lil yachty age in 2016

How old is Lil Yachty?

Lil Yachty was born on 23 August 1997 . Lil Yachty is 26 years old .

How old is Lil Yachty in days now?

Lil Yachty is 26 years 8 months 25 days old . Total 9,765 days old now.

When is the next birthday of Lil Yachty?

Lil Yachty's next birthday is in 3 months 5 days .

What is the zodiac sign of Lil Yachty?

Zodiac sign of Lil Yachty is Virgo .

Lil Yachty is an American singer and rapper known for his red hair. He was born Miles Parks McCollum in 1997 in Georgia. At the age of 17, he moved to New York City to pursue his career as a rapper and started promoting his music on SoundCloud. In 2015 his first single " One Night " became popular and opened Yachty a way to make necessary contacts in the world of hip hop. He collaborated with  Kanye West , DRAM, Kyle, and other rappers. In 2016 he released his two first mixtapes with the singles like " Minnesota ", " Wanna Be Us ", " Pretty ", " Life Goes On ", and many others. In 2017 his first studio album Teenage Emotions came out and managed to reach No 5 in Billboard Charts. A year later, two more albums were released and brought more popularity helping Yachty attract more attention of hip hop fans. In 2018 he became one of the presenters of annual MTV Awards. Lil Yachty also tried acting and modeling by collaborating with a few clothes producing companies. His YouTube channel is extremely popular and, as of the mid 2023, there are almost 2.9 million followers there.

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The Sudden Rise of Lil Yachty

The stylish 19-year-old rapper has made his way from obscurity in Atlanta to working with LeBron James and Kanye West.

Louis Vuitton mohair sweater, about $690, at louisvuitton.com . Gosha Rubchinskiy pants, $310, at Dover Street Market New York. Converse sneakers, $50, at converse.com . Credit... Clement Pascal for The New York Times; Styled by Alex Tudela

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By Joe Coscarelli

• Dec. 9, 2016

After 18 years of trying to get noticed, the rapper and teenage eccentric Lil Yachty has been forced recently to practice blending in. It’s mostly the hair.

On a recent Saturday, following a dayslong spate of promotional appearances and photo shoots, the 19-year-old internet supernova, who found fame online and beyond this year with a series of catchy mixtapes and goofy viral moments, hoped to do a little shopping in the heart of Brooklyn.

But before he could peacefully enter Kith , the streetwear store that specializes in sneakers and sugary cereal , Lil Yachty needed to hide his trademark accessory: his grenadine-red skinny braids adorned with clear plastic beads. As his chauffeured S.U.V. approached the buzzing shop, the Atlanta rapper grabbed a knit cap from the head of a friend, who assented without a word, seemingly familiar with the routine.

It worked. Locks tucked atop his head, Lil Yachty, whose face is usually obscured by the clacking tentacles, proved unrecognizable even to those who may have binged on his whimsical music videos or Instagram account. Like a millennial Clark Kent, he went unbothered in the maw of his target demographic, drawing stares only as he stacked five pairs of shoes and two art books (“Pharrell,” “KAWS”) by the register.

As with the mini-shopping spree, there was still some thrill in needing to go undercover. “At the beginning of this year, I used to walk through the local mall and say, ‘One day, I’m not going to be able to walk through this mall,’” Lil Yachty said later in the privacy of a Caribbean restaurant, his hair since released. “No way I could walk through the mall now. Unless I’m hiding.”

Last winter, the teenager born Miles McCollum, who had recently dropped out of college and had been arrested in a Florida mall for credit card fraud, was hoping to shake his anonymity. Rapping was a relatively new pastime (it still is), though striving for fame came naturally to a diligent student of social networks.

“I always knew I was going to be something,” he said. “I didn’t know what.”

Now, at the end of a career-making 2016, Lil Yachty seems more certain. “I’m not a rapper, I’m an artist,” he said. “And I’m more than an artist. I’m a brand.”

The stats back him up. In addition to releasing the popular “Lil Boat” and “Summer Songs 2” mixtapes, filled with his taffylike digital wails and cartoon melodies, and reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 with his sweet-and-sour guest verse on D.R.A.M.’s “ Broccoli ,” Lil Yachty has modeled Kanye West’s Yeezy line at Madison Square Garden, starred in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James and teamed up with Nautica on a capsule collection for Urban Outfitters. An official debut album with Capitol Records is planned for early 2017.

Yet even among the bevy of singular voices in the new Atlanta hip-hop scene, where male rappers can wear dresses and carry designer bags, moan about their feelings and dance with their hips, Lil Yachty is demonstrably odd, flaunting his indifference to rap traditionalism and aiming to remain somewhat wholesome: more schoolyard than trap house.

“Rappers don’t have endorsements because of their images,” he said. “Endorsement money is huge. And I care about my character.” He added: “I don’t rap about drinking or smoking, ever, because I don’t do it. I don’t rap about anything I don’t do.”

Instead, Lil Yachty preaches an all-purpose positivity fueled by timeless adolescent ambitions: chasing girls, looking cool and hanging out with friends. (Lil Yachty’s crew is known as the Sailing Team : “If you’re a fan of me, then you know my friends, because I push them just as hard.”) His most menacing raps can feel playful, his sexuality disarmingly juvenile and his boasts betray his age: “Parents mad at my ass ’cause their kids sing my song in class,” he taunts while proclaiming himself the King of the Teens. “We are the youth!” goes another battle cry.

As with his breakout viral hits “1 Night” and “Minnesota,” Lil Yachty’s music relies less on technical rapping than on simple melodies that invoke warped nursery rhymes, with bright, bubbly production and an affecting falsetto smoothed with Auto-Tune. Along with Kanye West and Kid Cudi, both of whom count as elder statesmen to someone born in 1997, his most direct influences include the cult-favorite, outre internet rappers Lil B and Soulja Boy, along with pop acts like Coldplay, Daft Punk and Fall Out Boy.

While modeling for Nautica last month to his own personal playlist, Lil Yachty mimed air guitar to “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses and boogied to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” when he wasn’t belting Chris Martin ballads. Between looks, he dined on his preferred menu of Domino’s pepperoni pizza, candy and cookies, head buried in his two Louis Vuitton-cased iPhones. (One had a hand-scrawled message: “LETS BE RICH FOREVER.”)

At the same time, Lil Yachty’s stated indifference toward the catalogs of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. has made him a punching bag for rap purists, the poster child for a style-over-substance new school dismissively dubbed “mumble rap.” He’s leaned into that mantle, so online schadenfreude bubbles up every time Lil Yachty, say, bombs a freestyle over ’90s beats or fails miserably at dunking a basketball .

“I ask myself all the time, ‘How do I always go viral?’” Lil Yachty said with a grin. “I’m the face of the youth, the new sound. Nobody likes my truth.” Except the youth, that is. “They relate to me because I’m so like them,” he said, “but on a global scale.”

Music, it turns out, was something of an afterthought, despite his deep roots in Southern rap. Though he was raised mostly by his mother in the Atlanta suburb Austell, his father, Shannon McCollum, lived in the city and worked as a photographer with local acts such as Outkast, Goodie Mob and Lil Jon. But hanging around stars as a child bolstered Lil Yachty’s sense of style and business acumen more than his sense of hip-hop history.

“I would let him help direct photo shoots, and I would always show him my invoices so he could see what I made,” Mr. McCollum, 46, said. “I used to photograph Miles every week. By 3 or 4, he was so comfortable in front of a camera.”

An obsession with fashion followed. “Once, when he was about 7, we were picking up his friend, and Miles had on a pink polo shirt,” his father recalled. “The little boy got in the back seat and started laughing uncontrollably at Miles, calling him a girl. Miles just said, ‘You don’t know nothing about this, man.’”

In high school, influenced by the bright colors favored by Pharrell Williams and Tyler, the Creator, Lil Yachty would spend the money he earned working at McDonald’s or as an assistant to his father at thrift stores. “Ninety-nine cents, 50 cents, I just knew how to put it together,” he said. His mother even taught him to sew.

His confidence and originality helped to win over his eventual manager, Coach K, an Atlanta stalwart who has worked with Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane and Migos. “It was like your first meeting with Marilyn Manson,” Coach K said of encountering Lil Yachty. “You’ve got this freakish look, but he’s not scared of who he is. He’s wearing it with pride. Instantly I said, ‘This is it.’”

Lil Yachty had already determined that packaging a mystique was his strong suit. After graduating from high school, he traveled repeatedly to New York and Los Angeles — his father’s day job at Delta gave him access to free flights — where he slept on couches and worked to ingratiate himself with rap-adjacent tastemakers like Ian Connor and Luka Sabbat .

“I was simply trying to get people who had an audience to hang out with me, so that I could get that audience,” Lil Yachty said. “I was making music, but I wasn’t really pushing it yet. I knew exactly how it worked.” He corrected himself. “I know exactly how it works .”

