poets Department' features 31 songs

Swift's 11th album "The Tortured Poets Department" features 31 songs, when you add in the 15-song deluxe version "The Anthology," which includes "I Hate It Here." The album draws on heartbreak and coming of age, traditional themes for one of the world's most famous people and songwriters.

Lead single "Fortnight" features rapper and singer Post Malone .

Let’s Start Here.

The first song on Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here. is nearly seven minutes long and features breathy singing from Yachty, a freewheeling guitar solo and a mostly instrumental second half that calls to mind TV depictions of astral projecting. “the BLACK seminole.” is an extremely fulfilling listen, but is this the same guy who just a few months earlier delivered the beautifully off-kilter and instantly viral “Poland”? Better yet, is this the guy who not long before that embedded himself with Detroit hip-hop culture to the point of a soft rebrand as Michigan Boy Boat? Sure is. It’s just that, as he puts it on “the BLACK seminole.”, he’s got “No time to joke around/The kid is now a man/And the silence is filled with remarkable sounds.” We could call the silence he’s referring to the years since his last studio album, 2020’s Lil Boat 3, but he’s only been slightly less visible than we’re used to, having released the aforementioned Michigan Boy Boat mixtape while also lending his discerning production ear to Drake and 21 Savage’s ground-shaking album Her Loss. Collaboration, though, is the name of the game across Let’s Start Here., an album deeply indebted to some as yet undisclosed psych-rock influences, with repeated production contributions from one-time blog-rock darlings Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson and Patrick Wimberly, as well as multiple appearances from Diana Gordon, a Queens, New York-hailing singer who made a noise during the earliest parts of her career as Wynter Gordon. Also present are R&B singer Fousheé and Beaumont, Texas, rap weirdo Teezo Touchdown, though rapping is infrequent. In fact, none of what Yachty presents here—which includes dalliances with Parliament-indebted acid funk (“running out of time”), ’80s synthwave (“sAy sOMETHINg,” “paint THE sky”), disco (“drive ME crazy!”), symphonic prog rock (“REACH THE SUNSHINE.”) and a heady monologue called “:(failure(:”—is in any way reflective of any of Yachty’s previous output. Which begs the question, where did all of this come from? You needn’t worry about that, says Yachty on the “the ride-”, singing sternly: “Don’t ask no questions on the ride.”

27 January 2023 14 Songs, 57 minutes Quality Control Music/Motown Records; ℗ 2023 Quality Control Music, LLC, under exclusive license to UMG Recordings, Inc.

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Potential Evidence Leaks Proving Drake Didn’t Write ‘Jumbotron S**t Poppin,’ Lil Yachty Did

Audio of Lil Yachty rapping Drake 's lyrics to the Her Loss song "Jumbotron S**t Poppin" in a reference track has leaked.

"Jumbotron S**t Poppin" Reference Leaks

Drake is seemingly in a battle with half of the music industry  as several artists have recently formed like Voltron to go against the 6 God. In the latest apparent attempt to assassinate Drizzy's character, someone has leaked a reference track that finds Lil Yachty rapping the lines to Aubrey's "Jumbotron S**t Poppin."  In the leak, which can be heard below, Boat raps the exact same lines as Drake does, except he says "I was too sipped out," where Drake changed the lyrics to "Boat was so sipped out."

"We ain't even out in Turks, she finna take sand/Ridin' 'round with F&N, we like to hold hands," Yachty raps in the clip below. "I was too sipped out, he ain't leave the bed/Damn, they dipped a pint of TEC in a Code Red/If I tell this bitch to pull up, she gon' moped it/My dawg, he don't smoke on shit unless it's unleaded/I don't back and forth over no 'net, so just go on, dead it/See me when you see me, if it's smoke, dawg, you unleash it."

This wouldn't be the first time Drake has faced a ghostwriting scandal. Back in 2015, he was infamously accused by Meek Mill of having a writer, who turned out to be Atlanta artist Quentin Miller.

Read More: A History of Rappers Accused of Using Ghostwriters

Who leaked the reference track.

Word on road is that the leak was sent to multiple blogs by an unknown Atlanta phone number. Controversial streamer DJ Akademiks has gone so far as to surmise the leak was delivered by none other than Metro Boomin.

After being dissed by several artists on Future and Metro Boomin's We Don't Trust You and We Still Don't Trust You albums, Drake clapped back at his detractors over the weekend with the diss song "Drop and Give Me 50,"  which finds him taking aim at Kendrick Lamar, Future, The Weeknd, Metro Boomin, Rick Ross and others. Rick Ross has already responded with his own song "Champagne Moments." 

Read More: Hip-Hop's 10 Greatest Ghostwriters [Poll]

Listen to Lil Yachty's "Jumbotron S**t Poppin" reference track and hear Drake's version below.

Listen to Lil Yachty's "Jumbotron S**t Poppin" Reference

Stream drake's "jumbotron s**t poppin", see 50 lyrics rappers got wrong, more from xxl.

Taylor Swift’s “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” Is A Venomous Breakup Song

The singer gifts us another powerful bridge to scream/sing/cry to.

