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“Lyfestyle,” the latest album from the 24-year-old rapper Yeat, recently debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart. It was the biggest success yet for an artist who’s been gaining popularity while studiously avoiding the spotlight, and whose music is legible to his most devoted fans and students, but maybe not far outside that tent.
Yeat is one of the most visible exponents of this generation of rage rap — music that’s almost industrial in texture and inscrutable in lyrics, but inspires fervent fandom and dynamic live shows. (Others include Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, both protégés of the Atlanta psych-punk star Playboi Carti.) This generation writ large is indebted to Future, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert and the rock-star hip-hop surrealists of the 2010s. And coming up now is a post-Yeat generation of genre-breakers including Nettspend, 2hollis, Lazer Dim 700 and more.
On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how hip-hop’s splintering has helped popularize its less lyrical wings, how the pandemic was a boon for artists who wanted to lean in to personal mystery, and whether in a few years, all rap will be rage rap.
Guest:
Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporter
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