Still, even he has been surprised by the speed of his ascent.

“It just feels like a dream,” he said, recalling that in January, he couldn’t make it past the door of Kanye’s studio. “I sat in the hallway for hours while ASAP Rocky was in there. They wouldn’t let me in. By August, I was working with him.” Nautica, too, came calling only after a year of Lil Yachty’s attempting to get the maritime brand’s attention via social media.

It was backstage among the V.I.P.s at Jay Z’s Made in America festival in September that Lil Yachty’s new reality started to sink in. “Obama’s daughters knew who I was,” he said. “They were huge fans. Jay Z said my name to me before I introduced myself.”

And yet, persona aside, a teenager can only be a teenager.

At an Urban Outfitters meet-and-greet in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, among decidedly less dazzling guests, the rapper hid once again behind his hair and phone as overeager young fans offered him anything they could find to autograph: $5 bills, laptops, water bottles, purses, coats and, yes, eventually breasts. Not yet immune to such attention at close range, Lil Yachty could only giggle to himself, shaking his head as he mouthed the words to his own music.

Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love ), Twitter ( Styles , Fashion and Weddings ) and Instagram .

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About That Yacht Life: How Teen Rapper Lil Yachty Made It Big

Meet the 18-year-old Atlanta rapper and Yeezy model making waves.

It was 3 p.m. on a Wednesday in New York, and the 18-year-old rapper Miles Parks McCollum, known to everyone as Lil Yachty, could not stop yawning. His bedazzled grill caught the overhead light of a Chinatown hotel room with each Wookie-like yawp; beneath his beaded red braids, it was almost impossible to tell whether or not his eyes were open.

His voice, which had the hypnotic drawl of a Novocaine-induced stupor, only reinforced the appearance of sleepiness. Only when the subject of Supreme surfaced did he perk up: “It went from me going in there to shop, to them playing my music now,” he declared. His friend Chalis, who came up with Yachty in Atlanta, reminded him that they once saw Joe Jonas in the store. Everyone in the room, including other core members of the “Sailing Team”—producer “Burberry Perry” and “Bloody Osiris,” plus Yachty’s manager, who goes by “ Coach K “—busted out laughing.

“I forgot we seen him,” Yachty recalled with a smirk.

Yachty, who came to seemingly everyone’s attention when he modeled in Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 show, wore a velvet Supreme sweat suit and Gucci slide sandals. On his neck hung a sizable diamond-encrusted gold medallion with the letters “QC,” which stand for Quality Control. Having only started making music a year ago, this is apparently the prize for going from no one to someone, boy to man, boat to yacht.

Lil Yachty, Perry, Chalis, and Osiris

“In high school, there was a group of older kids who called themselves the ‘Yacht Club,’” Yachty said of his stage name. “I was trying to get in the club.” They eventually let him in, but he had to start from the bottom as Lil Boat, which has since become his alter-ego. “They’re the same person,” Yachty continued. “Same soul. Same body. But one is more calm and the other is more aggressive.”

Chalis, who is two years older, was one of the charter members of the Yacht Club. “We were starting waves,” he said. “We used to record in my closet in Atlanta. We had a bum-ass mic and we put a sock on it. We had nothing.” After graduating, Chalis sailed off to New York. Once he was installed there, Yachty sent him a list of kids he followed on Instagram for Chalis to befriend. The advance team set the table for last summer, when Yachty arrived in town to stay with Chalis; together, they broke onto the scene, successfully networking with the likes of Ian Connor and Eileen Kelly .

“I just thought I’d give it a shot,” said Yachty. “I just wanted to get cool.” He shrugged and then paused, as if his rapid success had finally just hit him. “I was just in a dorm room. I was at Alabama State—I was literally just there !”

Last week, Yachty attracted a crowd so large at his VFiles show that the police had to barricade the street. He then went on to perform at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by a show in Philadelphia with Young Thug. On Tuesday, he released his music video for “ 1 Night ,” which is quickly making its rounds on the Internet for its meme-friendly visuals. “He’s one of the most focused young guys I’ve ever met,” said Coach K, who’s worked with stars like Young Jeezy, Migos, and Gucci Mane. “He’s going to be really big .”

When he’s onstage, Yachty comes to life. In one clip of a performance posted to his Instagram, he jumps up and down so energetically that his sweatpants practically fall off. His hair thwacks his face in sync with the beat. He dives into the audience. He is buoyant, like, well, a yacht.

Yeezy Season 3 at Madison Square Garden. Photo by Getty Images.

“He’s got a lot of little white boy fans,” Osiris said of the usual crowd.

“Like lemme-get-a-pic-for-the-gram !” Burberry Perry chimed in.

Music is something that Yachty simply tried, and found that he had a knack for it. “Growing up, my dad used to play India Arie, Coldplay, and Paul McCartney ,” he recalled. His father, Shannon McCollum , is a photographer who’s worked with everyone from Outkast to Dead Prez, so maybe the spotlight is the beam by which Yachty was meant to chart his route. His raps, which have the same hazy quality of his speaking voice and are infused with nonchalant humor, have little to do with the trap artists—like Migos, Young Thug, Young Jeezy, and Future—that came before him in Atlanta. In fact, Yachty claimed he’s not interested in the genre; instead, he described his sound as “colorful” and “soft.”

Meet Lil Yachty, the Teen Rapper Making Waves

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Raf Simons v-neck knit, $1,700, rafsimons.com ; Theory T-shirt, $75, theory.com ; Ami trousers, $355, amiparis.fr ; Converse sneakers, $55, converse.com ; Lil Yachty’s own jewelry.

Louis Vuitton shirt, $850, louisvuitton.com ; Dries Van Noten tank top, $140, barneys.com ; Lil Yachty’s own jewelry.

Prada shirt, $710, and sweater, $930, prada.com ; Ami pants, $350, amiparis.fr ; Falke socks, $28, sockhopny.com ; Louis Vuitton sneakers, $785, louisvuitton.com ; Lil Yachty’s own jewelry.

“When you think of trap, it’s like hard, gutter stuff,” explained Chalis, whose job description seems to be happily filling in Yachty’s long silences. “But we’re young kids; we’re not like that. Obviously, we love trap and are influenced by where we come from, but Yachty is fun. His voice is angelic! A lot of rap you can’t relate to, but Yachty is young. Not even a year ago he was a regular civilian.”

While Yachty claimed the only music he listens to is his own, his friends name-dropped people like Lil Uzi Vert , who is 21. “Why so many Lil’s?” I asked.

“It’s because everyone wants to be a kid again,” explained Osiris.

I turned to Yachty and asked him what else he might hope to accomplish next. He stretched out his arms and yawned deeply, and then mumbled something in his drowsy baritone.

“You want to what?” I asked.

Yachty stuck his hand down his Nautica boxer shorts and closed his eyes: “I just want to be mainstream.”

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Lil Yachty Discusses the Craziest Year of His Career

"This my last year being broke."

Image via P&P

2016 was a monumental year for Lil Yachty. The Atlanta rapper rose from obscurity and became a global sensation, earning a Grammy nomination for his contribution to D.R.A.M.'s sleeper hit "Broccoli" and accomplishing even more along the way. The 19 year old recently spoke to  Fader   about his whirlwind year, opening up about his wildest experiences.

He discussed meeting Malia and Sasha Obama for the first time at Jay Z's  Made In America  festival in Philadelphia. "Backstage, I went to the VIP section and watched Coldplay where Malia and Sasha were. It surprised me that they knew who I was," he recalls. "Sasha was a fan of my music, a huge fan. I was shocked that Malia and Sasha were asking me for pictures. I was just in shock. I didn’t ask them nothing." Later that night, he met one of his idols, Jay Z, who overheard him singing Coldplay's "Fix You" and told him that he should record his own version of the track. "It was dope," he says of the experience.

He also discussed his growing presence in the fashion world, expressing excitement about getting noticed by  Nautica.  "I had been pushing to get their attention. I was wearing 100 percent Nautica for months," he says. "The Nautica lookbook came through, and we have a lot of future business in the works." He cites his appearance in Kanye West's Yeezy Season 3 fashion show as the beginning of his fashion career, discussing how his position at the front of the stage helped him gain recognition. "That opened doors for me. A lot of fashion doors opened up after that," he says of the fashion show.

In addition to discussing the crazy experiences he's had because of his fame, he also spoke about creating the music that propelled him into the limelight. He reflected on the creation of his stellar Lil Boat   mixtape, which he worked on at Atlanta's QC Studio. "It wasn’t like I had to call nobody [to record features], they were all just here," he says of the popular Atlanta recording spot. "People showed me a lot of love. They took me in, like a foreign exchange student. I was new, but they showed me a lot of love from the start." He goes on to discuss working with D.R.A.M. at Rick Rubin's Malibu home and embarking on three different tours.