Shortly after announcing The Tortured Poets Department as her next original album, Taylor Swift opened up to an Eras Tour crowd in Melbourne, Australia, about what the project meant to her. “More than any of my albums that I’ve ever made — I needed to make it,” she said in February, via NME . “It was really a lifeline for me. Just the things I was going through and the things I was writing about. ... I never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets .”

The comments fueled fan theories that this would be a confessional breakup album , but if people were expecting a melancholic ode to a relationship lost, they’ll be surprised by the sharp, biting ire of at least one song.

Here are “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” lyrics, explained.

A Taylor Swift Bridge For The Ages

The song is set after a relationship ends, in which the narrator is now doubting everything. “Was any of it true? Gazing at me starry-eyed in your Jehovah’s Witness suit, who the f*ck was that guy?”

Swift sings about a guy who showed her off, but didn’t treat her right in private. She also makes multiple references to drug use, and wonders, “I just want to know if rusting my sparkling summer was the goal.”

But then there’s the bridge — and it might go down as one of Swift’s best ever. “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?” she asks as the music climbs, before implying that the ex was living a lie the entire time. “Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy? In 50 years, will all this be declassified?”

Swift has written some devastating breakup bridges, but few have come close to this level of venom. It’s one thing to imply someone is a poor partner. It’s another thing entirely to paint them as a malevolent force. “You deserve prison but you won’t get time,” she sings.

But... Who Is The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived?

As always, Swifties can only speculate as to who this song is about — and even then, not every detail is likely autobiographical.

The line about Swift’s “sparkling summer” being rusted seems to hint at a relationship that fell apart during the warmest time of year. Swift and Joe Alwyn’s breakup was announced in April, while her reportedly “always casual” connection with The 1975’s Matty Healy cooled off by June, per People .

It’s worth noting that Swift’s line, “I would have died for your sins,” is somewhat reminiscent of “I would die for you in secret” from “ Peace ,” which Swift previously told Rolling Stone was inspired by her personal life.

That song, too, navigated the gap between a relationship’s public facade and private challenges. That isn’t to say the tracks are connected — they have very different emotional contexts — but if nothing else, it seems Swift has been thinking about these themes for a while.

“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” Lyrics

Read the song’s full lyrics below.

Was any of it true?

Gazing at me starry-eyed

In your Jehovah's Witness suit

Who the f*ck was that guy?

You tried to buy some pills

From a friend of friends of mine

They just ghosted you

Now you know what it feels like

And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know

If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal

And I don’t miss what we had, but could someone give

A message to the smallest man who ever lived?

You hung me on your wall

Stabbed me with your push pins

In public, showed me off

Then sank in stoned oblivion

‘Cause once your queen had come

You’d treat her like an also-ran

You didn't measure up

In any measure of a man

Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?

Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?

Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy?

In 50 years will all this be declassified?

And you'll confess why you did it, and I'll say, “Good riddance”

‘Cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden

I would've died for your sins, instead I just died inside

And you deserve prison, but you won't get time

You'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars

You crashed my party and your rental car

You said normal girls were “boring”

But you were gone by the morning

You kicked out the stage lights, but you're still performing

And in plain sight you hid, but you are what you did

And I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive

The smallest man who ever lived

It Looks Like Travis Kelce Made It Into Taylor Swift’s New Album, So Here’s What She Seemingly Had To Say About Their Relationship

While reckoning with her past, it seems Taylor didn’t forget about her current beau.

BuzzFeed Staff

By the look of things, Taylor Swift's Tortured Poets Department draws a lot of inspiration from her past heartbreaks . But, fortunately for Travis Kelce , it seems she still dedicated a few tracks to her present.

In the unlikely event you need catching up, Taylor’s highly anticipated 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , dropped at midnight, inevitably sending Swifties into a frenzy of excitement.

And just as listeners were processing the 16-track record, Taylor did what she does best and dropped in at 2 a.m. with a surprise — gifting fans with yet another 15 songs, which merged with the first installment to create The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology .

So, with 31 brand-new tracks to get their teeth into, Swifties have been deep in lyrical analysis since the moment the clock struck 12. And by now, many have speculated that a lot of the songs may have been inspired by Taylor’s fleeting — and rather controversial — romance with Matty Healy , as well as a few nods to her previous ex, Joe Alwyn .

For a reminder, Joe and Taylor dated for six years before breaking up in April 2023 . It was only a month after her split from Joe that Taylor was seen with  Matty — whom she was previously rumored to have dated in 2014 . 

After sparking widespread controversy in her fanbase, Taylor's brief relationship with The 1975 frontman ended in June, with a source telling Entertainment Tonight at the time: “They are both extremely busy and realized they're not really compatible with each other.”

Going into last night's album release, hopes were high that Taylor may have sought inspiration from her current relationship with Travis Kelce — and luckily for Tayvis fans, it seems she delivered.

From what we know, Travis and Taylor first started seeing each other privately around August — a month after the NFL star gushed about trying to shoot his shot with her while attending the Eras Tour over the summer.

