Every few years a certain rapper becomes the figurehead for the ongoing downfall of Hip-Hop. In the past this honour has been bestowed upon artists such as Lil Wayne and Chief Keef and now this anti-accolade passes to Lil Yachty, a rapper-slash-singer from Atlanta who makes ultra-dumbed-down, auto-tuned, half-rapped, half-sang musical catastrophes. Yachty’s aural awfulness has been described as “Bubblegum Trap” but he is usually placed under the umbrella of “Mumble Rap” by the mainstream media. In truth however, Yachty’s songs are simply crap… it’s just bad music.

Now before someone points out, yes music like all forms of art is subjective, but being off beat is being off beat, bad singing is bad singing, and simplistic rhymes and a childish delivery is simplistic and childish. You can call it a stylistic choice if you so desire but everything from your ossicles to your brain alerts you to the fact that Lil Yachy’s music is shite, so why wouldn’t you listen to your ears and trust your gut?

If you don’t know who Lil Yachty is or you haven’t heard any of his music, just listen to ‘1 Night’ and bear witness to one of the worst songs ever created; appalling singing, bad rapping, simplistic rhyme schemes, amateur aesthetics, Yachty is the embodiment of musical garbage…

It might sometimes feel like bullying when pretty much everybody is attacking someone; joking about their style, their ability, or lack thereof. After all, Yachty hasn’t hurt anyone, he’s making music, albeit crap music. I guess his fans would say that we’re all “haters”, their usual comeback is “if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it”. But this isn’t an industry where people are immune to critiquing, music is offered to the public and so the public are allowed to say what they think of it. Since I’m part of the public too, I’m not going to feel sorry for someone who gets flack for making dumbed-down, amateurish music. If that’s what Yachty wants to make, then he should expect a little criticism.

Lil Yachty’s Twitter bio reads “they hate on me but they hated jesus”… oh woe is me! Badly constructed sentences and missing capitalisation aside, comparing yourself to the Messiah is pushing it, even John Lennon didn’t get away with it, and he could actually write and sing. It’s things like this that make Hip-Hop fans hate Lil Yachty, he makes “Bubblegum” Pop music that many people make fun of, but at what point is his so-called hardship akin to a crucified religious leader? Delusions of grandeur or what?

Lil Yachty has of course encouraged much of the resentment and hostility he’s received and he even made the situation worse for himself by saying that he can’t name 5 Biggie or Tupac songs or that Drake is a better rapper than both deceased MCs. Making such statements is almost like smothering your buttocks in honey and going arse first into a beehive. What do you expect when you talk trash about the golden era but can’t make anything yourself that tops it? In addition, if you don’t want to be considered a rapper and you don’t listen to old-school Hip-Hop (two things Yachty has stated in the past) then why say Drake is a better rapper than Tupac and Biggie in the first place? If you can’t even name 5 of their songs, then how can you say who is better? Plus, if you don’t listen to Hip-Hop and you don’t want to be a part of Hip-Hop then maybe stay the fuck out of it.

What’s funny about this situation is the majority of people who hate Yachty are fans of mainstream music themselves. That being the case, people are arguing about contemporary Hip-Pop with people who like old-school Hip-Pop, however good Tupac and Biggie were it has to be recognised that they were both extremely overrated by the same media – the same media who is currently hyping today’s Mumble Rappers. Old-school rappers including Nas, Ras Kass, K-Rino, and KRS-One (among others) were arguably better than both Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G., but bringing in underground artists into a conversation about mainstream music will always confuse matters. In any case, even when Tupac was lying in a bathtub draped in gold jewels for a photoshoot and even when Biggie had a bouncing karaoke ball in his music video, they both had more credibility, style, and lyrical skill in their pinky finger than all these Mumble Rap clowns put together, but I digress.

People have been saying for decades which musicians are trash and which are talented. While the masses were lapping up Master P or Silkk The Shocker for instance, I was one of the voices calling that No Limit shit what it really was; the beginning of the end of credible Hip-Hop. Back in the day, nobody wanted to hear that their favourite music genre was devolving but every year since the late ’90s the bar was continually lowered to accompany an ever increasing amount of inferior “rappers”. There’s now been two full decades where morons have continually defended crap musicians and over the years there’s been countless people saying shit like; “I know he’s not a good rapper but the beat is fire” or “in the club I don’t want meaningful lyrics” or “I like Hip-Hop that’s not serious, I just want to have fun”, but thanks to all this advocacy for Hip-Pop, this has now resulted in Mumble Rappers like Lil Yachty, congratulations to everyone involved.

Lil Yachty recently had a feud with Shia LaBeouf and strangely the actor proved on numerous occasions that he’s better at rapping than the actual rapper. Just by looking at this beef alone, you know something is fishy about the whole situation… why did Motown Records sign this amateur prick? And why is someone so wack so famous? Well, I guess there’s nothing like nepotism to explain why someone this talentless is making strides within the music business. Yachty’s father is apparently a “music photographer” named Shannon McCollum who has photographed the likes of Outkast and dead prez. According to an article I read online, McCollum said that he played songs by Coldplay when Yachty was a child, so I guess that’s another way Chris Martin has managed to ruin music. Regardless of his influences however, Lil Yachty is the definition of inferior, dumbed-down, commercialised Hip-Hop; whether he’s bringing Kylie Kardashian–Jenner into the genre or ruining old-school Rap hits with Carly Rae Jepsen (they recently did a remake of Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s ‘It Takes Two’), Yachty seems to revel in his ruination of Hip-Hop music. Every day this twat creates something that sinks the genre further into a quagmire of mediocrity.

Looking like Fizz from the Tweenies and sounding like a haunted Speak & Spell, I have to reiterate that Lil Yachty is the epitome of shite. Take a listen to his song ‘Minnesota’ from his ‘Lil Boat’ mixtape and as you witness Yachty’s amateurish style and overly-simplistic rhymes, bear in mind that this song has received over 11,000,000 views…

The funny thing about Lil Yachty is that he prats around acting like he’s avant-garde… my oh my, he’s come up with something new and unique. Look closely however and you’ll notice that everything he does is old hat; his sunglasses are ’70s, his beaded braids are ’80s, his grills are ’90s, his beats are ’00s, so what exactly is new about this fraud? I once heard him say in an interview that he dropped out of college because he thought the institution was 10 years behind, but maybe he should check his own outdated style because that too is a decade in the past. His amateur-on-purpose music video has been done to death by Tim And Eric (and The Limmy Show among others) in fact many of his visuals have already been better executed by artists ranging from Onyx to M.I.A., and his outfit and glasses are a mix of Mystikal and Dame Edna Everage. Unless the ’10s are a decade of thievery, what pray tell has Lil Yachty contributed to music or pop culture? The answer is fuck all.

Looking like the offspring of Ma$e and Ronald McDonald and dressed like some psychiatric out patient who’s broken in to a boat house and stolen some Nautica clothing, the man is a disgrace to music and fashion. Lil Yachty might think his signature auto-tuned Trap-Pop is somehow new… but man, that boat sailed a long time ago.

Sunk.