After all the success he's found in 2016, it will be fascinating to see where 2017 will take Yachty. Revisit our interview with the charismatic rapper here.

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How Lil Yachty Made It From McDonald’s to One of 2016’s Most-Hyped Debuts

One of the buzziest and most-hyped names in rap today, lil yachty has had a break-out 2016 thanks to two acclaimed mixtapes..

One of the buzziest and most-hyped names in rap today, Lil Yachty has had a break-out 2016 thanks to two acclaimed mixtapes (starting with his debut, Lil Boat ), chart-topping singles (his collaboration with D.R.A.M., “Broccoli,” is rising up the Hot 100) and impressive co-signs (including the likes of Kanye West and Rick Rubin ).

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For the soon-to-be 19-year-old Yachty, real name: Miles Mccollum , it’s a long way from growing up in Atlanta where his previous job was working at an area McDonald’s. Hot on the heels of his sophomore mixtape, last month’s Summer Song 2 , and the mainstream success of “Broccoli” and solo single “1 Night,” the Observer caught up with Yachty recently to discuss his rise, creative process, and the origin of his trademark red hair.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K44j-sb1SRY&w=560&h=315]

Where are you right now?

I’m dying my hair right now in Atlanta.

Ah yes, your red hair has become a trademark. What made you dye it red?

I had a job at McDonalds and I had long braids with beads. So my mom made me cut it for a job interview. When I got the new job, I was upset at my mom because at the time nobody had braids or beads and then I had the same haircut as everybody else. One day on the car ride to work, she suggested that I dye my hair red. I guess she didn’t think I was actually going to do it, but I did it and it never went away.

What does she think of that red hair now?

She never liked it until it started making me money. [Laughs]

Well, congratulations on your success. Not only do you have “1 Night” on the charts, but D.R.A.M’s track “Broccoli’ that you’re featured on is a hit as well. What was your experience like creating “Broccoli”? It’s such a jam.

We made that one in Los Angeles. I met D.R.A.M. through Rick Rubin and they really wanted me in the studio. Rick set up a session, so D.R.A.M. saw me later that night and asked me to come through. That was the first time I’ve ever seen a beat get made from scratch, and was the first time I saw more than one person make a beat. They had pianos and instruments chiming in making it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=251cxou3yR4&w=560&h=315]

You met D.R.A.M. through Rick. How did you originally meet Rick?

He actually set up a meeting to meet me.

What’s it feel like to see “Broccoli’ become so popular? Does it feel like things are happening super quickly, or has it been a slow burn to this point?

It’s quick. I think it’s even moving too quick to feel any kind of way.

What’s your writing process like?

I’ll usually write everything on my phone or just freestyle, either or. Around my first mixtape, I did a lot of writing at home. I’d work on stuff in bed, or in the shower I’d come up with stuff. Literally anywhere. Even now, lines will come into my head and I’ll jot them down. At my mom’s house I used to do a lot of work really late at night, 3 or 4 in the morning, and I’d just write in bed.

I want to hear about you and Kanye West. Because I know you were a model during his big Pablo fashion show at Madison Square Garden . What that’d feel like?

I don’t know, it didn’t really feel like anything. I always feel weird when people ask me because I never really know how it felt like. It felt like what I feel like right now getting my hair colored, except with other people watching me. My friend Ian Connor helped me be a part of it.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/246294553″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

For anyone who’s never met Kanye West, what’s he like in person?

He’s nice. He’s a nice guy. He’s not mean at all. He’s really nice.

What did you think of Life of Pablo when you heard it?

It was tight. I heard a couple of the songs before it came out, and I thought it was good!

I’m wondering what it was like for you growing up in Atlanta?

I grew up on the West Side…. [Laughs]

What are you laughing at?

I’m sorry, but I’m in a group message and it’s so funny right now.

Who’s on the group message?

All my friends, and everyone’s sending me throwback pictures. It’s so funny. [Laughs hysterically] Somebody just sent me a picture of my dad in the group and captioned it, “I be trippin’.” It’s so funny! My dad is a character.

What’s he like?

He’s a photographer. He’s not your average dad, he’s real artsy and he looks 22 even though he’s 40-something. He dresses like a younger person, too. He’s really cool.

Have you been back to the McDonald’s you used to work at?

I actually haven’t been there recently. I should do that.

You definitely should. You’d be the man s trolling in.

I actually might go today!

• SEE ALSO : Will Keen On Playing Vladimir Putin On Broadway in ‘Patriots’

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Watch Lil Yachty’s 2016 XXL Freshman Interview and Freestyle

If there was ever a rapper to exemplify the new wave in hip-hop, it's Lil Yachty . The ATL rhymer with colorful beaded braids in his hair has exploded onto the rap scene in the last year. It almost seems like he came out of nowhere. Thanks to strategic management and more importantly, a rabid Internet fandom, Yachty scored the coveted XXL Freshman 10th Spot for this year's class.

As the leader of his crew, the Sailing Team, the Quality Control signee found viral fame with only six months of serious rapping under his belt. And at just 18, Lil Boat uses his youth to his advantage every step of the way. The self-proclaimed "King of the Teens" uses samples on his songs that 1990s babies love -- from Finding Nemo voiceovers in "Just Keep Swimming" to the Rugrats theme song in "All Times."

After perking the ears of young listeners online and popping up on features with his Quality Control cohorts Rich The Kid and Migos, Yachty dropped his debut mixtape,  Lil Boat , in March of this year. "Minnesota" and "1Night" became instant standouts from the 14-track offering, which boasts features from Young Thug and Quavo as well as production from Yachty's longtime producer and best friend Burberry Perry. Together, Yachty and Perry make what the Freshman calls "colorful, positive" music. Simple as that.

"I once said bubblegum trap in an interview and then everyone took that and ran with it," Yachty tells XXL when asked to describe his sound.

And even though he's the "King of the Teens," the highly unorthodox rhymer knows that bringing something different to the culture comes with its fair share of haters. Yachty's seen the hate online from old hip-hop heads already.

"Me getting this, it's going to show a lot of people, you know what I'm saying, it'll make them hate me more or respect me more, either way it go, they going be talking more," he shares.

Lucky for Lil Boat and his team, the boos from the haters definitely get drowned out by the "Yachty" chants. During the New York XXL Freshman show this past week, Yachty's fan base showed up in droves and even caused a mob scene outside of the venue in Times Square once he tried to leave after his performance.

Even with the rising stardom, Yachty isn't taking anything for granted or slacking on his work ethic. His second mixtape,  Summer Songs 2, is due out this summer.

"I'm very excited because I grew up every year waiting on [The Freshman issue]...so, to see myself here, it's like a dream come true," Yachty states.

Watch Lil Yachty talk about dealing with the haters and staying true to himself in his video interview above and see his bars in his 2016 XXL Freshman freestyle and exclusive photos below.

Go Behind the Scenes With Lil Yachty at 2016 XXL Freshman Cover Shoot

More From XXL

How Lil Yachty Got His Second Act

By Jeff Ihaza

Until the pandemic, Lil Yachty never stopped to think about how quickly he became famous. “It was a full year from walking across the stage in high school to then I’m in this penthouse in midtown Atlanta , I got this G-wagon, put my mother in a house,” Yachty explains. “It’s a fast life. You not ever getting the chance to think about a lot of shit.”

Yachty’s 2016 hit “Minnesota,” which had the treacly energy of a nursery rhyme, earned the then-17-year-old the title “King of the Teens.” But since then, he’s become an elder statesman of a certain brand of young superstar — and something like the Gen Z answer to Diddy. He collaborated with brands like Nautica and Target; he appeared in the movie How High 2 ; he signed an endorsement deal with Sprite. Signees to his new label imprint, Concrete Boys, even get an iced-out chain.

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Born Miles Parks McCollum, Yachty embodies many of the ways the music industry has changed in the past decade. He rose to fame on the internet and commands attention with or without new music. Over Zoom in March, he’s calm and reserved, pausing intently before he responds to questions. The youthful exuberance is still there, though. At one point, his mom, who lives nearby, calls to ask what he wants from the grocery store. “I need Pop-Tarts,” he says sweetly. “I really want them cinnamon-bun Pop-Tarts.”

He can afford lots of Pop-Tarts. Yachty reportedly made $13 million on endorsements in 2016 and 2017. (“Work hard, play hard,” he responds when asked about the number.) He spends more than $50,000 a month on various expenses, according to one recent headline. (“If anything I pay a little more. I have many assets and insurance, plus an elaborate payroll.”) He’s working on a Reese’s Puffs cereal collaboration, a film based on the card game Uno, and he was one of the first rappers to hop on the crypto craze, selling something called a “YachtyCoin” last December in an auction on the platform Nifty Gateway. According to a report from Coinbase, the token sold for $16,050. Yachty explains that when he was first discovered by Quality Control records founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee, “one of the biggest things he talked about was being a brand. Being bigger than just an artist — being a mogul.” 