They confirmed their relationship in September when Taylor attended one of his football games with the Kansas City Chiefs — and the rest is history.

But, before we get into it, we must first acknowledge that lyrical interpretation is subjective. Therefore, this analysis is rooted in speculation based solely on the history of Travis and Taylor’s relationship.

In the first batch of songs, a track titled “ The Alchemy ” quickly stood out to listeners as potentially Travis-inspired due to its slew of sports references — namely, the mention of touchdowns.

“So when I touch down / Call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team,” Taylor sings in the chorus. “Ditch the clowns, get the crown / Baby, I'm the one to be / 'Cause the sign on your heart / Said it's still reserved for me.”

In scientific terms, alchemy is concerned with mixing chemicals to create gold, and if there’s one thing we know about Taylor, she loves using golden themes to describe her happiest relationships. So, with that in mind, the story of this song seems to be about the transformative magic of a budding romance — presumably with Travis.

For example, in the first verse, Taylor appears to call back to the start of the relationship, noting that such a strong connection is rare.

“This happens once every few lifetimes / These chemicals hit me like white wine,” the opening lines go.

Later in the first verse, she also sings about seeking out her lover by circling them “on a map,” which some fans think could be a subtle reference to claims that Taylor put Travis “on the map” by boosting his fame and popularity when they started dating.

In the post-chorus, Taylor throws out more sporting references, singing about “blokes” who “warm the benches,” and being on a “winning streak.”

Since “bloke” is a slang term for “man” commonly used in the UK, it’s possible that the blokes in question are her British exes, Matty and Joe, with Taylor poking fun at how her past lovers have been sidelined.

Meanwhile, the “winning streak” line could be a nod to the Chiefs’ immense success during the football season, becoming Super Bowl champions for a second consecutive year.

But perhaps most notably, the bridge paints a vivid picture of a familiar sporting scene as Taylor sings: “Shirts off, and your friends lift you up, over their heads / Beer stickin' to the floor, cheers chanted 'cause they said / ‘There was no chance trying to be the greatest in the league’ / Where's the trophy? He just comes, running over to me.”

As most will remember, the last line, in particular, seems to draw parallels to the viral moment that Taylor and Travis embraced on the football field when the Chiefs won the AFC Championship game in January, securing their spot in the Super Bowl.

Despite all this, not everyone agrees that Travis was this song’s sole muse. In fact, numerous fans have theorized that “The Alchemy” could be about Matty.

For starters, in the post-chorus Taylor uses wordplay centering on heroin, singing: “He jokes that ‘It's heroin, but this time with an E.’” For context, Matty has talked openly about using heroin earlier in his life, so some have interpreted this as a reference to his past addiction struggles .

On top of this, a recurring theme in the song is past lovers and comebacks, with Taylor indicating multiple times that she’s “coming back” to the relationship. This would align with the fact that she and Matty were romantically linked nearly a decade before their public fling in 2023.

And while “The Alchemy” left fans a little divided, listeners seem to have no dispute that “ So High School ” from the second batch of songs might be inspired by Taylor’s all-American love story with Travis.

From the outset, it’s noteworthy that Taylor and Travis’s relationship has drawn high-school comparisons since it first began — the superstar and her popular football player boyfriend, reminiscent of a senior year power couple.

And with that, “So High School” automatically seems to play into that perception of their sweet romance as Taylor depicts the nostalgia of teenage first love — dropping shoutouts to everything from American Pie to Grand Theft Auto , much to the amusement of her fans.

“And in a blink of a crinkling eye / I'm sinking, our fingers entwined,” the chorus goes. “Cheeks pink in the twinkling lights / Tell me 'bout the first time you saw me.”

“I'll drink what you think and I'm high / From smoking your jokes all damn night,” she sings, leaning into the giddiness of young love. “The brink of a wrinkle in time / Bittersweet 16 suddenly.”

Away from the general high-school themes, Taylor also appears to include some nods to specific moments between her and Travis that fans pored over in the early months of their romance.

In the intro, for example, she sings about finding her lover in a crowd (something she and Travis are pretty used to, what with football games and concerts), as well as someone opening the car door for her (Swifties memorably lost it over Travis escorting Taylor from her car during a trip to NYC in October).

The first verse also includes the line: " Are you gonna marry, kiss, or kill me? ," which has been interpreted by many as a callback to a 2016 interview in which Travis played a game of "Kill, Marry, Kiss" — choosing to kiss Taylor.

And finally, the bridge appears to echo Travis’s public pursuit of her last summer, with Taylor signing: “You knew what you wanted, and, boy, you got her.”

So, while The Tortured Poets Department appears to dedicate a lot of time to the past, it looks like Taylor wants fans to know she’s doing pretty damn well in the present, too.

Travis has not publicly discussed The Tortured Poets Department since its release, but we’ll let you know as soon as he does. In the meantime, you can read more of our Taylor coverage here .

Topics in this article.

• Taylor Swift
• Travis Kelce
• Matty Healy