Lil Yachty is opening this week’s Billboard 200 at #9 with “Let’s Start Here”.
The experimental release debuts with 36,000 equal album items earned, including 31,500 in streaming equivalent album units (41.34 million on-demand official streams of the tracks), 4,500 in album gross sales and a negligible sum in track equivalent album units. “Let’s Start Here” gives Yachty his third top 10 entry on the Billboard 200.
“Let’s Start Here” is a psychedelic rock album. Despite including some aspects of Steve Lacy-like R&B and even synth-pop, it is formatted as a Pink Floyd-like album, with lyrics about consciousness and the subconscious.
In an interview with Ice Box last year, the rapper revealed he was going in a different direction with the sound of his new studio effort. “My new album is a non-rap album,” he declared. “It’s alternative, it’s sick… It’s like a psychedelic alternative project. It’s different. It’s all live instrumentation.”
This wouldn’t be Yachty’s first dip into the genre, as he collaborated with Tame Impala on a 2021 remix of “Breathe Deeper” from The Slow Rush B-Sides & Remixes, which peaked at #47 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.