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In fact, collaboration has come to be a useful tool for Yachty as he sheds the King of the Teens title for something more akin to a rap mogul. “I only work with people I have friendships with, who I really admire,” Yachty says. “And I love working with newer artists, up-and-coming artists.”  Within the world of hip-hop, Yachty has found for himself somewhere between a megastar and internet hero, and it would appear that he’s just settling in. “I just fuck with new talent. Not even like, ‘let me sign you, get under my wing,’ ” he explains. “Just ‘hey, I’ve been in this spot before. I know what that’s like, bada bing, bada boom.’ ”

Yachty started Concrete Boys last year. One of the first signees was his childhood friend Draft Day, who offers one of the more exciting features on Lil Boat 3, on the cut “Demon Time.” “I feel old sometimes,” Yachty admits. “I feel old as fuck when someone’s popping and I don’t know who they are. Which is rare, because I be on my shit.”

Yachty is also at the forefront of a new realm of social platforms, namely Twitch and Discord, that engender more direct communication within communities. Yachty frequently talks directly to fans on both platforms, and in April he collaborated with Discord on “sound packs,” which allowed users to replace the app’s normal notifications with sounds he created. 

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I ask Yachty where he sees himself in five years. “Hopefully, a really successful actor,” he responds. “And with a bangin’ eight pack. I’ll probably cut my hair up, maybe a little beard. Real sex-symbol shit, you know what I’m saying?” For Yachty, who opened the door to a new brand of celebrity rapper, it doesn’t register as wishful thinking. His enduring celebrity is proof of what’s possible with a solid flow and internet savvy. “I just want to do everything. Because I’ve realized I can,” Yachty explains. “I’ve learned the power I have. The only thing stopping me is me, for real.”

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From Lil Yachty to DRAM, 2016's best hip-hop is all about black joy

With references to Super Nintendo, Pixar and healthy vegetables, this year has seen a new breed of rap superstars who are content to swap scowls for smiles

T he last decade has seen a lot of rap move towards a darker and introspective sound. Major players such as Kanye West, Drake and Kendrick Lamar have taken on topics such as their own mental health, while dominant scenes such as drill in Chicago have reflected the violence in the city in which it was invented. In 2016, though, there has been a slight realignment towards fun rap that channels happiness above all else, something Chance the Rapper tagged #BlackBoyJoy , encouraging others to participate. A crop of new young rap stars hope to turn the tables toward euphoria, and flip rap classicism on its head.

Chance is the artist at the epicenter of this mood shift; critically lauded and liked within rapper circles and without , his latest mixtape, Coloring Book, was an expansive playground with enough room for Lil Wayne and Lil Yachty, and it united Kanye West with the Chicago Children’s Choir, T-Pain with Kirk Franklin. Chance’s music, and the sound of those in his inner circle – Noname, Jamila Woods and Saba – is joyful. It’s hopeful. It’s optimistic. His delivery is animated; his demeanor is excitable. He raps about love, drugs, faith and finding solace, and coats it all in optimism.

Chance has become the posterboy for a very particular kind of black joy in rap, but there are a handful of others doing similar work. Among the most popular of them is Lil Uzi Vert, a Philly rapper whose frolicking half-ballads only see teen romance through the dizzying frames of rose-colored glasses. Since breaking through in 2015, Uzi has been prolific, releasing a trio of doe-eyed, love-centric mixtapes – Luv is Rage, Lil Uzi Vert v the World, and The Perfect Luv Tape – and a collaborative project with Gucci Mane, 1017 v the World, before recently teasing Luv is Rage 2. His singsong is infectious (as on Scott & Ramona) and often even cheery (as on Ronda (Winners), and when he isn’t rapping, he’s dancing around hotel rooms .

A single degree of separation from Uzi, there’s Lil Yachty, the bubblegum rap star that’s a self-proclaimed King of the Teens. As if proving the very utility of his raps, Lil Yachty first became popular when his SoundCloud track, 1 Night, scored a viral comedy video . He makes fun, hook-first pop rap oblivious to songcraft and structure that doesn’t take itself too seriously, with very little interest in legacy and even less in rap canon. His production, which is mostly handled by friend Burberry Perry, evokes clouds, cotton candy and Super Nintendo. Many of the strongest moments in Yachty’s digital discography are distillations of cut scenes from Pixar and Super Mario that make it feel like you’re taking the scenic route through the early 00s on a Flying Nimbus .

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Yachty is DRAM, who recalls entire swaths of R&B history, both recent and distant. DRAM’s happy rap isn’t a far cry from Chance’s, warm and refreshing. But it has an added layer of soul and richness. In a recent interview on the Rap Radar podcast, Erykah Badu said DRAM is what would happen “if George Clinton, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and D’Angelo had a baby”, and it’s easy to follow the lineage. There’s something distinctly neo-soul about his vocals, but there are traces of feel-good funk and manic ODB enthusiasm, too. It’s his ability to be so many different things at once that makes Broccoli, his sleeper hit with Lil Yachty, work so well and it’s why the song shot up the charts: it’s brazenly jolly.

In a different realm, but sharing a similar spirit, is Rae Sremmurd, the Mississippi party rap duo of brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi. Their music doesn’t have the effervescence of Yachty’s, and it isn’t imbued with positivity in the way that Chance’s is, but it’s a similar kind of carefree. Their glee is implicit in their energies, their youthful exuberance. The SremmLife credo is basically have as much fun as you can, as safely as you can, and it permeates their shows , their interviews , and, obviously, their songs. The smash single, Black Beatles, which rocketed up to the top of the Billboard chart, is Peak SremmLife – they’re young bulls living like old geezers with so much money on the floor that “they’re buying school clothes”. They’re young, rich and free.

These are just some of the primary voices helping bring balance to rap’s tone, adding some levity where there was mostly myth-making and legacy-building before, humorlessness and sedation. There is more than enough space for both to flourish, but it is crucial, especially in times like these, that feel-good music brings a little light to our lives. Rap , go forth and be merry.

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Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert: In 2016, the Kids Took Over Rap

By Matthew Ramirez

The first time I heard Hawaiian Punch-braided teen rapper Lil Yachty was, fittingly, in a viral video . There’s no way in a million years would I have thought the artist behind what I assumed was literally a joke song could be a respectable rapper, but once I poked around his SoundCloud, I thought he had a sincerity that made him more than a novelty. Even so, I never imagined he’d play on the radio, or end up in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James. Then, not long after, I came across another meme featuring Yachty. He was in the top left quadrant of an Instagram post that blew up: the “No one over 30 can name all 4 of these n***** w/o Google” meme. Despite being 27 years old, I only recognized Yachty.

It was a shocking moment of feeling irrelevant, like my rap fandom had finally led me outside of the moment. The meme pushed me to eventually find out about Lil Uzi Vert, who sits to the right of Yachty in the quadrant. They’re both rascally young kids, except Yachty is more earnest and open, and Uzi—aided by his nasal tone and frantic delivery—is brattier, though far from what any old-fashioned hip-hop head would call hard. He’s Sum 41, while Yachty is Blink-182. Like “Fat Lip,” I heard Vert’s “Money Longer” in DJ sets and on the radio, and thought it was a fun, disposable radio song with a killer hook … that didn’t necessarily signal career longevity, I thought as I pressed my copy of To Pimp a Butterfly to my chest.

But there I was, being an old. Career longevity doesn’t necessarily matter to the rappers in that meme quadrant—Yachty, Vert, 21 Savage, and Playboi Carti—who are all 24 and younger. (Yachty is just 19 years old, making him the most relevant rapper alive who maybe doesn’t remember 9/11 happening.) On the surface, they don’t seem like they have a lot in common either thematically or sonically, but as a unit they comprise an unofficial movement of devil-may-care, youth-oriented rap. It ranges from the squawky but commercial-leaning Vert to the more eccentric Yachty, from jokesters like Houston’s Ugly God to gangsta rappers like 21 Savage. You can draw a line from Yachty to Wintertime or Playboi Carti to NBA YoungBoy based on the same cocktail of youth, the ease with which they repel rap fans 25 and older, their prodigious use of social media, and the insouciant ideas, twisted through the swagger of recent guys like Future, Migos, and Young Thug, swimming throughout their output. The snarkiest might call it shithead-teen rap, even if some of the principal artists are technically in their 20s.

Artists in this group earned their stripes through trial by fire—they were sent to the principal’s office, a.k.a. the interview chair of Ebro, Hot 97’s resident rap reactionary. (They were even dissed by J. Cole , the leader of the debate team.) On Ebro’s show, Yachty and Vert went so far as to insist they weren’t rappers. That’s a fine amount of logical hoops to jump through, even if they do court more of a rock-star image. (See this amazing, Beatlemania-esque viral video where Uzi is chased by adoring fans at a festival.) But hey, they were ready to own it. Yachty has a song called “King of the Teens”; on “Shoot Out the Roof,” he rapped, “You ain’t Uzi, you ain’t Carti, damn sure not me.”

These guys, along with some others, signaled another changing of rap’s tide. This has been a recurring wave for a few years: As far back as 2007, Soulja Boy broke through with “Crank That” and inspired a thousand “is this real rap” conversations. In 2012, Chief Keef inspired a thousand more “is this real rap” conversations before everyone started making drill; in 2013, Migos inspired even more “is this real rap” conversations before everyone started doing the Migos flow. So it goes. These guys are obviously inspired by Migos, as well as the frenetic style of Young Thug (another rap contrarian), but they’re younger, weirder, and maybe even more popular among the kids, who are always alright, even when they’re wrong. Here are some of our favorite songs by these renegade kids from 2016.

Lil Yachty, “1 Night” Where it all started for me. Still an irresistible, silly earworm.

Lil Yachty, “Minnesota” ft. Quavo, Young Thug, Skippa da Flippa This was the song that made me believe there was “more” to Yachty. While his verse retains his characteristically sloppy charm, the beat—an exercise in minimalism—propels “Minnesota,” which features two dudes who might be called the fathers of this scene, and one guy adjacent to it.

Lil Yachty, “All In” ft. Kodie Shane, Big Brutha Chubba, Kay The Yacht, Jban$2Turnt, TheGoodPerry, $oop, K$upreme, Byou Notable because it introduced me to Kodie Shane, and is my favorite song on Yachty’s uneven Summer Songs II tape. It’s also a good rap song, a team cipher that runs six essential minutes and has a wistful, youthful “seven years later and I got the same friends” hook.

Lil Uzi Vert, “You Was Right” Lil Uzi’s other big radio song, this is both one of his most outwardly rappity-rap tracks, and one of his most introspective. It’s a perfect dance song, too.

Lil Uzi Vert, “Ps and Qs” After two mixtapes and a joint mixtape with Gucci Mane, this remains my favorite Lil Uzi Vert track on the strength of its beat alone. More rap songs should prominently feature accordions.

Lil Uzi Vert, “Do What I Want” Speaking of more memes, I was cold on The Perfect Luv Tape until I saw Russell Westbrook rap along to this in his car. (Later, he replicated the spot for a Jordan commercial .) That’s when I knew he’d be all right in Oklahoma City.

21 Savage, “X” ft. Future By virtue of age (24) and style (cold, sobering gangsta rap), 21 Savage is the odd man out in this scene, but he belongs because he confused a lot of older people when he first came out. Plus, his “ issa knife ” moment became a meme, and he’s such a character he influenced a wack rapper—the shameless 22 Savage—in his wake. This is a fun, real-world hit, and while nothing 21 Savage does could be labeled “bratty,” the “I’m just flexing on my ex-bitch” hook thematically lines up with guys like Uzi.

Playboi Carti, “Fetti” ft. Da$h and Maxo Kream He didn’t quite taste the mainstream success of his peers in that four-quadrant meme, but Carti quietly released some good music this year. My favorite song of his remains his 2015 track “Fetti,” which predicted a lot of the “slowed-down-Migos-flow” stuff that really blew up in 2016.

Kodak Black, “Vibin in This Bih” ft. Gucci Mane Kodak hit too many legal troubles to truly blow up in 2016, and he’s yet to repeat the viral highs of 2015 jams “Skrt” and “Ran Up a Check.” His feature on “Lockjaw” was one of rap’s finest moments this year, but that’s definitely a French Montana song. On this song from Lil B.I.G. Pac he teams up with grandfather figure to all these guys, Gucci Mane, to trade spirited verses and establish himself as a “take me seriously” member of this team.

Madeintyo, “Uber Everywhere” A totally goofy and fun radio song, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’m not really checking for more Madeintyo songs, unless something really comes out and knocks me off my feet.

Trill Sammy, “Martin” Trill Sammy flies under the radar, but he secretly has millions of YouTube views on his songs and defiantly sticks out in a weird Houston scene whose most visible stars, Travis Scott and Sauce Twinz, sound nothing alike. “Martin” is a grating (and great) piece of “repetitive phrase rap” that sticks in your head. And I secretly enjoy his “ Uber Everywhere ” freestyle more than the real thing.

Amine, “Caroline” This is more in the vein of D.R.A.M.’s 2015 hit “Cha Cha,” but this crude yet joyful hit (53 million YouTube views and counting, appearing in the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100) was the sleeper song of the year. Amine earns points for taking the song to Jimmy Fallon and dropping an anti-Donald Trump verse at the end.

Ugly God, “Water” Houston’s 20-year-old Ugly God is the most genuinely weird artist out of all these guys. He’s like an evil Lil Yachty. The first reaction to an Ugly God song is to want to dismiss it as a joke, except Ugly God is an ace at writing hooks and has a genuinely funny personality. He’s impossible to hate.

Ugly God, “Booty From a Distance” Speaking of funny, Ugly God’s “ I Beat My Meat ” wears its iPhone ringtone sample too heavily to register as more than a novelty, but his “Booty From a Distance” is a great story song. Maybe it’s the Houston connection but I can’t help but think of Bushwick Bill when I listen.

Kodie Shane, “Hold Up” ft. Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Yachty I like Kodie because her music is fun and she has a great personality, but I also give her credit for hijacking the one Famous Dex song everybody liked (“Drip From My Walk”) and re-contextualizing it out of the view of the intolerable Chicago rapper who was primed to blow up like Yachty and Uzi, but was caught on camera beating a woman . This is a good little song that features the two biggest stars of the scene.

Wintertime, “Thru It All (Remix)” ft. iLoveMakonnen The Florida rapper’s most popular song, no doubt boosted by the appearance of iLoveMakonnen. It mixes atonal sing-song rapping with an ultra chill beat—it’s not as commercial as Yachty and less outrageous than Ugly God, but it treads the middle ground between easily digestible and borderline avant-garde.

NBA YoungBoy, “38 Baby” While NBA YoungBoy is more or less making traditional gangsta rap, he’s still only 17, and thriving on a post-Chief Keef, post-Bobby Shmurda wave that altered the fabric of gangsta rap by virtue of persistent youth alone, which makes him adjacent to this scene. This is a great song with a simmering, throwback West Coast sample, though of course the young rapper hails from Louisiana. (Unfortunately, like Keef and Shmurda, NBA YoungBoy is dealing with some serious-sounding legal issues .)

Migos, “Bad and Boujee” ft. Lil Uzi Vert As of this writing, this song sits at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, which would make it the highest charting single of Migos’s career. Anecdotally, it’s also a song where people have decided to “come around” to Vert—his voice sounds right at home amid the distinctive tones of Migos, atop a pristine Metro Boomin beat with an inescapably catchy hook. While D.R.A.M. and Yachty’s “Broccoli” is a bigger hit (and peaked at No. 5), this is the first time it feels as if this “sound” propelled a song forward, rather than relying on a “who are these guys?” curiosity factor to reel people in.

This post Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert: In 2016, the Kids Took Over Rap first appeared on SPIN .

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Lil Yachty and ‘Super Mario’ Made Nostalgia Great Again in 2016

Sometimes we’re prepared for it — other times, it comes for us

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Share All sharing options for: Lil Yachty and ‘Super Mario’ Made Nostalgia Great Again in 2016

Do o you remember what it felt like to fly in 1996? I’d forgotten, until a teenage rapper named Lil Yachty (who, in his own words, sounds like “ a fucking cartoon character ”) reminded me.

I discovered Yachty in March, when the Twittersphere was hyping Lil Boat , a new mixtape from the 18-year-old, red-beaded Atlanta MC. Word was, the project sounded like cotton candy, river tubing on the hottest day of summer, and a 24-hour marathon of Disney Channel original movies wrapped into one. Worth at least a cursory listen.

The first person you hear on Lil Boat is not Yachty. It’s Ellen DeGeneres. The opening track samples the “just keep swimming” dialogue from Finding Nemo , a millennial mantra that every person under 30 in America has muttered to themselves during at least one final-exam cram session or exhausting late-night shift. When Yachty does eventually step to the mic, his bars are adequate but not head-turning. Then, halfway through the song, he Digivolves into an otherworldly singer, bleating emotions rather than words. His wailing “hellooooooo” sounds simultaneously forlorn and euphoric. It’s whale-speak spun through Auto-Tune.

I bobbed absentmindedly through more of the tracks. The songs are fun and ephemeral, like perusing your friends’ Snapchat stories on a hungover Saturday morning. “Wanna Be Us” has immediate potential as a giddy summer jam. “Minnesota” demonstrates Yachty’s clear debt to fellow ATLien and featured artist Young Thug.

Then the eighth track, “Run/Running,” comes on, and a #throwbackthursday bomb detonates inside my head.

Sometimes we are prepared for nostalgia. We go into Toy Story 3 ready to weep for our own lost childhoods. We visit our college campuses knowing every square inch will be overrun with vivid coming-of-age memories. We roll our eyes when Hollywood decides to make a mature Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reboot because we, unlike movie studios, know you can’t tug at heartstrings with a tow truck.

But when nostalgia comes after you out of nowhere, while you’re just minding your own business, it’s different. It’s overwhelming. It can induce hysteria. I was in a legit panic when “Run/Running” kicked off with a buoyant pan flute, a sound that I immediately knew was an integral part of my youth but couldn’t immediately place. I was transported back to my childhood home in Montgomery, Alabama, and I started investigating. I flipped through my favorite television channels in my mind: Was it the theme song from a One Saturday Morning cartoon? I rummaged through my mess of a closet: Was this the bumper music from a 2-XL tape ? Maybe it was the tune my Bop It played? No, this is way too dope for Bop It.

I couldn’t place it. I was going to go mad listening to a SoundCloud rapper warble over an arcane piece of ’90s flotsam, lost to the sands of time.

I returned to Twitter, the font of all human knowledge. And that’s how I figured it out, as I scanned through reactions from other people who were having the same perplexed , disbelieving , ecstatic response as I was: This is the goddamn menu music from Super Mario 64.

In one of his most famous ad pitches , Don Draper called nostalgia “the pain from an old wound.” That characterization — nostalgia as a fundamentally negative, heart-wrenching, malignant force — is the way the sentiment was viewed for centuries.

“Nostalgia” began its life as a disease. The term was coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688 as a diagnosis for mental and physical problems suffered by the country’s soldiers. Young men trapped on battlefields far from home, who carried symptoms ranging from melancholy to loss of appetite to irregular heartbeats, were said to be suffering from nostalgia. It was a sign of mental weakness. Over the next 200 years, doctors and military leaders tried a variety of strategies to cure the disease, from leeches to death threats to rituals of public humiliation, according to The Atlantic .

In a 2013 paper, a group of social psychologists wrote that, “Though speculations about the causes of nostalgia varied, they had one common feature; they all ultimately viewed nostalgia as abnormal and problematic.”

In the 20th century, the perception of nostalgia began to shift, but no one had empirically proven its effects until a social psychology professor at England’s University of Southampton got in an argument with a colleague about, among other things, his desire to talk about the Tar Heels. Constantine Sedikides, one of the coauthors of the aforementioned study, had formerly taught at the University of North Carolina and felt nostalgic about his time watching basketball there (during the Dean Smith era). Another professor said this bout of nostalgia clearly indicated he was depressed. Sedikides set out to prove him wrong.

Researchers at Southampton began bringing in groups of people to attempt to measure the effect nostalgia had on their demeanor. One group would be asked to write in detail about a nostalgic event that had occurred in their lives, while a control group wrote about an ordinary event. The group steeped in nostalgia was found to have boosted self-regard, social interconnectedness, and interpersonal competence. Thinking about treasured memories from the past made the test subjects more optimistic about the future.

Studies have shown that nostalgia, which is largely driven by social experiences, increases our desire to connect with others. It makes single people want to date; it makes people in couples happier about their relationships. “It makes you feel loved and connected,” Clay Routledge, a psychology professor at North Dakota State University and another coauthor of the nostalgia study, tells me. “Nostalgia’s kind of a reminder of, ‘Whoa, I’ve had all these great experiences with people. I’ve done really good things. I should keep doing that kind of stuff.’”

While the academic community was proving nostalgia’s benefits, corporations didn’t need a peer-reviewed study to divine that the emotional experience was powerful — and profitable. Over the past decade we’ve watched nostalgia become weaponized, as media giants bludgeon us over the head with comic book movie reboots, video game remasters, television revivals, album sequels, and a seemingly endless string of reunion tours. You no longer need to be a ’90s kid to remember the 23 identity-affirming items on a BuzzFeed listicle, because each of those things has no doubt been reanimated in some fashion to make money.

“The reason why nostalgia is big business … is simply because it helps fulfill basic psychological needs that we have,” says Jacob Juhl, coauthor of the study and an assistant psychology professor and lecturer at the University of Southampton. “Humans have a need for social connectedness. We have a need for self-esteem. We have a basic need to see our life as meaningful and purposeful. Nostalgia is something that helps us fill this need. We’re more likely to gravitate towards products that are going to fulfill important needs for us.”

Technology has made it easier to satisfy our ravenous appetite for microwaved versions of the past. We’re never more than a few clicks from summoning a beloved childhood song on Spotify or a favorite movie on Netflix. And, thanks to social media, we can quickly find other people who also celebrate Mean Girls ’ anniversary every year or believe Super Mario 64 is the greatest game of all time. Obsessions that might have made us feel ostracized as kids now feel validated when they’re trending on Twitter.

“The availability of things from our past is a reason why nostalgia is kind of a hot topic right now,” Juhl says. “We’re able to access nostalgic events that were not necessarily social, where before we were unable to access non-social nostalgic things.”

Researchers say increased uncertainty also drives us toward nostalgic content. That uncertainty can manifest itself on an individual level — information overload on the Twitter timeline or the Netflix queue may lead you to retreat to a sure, comforting thing. But it’s also apparent on a macro scale, where global forces have pushed economic, political, and environmental uncertainty top of mind. When the planet feels like it’s in shambles, we curl up in the coherent, artificial worlds of old movies, TV shows, and video games. “Part of it might be a natural kind of coping mechanism that people use in times when they feel less stable or less secure,” Routledge says. “Nostalgia seems to be a way to get some sense of certainty or control.”

Today everyone from Disney to Donald Trump wants to make you wistful for the past in some way or another. It’s exhausting, and it could eventually lessen our ability to feel nostalgic at all, experts say.

“I think it’s possible that people could become desensitized to [nostalgia],” Juhl says, noting research has shown that people become satiated with stimuli through overexposure, whether it’s a favorite meal or a beloved song. “People would be more likely to become numb to a specific thing in pop culture that is related to one specific nostalgic memory.”

I’ve been feeling that numbness to our current nostalgia overload. In fact, I’ve been annoyed by much of it . But then that Yachty song bowled me over. Why did a tune I’d buried in my mind being featured in a song by a rapper I had never heard of manage to get to me? How did this perfect combo hit all the right notes and cut through the current nostalgic noise?

For a kid who has not yet spent two decades on this Earth, Lil Yachty is a deeply nostalgic artist. In addition to sampling Nemo and Mario , he’s rapped over beats that lifted from Rugrats (harmless), ice cream trucks (grating), and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (never let Kylie near a mic again). He reps Seinfeld and Incubus on his Instagram.

And he loves video games. Yachty talks about Rock Band with his fans. He’s recently revisited the library of the very underrated Nintendo GameCube. He claims to have an incredible N64 collection. I’m inclined to believe he does.

According to Routledge, the kind of intense affection for the past Yachty shows is fairly common for someone of his age. A yet-to-be-published study by Routledge and other researchers finds that early adulthood is a time of increased nostalgic feelings, as teenagers cope with leaving home for the first time to go to college, or, in Yachty’s case, leaving home to hang out with superstars like Kanye West. “Those times of changes [are when] you might be more prone to nostalgia as a way to compensate or to feel more of a sense of stability and your sense of identity,” Routledge says.

It’s this intense devotion to the past that birthed “Run/Running.” Last summer, a month before he released his hit single “1 Night,” Yachty tweeted out a 30-minute YouTube clip of the menu music for Super Mario 64 . The song, produced by legendary Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, is a relatively obscure musical piece in a wildly popular game. Everyone who’s played Mario 64 has heard the tune during the boot-up sequence, but it burrows into a different part of your mind than the actual level music that you’re forced to listen to for longer stretches. It’s ubiquitous and anonymous at the same time (Juhl says songs we once heard a lot but then slipped from our conscious memory can pack a more potent nostalgic punch than ones that remain consistently familiar).

Earl the Pearl , a producer and childhood friend of Yachty’s, saw the tweet, and it immediately took him back to his own memories of playing the game. He thought it could make the basis for a good beat. He added hi-hats, the Super Mario Bros. jump sound effect, and a booming bass that catapults the Nintendo melody into 2016 at about 40 seconds in. Yachty glides over the track in full Auto-Tuned glory, much more at home here than on his other nostalgia plays. “I spent everything I have, just to make it right back,” he croons. This must be how Mario felt when he donned the Wing Cap.

“He wanted to make a beat like this for the longest,” Earl says. “I did the beat in like 15 or 20 minutes. I gave it to him, and he loved it from the first time he heard it. It brings [listeners] back. Like, ‘Aw man, I remember this game when I was a kid.’”

If Yachty was searching for a totem to represent his idealized vision of childhood, he couldn’t have picked a better one than Mario 64 . In 1996, when the game debuted, the character was already iconic, having starred in the best-selling video game of the ’80s (and the most unfortunate video game–adaptation of the ‘90s). For both Mario and Nintendo, the Nintendo 64 marked a first foray into 3-D gaming, a new paradigm for the industry that had previously been explored but not yet perfected.

Mario 64 got it astoundingly right. For its time, the game was a technical marvel, boasting cutting-edge graphics (for a console game ) and unparalleled control sensitivity thanks to the N64’s analog stick. The way Mario ran, leapt, and karate-kicked across his colorful 3-D landscapes was intuitive in a way that earlier games couldn’t match. And the nonlinear structure of the game — the goal is to get 70 stars, completing tasks across various open levels as the player sees fit — paved the way for the sandbox games that predominate the gaming world today. Whether you were a kid seduced by the Toys R Us demo, a seasoned gamer impressed by the glowing reviews, or a developer wowed by Nintendo’s technical wizardry, the game was a revelation. Perhaps no other game has ever floored so many people at once, or inspired such a thrilling sense of limitless possibility ( Minecraft is Mario 64 ’s heir apparent in that regard).

“ Mario 64 had both technology and game design going for it,” says Jeremy Parish, a video game journalist and host of Retronauts , a podcast about retro games. “Nintendo wasn’t afraid to change the workings of Mario, doing things like breaking away from the series’ usual series of short stages in favor of about a dozen huge playgrounds each with multiple goals, to allow players to really learn the ins and outs of these more complex spaces. Nintendo had the intuitive sense to avoid trying to simply turn 2-D Mario into 3-D and instead let the game play out with a more sprawling, laid-back sensibility that felt more appropriate for the third dimension.”

The game was the best-selling release on the Nintendo 64, moving more than 11 million copies. It’s one of those titles everyone who loves video games has touched at one point or another. Dan Houser, cofounder of Grand Theft Auto –creator Rockstar Games, has said every 3-D game developer borrowed something from Mario 64 .

And now one of the hottest rappers of 2016, who wasn’t even alive when the game debuted, has borrowed something as well.

Do o you know what it feels like to fly in 2016? Inspired by my visceral reaction to the song, I corralled a friend’s Nintendo 64 recently and played Super Mario 64 for the first time in at least a decade. Of course, I lingered on the menu screen and thought of Yachty. “That song has been activated by the rap artist,” Juhl explains. “Purely on a cognitive level, it suggests that you’ll be more likely to associate the nostalgic event with him and be more likely to form some kind of attachment.”

There’s no hiding the game’s age. Even as I’m writing this, I’m imagining the blocky graphics to be better than they actually are. The camera, limited to a few preset angles, regularly gets stuck in awkward positions. Some of the songs that are not the incredible menu music — and repeat across multiple levels — grate after a while. And that first flying level where Mario gains the Wing Cap, which I remember as a blissful experience from childhood, is actually incredibly frustrating and kind of cheap .

But… it’s Mario 64. There’s a thrill in returning to that initial courtyard, where I and millions of other gamers took our first baby steps in a 3-D world. The eel that lurks in the waters of Dire, Dire Docks is still terrifying. And Mario’s “wahoo!” upon vaulting into the third leg of his triple jump remains one of gaming’s greatest cathartic releases.

Of course I still love Mario 64 — my brain is wired to. One of the most powerful reasons we lap up nostalgia is because we crave self-continuity, the notion that the things that happened to us in the past are relevant to our lives’ ongoing narratives. “I suspect that when you heard the song, it activated pleasant memories,” Juhl tells me. “It was something that you liked, which was something that you also liked in the past. There’s some part of you from the past that is currently persisting and makes up who you are today.”

This is really what nostalgia comes down to — the desire to be made whole, to know that what happened in the past mattered and still matters. Mario 64 is not just about the acrobatic plumber and Nintendo’s clever game design. It’s about my months-long odyssey to scrounge together $200 for a Nintendo 64, my trip with my father to Toys R Us to buy the console and game, playing Mario 64 with the volume off while my parents slept on Saturday mornings, getting yelled at because I wanted to to get one more star rather than go to school, discovering the Wing Cap level with a childhood friend by accidentally staring into the sun, sharing “Run/Running” with my current friends just to witness their own bewildered excitement, and celebrating the game’s 20th anniversary with people around the world on the internet.

“A lot of these pop culture phenomena are actually more connecting than you think they are at first blush,” Routledge says. “It’s affirming to know that this is something that’s meaningful to other people.”

This game and its many social tendrils are a part of me. Now, the song is too.

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Lil Yachty: The Full Profile

Home » Artist » Lil Yachty: The Full Profile

As someone who would describe himself as more of an artist than a rapper, Lil Yachty burst onto the scene in 2016 after one of his SoundCloud tracks went viral. Since then, his aptitude on social media has kept him afloat and kept the collaboration requests rolling in. But what type of a man is Lil Yachty really, and what does the future have in store for him?

Lil Yachty was born under the name Miles Parks McCollum in Mableton, Georgia. He grew up in Atlanta and was introduced to a life of media production through his father, Shannon McCollum, a well-known photographer. At an early age, he became accustomed to being in front of a camera and was introduced to music of many genres, inspiring him to be someone that didn’t hold to one version of what art could be. His musical influences ranged from the likes of Kanye West and Soulja Boy to Coldplay and Fall Out Boy to classics like the Beatles.  

Growing up, Lil Yachty wasn’t afraid to stand out. He liked fashion, he liked bright colors, and he was bullied for it. But he always knew that his differences were what made him stand apart from others, distinct and memorable instead of fading into the background. He would use that to build his brand and his following. 

Going Viral: A Burgeoning Career

Lil Yachty has been grouped with a new generation of rappers. These rappers gain huge fan bases from social media and achieve fame by going viral off Soundcloud and other media platforms. The longevity of their careers depends on if they can adapt to the new trends and keep their fans while remaining distinctly themselves. 

The Beginning of Lil Yachty, the Artist

In 2015, Miles Parks McCollum decided to move to New York City after living in Atlanta and working at McDonald’s. He stayed with a friend and lived humbly, slowly building up his social media presence and networking skills. This slow pace led to him attending college at Alabama State University for what would only be a short two months, before he decided to move back and fully dedicate himself to cultivating a network of like-minded artists. Thus, Miles McCollum became Lil Yachty.

Going Viral

Lil Yachty got his start on Soundcloud, where his song “One Night” went viral after it was used in a comedy video. With these newfound thousands of eyes on him, he was able to capitalize on his months of hard work networking with fashion personalities and get a job modeling for Kanye West’s 2016 Yeezy show in Madison Square Garden. 

Soon after his modeling exposure, he released his first mixtape Lil Boat , which peaked at 106th on the US Billboard 200. The rest of 2016 was filled with successful collaborations and featuring spots. Two features in particular, on “Broccoli” by DRAM and “iSpy” by Kyle, were extremely well received and were nominated for numerous awards, putting Lil Yachty firmly in the public eye. 

Signing With a Label

Nearly a year after signing a joint record deal with Motown Records, Quality Control Music, and Capitol Records, Lil Yachty released his first full-length studio album, Teenage Emotions, in May of 2017. The album peaked at 5th on the US Billboard 200 and paved the way for two additional studio albums released in 2018, Lil Boat 2 and Nuthin’ 2 Prove respectively. 

Throughout 2019 and 2020, Lil Yachty continued his streak of features and collaborations with other artists until he released his fourth studio album in May of 2020, Lil Boat 3 . The album peaked at 14th on the US Billboard 200, the lowest position of any of his albums. However, the lower ranking of his last album didn’t deter the rapper’s determination at all. In fact, it was seemingly bolstered by the fact that Drake , a man who Lil Yachty has long looked up to and idolized, featured on one of Lil Yachty’s Lil Boat 3 tracks, “Oprah’s Bank Account.” 

Image and Musical Style

A unique figure in the crowd, Lil Yachty has long said he doesn’t want to be put in a mold, stuck in one genre or image. He wants to be considered an artist more than a rapper. 

When Lil Yachty broke out on the scene, he was instantly recognizable for his brightly dyed red hair with beads, usually styled artfully in his face. However, 2020 saw the rapper ditch the red braids for his natural black color. Although some fans tried to analyze it as a sign of a turn to darker tones in his music, Lil Yachty has maintained that (much like Ariana Grande) his new hair is due to the strain that the red dye had on his hair, causing it to not grow correctly and to even fall out. So yes, the red dye is gone, but he still maintains his braids and beads. 

Although Lil Yachty once was well known for his sparkling grill, nowadays, you’ll see him rocking a pair of very expensive veneers, as has been the trend for social media stars in 2020. 

As someone who has deliberately kept a more mysterious and yet still open persona, Lil Yachty doesn’t have a specific style. Or, at least he won’t share it. He seems to be open to all types of fashion but isn’t one to follow specific trends. He does what he feels looks and feels right in the moment, whether it be matching his beads to his clothes or admiring crop tops on men. 

For a man with such a unique combination of influences, styles, likes, and dislikes, defining him is actually very straightforward. He’s easygoing. This easygoing nature is what has appealed to his fans for so long. He’s humorous, fun, and distinctly lighthearted, a recipe for success on social media. 

Musical Style

Early on in his career, Lil Yachty’s music was disregarded by established rappers who thought his generation of Soundcloud rappers wasn’t authentic or real to the genre. He was accused of being style over substance, with his rap style specifically being called “ mumble rap .”

These early criticisms didn’t seem to phase Lil Yachty much, as he had long wanted himself to be genre-defying with his music anyways. He rejected restrictions of what people consider to be real rap. As his fanbase is mainly young like him, he wants to remain relatable, wholesome even, wanting to rap more about teenage life than alcohol and drugs. In fact, in his early days, he claimed to not like the taste of alcohol or the effects of drugs, saying he didn’t need either in his life. 

Lil Yachty has described his music as “happy bubblegum trap” and “boat music,” an interesting choice of description since three of his four albums are named Lil Boat 1 , Lil Boat 2 , and Lil Boat 3 .

He wants his music to be fun and genre defying. To that end, he raps about video games and samples music and themes from cartoons to include in his songs. Lighthearted and fun, Lil Yachty doesn’t want his music to be a copy of rappers before him; he wants to be distinctly unique. An artist more than a rapper, a recognizable brand above all else. 

Accomplishments

With 14 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Songs, four full studio albums, and a fervent young fan base founded on social media, Lil Yachty is quickly blazing a path in the music industry. He continues to reap the rewards of his hard-won networking skills, collaborating with dozens of rappers and producers – some up and coming, while others are people he has admired for ages. In 2016, he even appeared in a Sprite commercial with Lebron James, expanding his network even further beyond artists in the music business.  

Lil Yachty has appeared in three movies: Life-Size 2: A Christmas Eve , Long Shot , and How High 2 . He has also done voice work in one animated movie: Teen Titans Go! To the Movies . 

Awards – Songs

“Broccoli” by Dram featuring Lil Yachty

• 2017 Billboard Music Awards nominations for top rap collaboration, top rap song, and top audio streaming song 
• 2017 MTV Video Music Awards nominations for best hip hop video and best collaboration. 
• 2017 Grammy nomination for best rap/sung collection. 

“iSpy” by Kyle featuring Lil Yachty

• 2017 MTV Video Music Awards nomination for best visual effects.
• 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards nomination for best video. 

Awards – Personal

• 2017 iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards nomination for best new international artist.  

Personal Life

Although he gained fame through social media, Lil Yachty’s personal life has been fairly quiet when compared to the blatant over-exposure of other artists and influencers. 

Famous Friends and Feuds

At the beginning of his career, Lil Yachty was a part of a group called The Sailing Team, composed of other rappers and producers such as K$upreme, Burberry Perry, and his own sister Kodie Shane. However, since 2019 Lil Yachty has stated that The Sailing Team is no more, claiming that his effort in the group outweighed the rest of their contributions. 

Lil Yachty gained his initial fame from social media. He owes much to it, and yet it has also landed him in controversy and feuds. Most controversy comes from his twitter account, and song lyrics, namely his song “E-ER,” which fans have felt sexualizes a female TikTok star inappropriately. 

One of Lil Yachty’s most famous controversies was a three-day feud with Soulja Boy over a photo and leaked audio. It resulted in a public reconciliation over social media and a few extra thousand followers each for them. 

Issues With the Law

In 2015, Lil Yachty was arrested in Florida for credit card fraud and stayed in jail until he paid a bail of $11,000. He cited the incident as something he never wanted to repeat. However, the dreaded year of 2020 brought more issues with the law in the form of speeding and crashing Ferraris. 

He is also currently being sued for assault and battery following an altercation with a man during the 2019 Rolling Loud festival. 

What’s Next?

Lil Yachty has promised his fans new music for 2021 and has so far released a music video called “ Royal Rumble ,” a collaboration with six other rappers all hailing from Michigan. He also has plans to tour starting in May, with a stop at the Rolling Loud Festival in Portugal in June. 

Beyond music, he will have a role in the upcoming Mattel Films movie based on the game Uno. So far, it is said to be a heist movie based in Atlanta, following Atlanta’s underground hip hop culture. 

Other than that, he stays a constant influence on social media, recently showing off his closet and impressive collection of shoes. As someone who was built on the backbone of social media, the race to stay relevant is ever important to an artist such as Lil Yachty. The music industry held more interest in him in the beginning of his career, as he had skyrocketed so fast and so young into the public eye. However, Lil Yachty still peaks interest and is bound to remain in the game for a while, if at least due to his business skills. 

The Sudden Rise of Lil Yachty | NY Times

They Came From Soundcloud: Lil Uzi Vert and the 6 Rappers Who Could Be Rock Stars | W Magazine

Lil Yachty Drops New Video for Michigan Hip-Hop Posse Cut ‘Royal Rumble’ | Rolling Stone

Lil Yachty | Biography & History | All Music

Lil Yachty Says He Stopped Trying To Promote The Sailing Team Because They Were “Really Lazy” | Genius  

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• Nuthin' 2 Prove · 2018
• Lil Boat · 2015
• It's Us Vol. 1 · 2024

Essential Albums

One of hip-hop's sunnier personalities plays dark and determined.

Music Videos

Artist playlists.

Cast-iron bangers and punchy vocals from the Atlanta rap star.

Singles & EPs

EmanuelDaProphet

More To Hear

Conversation around his album, 'Let's Start Here.'

The rapper on "G.I. Joe" and his album 'Michigan Boy Boat.'

The MC and City Girls' Yung Miami talk music, Quality Control.

Vince and Ty get festive, exchange gifts, and spin 21 Savage.

Vince and Ty report from backstage at the Childish Gambino tour.

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About lil yachty.

Lil Yachty makes it look easy. An Atlanta-raised rapper with a sleepy flow and a bright, almost childlike outlook, Yachty (born Miles Parks McCollum in 1997) rose to prominence in 2016 with a pair of mixtapes (Lil Boat and Summer Songs 2) that recast the booming caverns of 2010s rap as something soft, sweet, intuitive, and a little goofy—a sound Yachty once called “bubblegum trap.” Dozens of features and guest appearances followed, including cosigns from Kanye, Chance the Rapper, Calvin Harris, and Macklemore. In 2017, he released his first full-length album, Teenage Emotions. His second, 2018’s Lil Boat 2, took a harder, darker turn but retained the clarity that made his early music stand out. Like Lil Uzi Vert (or Young Thug before him), Yachty represents a turn away from the conventional metrics of rap, favoring slogans over bars, hooks over metaphors, fluidity over stricture, and vibe above all. (He famously—or infamously, depending on your stance toward tradition—once told Billboard that he couldn’t name five songs by either 2Pac or Biggie.) But he’s also emblematic of a broader shift from understanding rap music as an end in itself to seeing it as an extension of the person who made it, a facet of a bigger image or experience. No wonder he FaceTimes with fans, or started his career primarily as a presence on Instagram—for him, the project is social. Still, it wouldn’t make a difference if the music itself weren’t striking—and if he weren’t so casual about it too. Speaking to Beats 1’s Zane Lowe shortly before releasing Teenage Emotions, Yachty—guileless and ever-intuitive—said, “I didn’t know [my sound] was different. I didn’t know until it took off. Then I was like, ‘Well, I don’t sound like nobody else.’” He paused. “I don’t even know if that’s a good or a bad thing. But it’s a thing. It’s a thing.”

Similar Artists

Lil uzi vert, playboi carti, travis scott, trippie redd, kodak black, africa, middle east, and india.

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Highest Rated: 91% Teen Titans GO! to the Movies (2018)

Lowest Rated: 40% The System (2022)

Birthday: Aug 23, 1997

Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Rapper Miles Parks McCollum - better known by his stage name, Lil Yachty - was born in Mableton, Ga., on Aug. 23, 1997. He first gained fame in August 2015 with the release of his singles "One Night" and "Minnesota." That fall, he dropped out of Alabama State University to pursue his musical career, which saw him release his debut mixtape "Lil Boat" in March 2016. On June 10 of that year, Lil Yachty announced that he had signed a joint venture record deal with Quality Control Music, Capitol Records and Motown Records. His debut studio album, "Teenage Emotions," came out on May 26, 2017. His follow-up album, "Lil Boat 2," was released on March 9, 2018. Lil Yachty described his musical style as "bubblegram trap" for his sampling sounds that range from "Mario Bros." audio and the theme from long-running animated series "Rugrats" to the startup sound of a Nintendo GameCube video-game console. Outside of music, he debuted as a model for Kanye West's Yeezy Season 3 fashion line at New York's Madison Square Garden in February 2016.

Highest rated movies

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