“I’m the only one out of my generation changin’ music this time/So I got a lot on the line,” harmonizes Yeat on “Up From Here,” the final track on his latest project, ADL (a.k.a. A Dangerous Lyfe). His overweening confidence is fueled by sustained chart success — since 2022, all of his projects have debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart — and a sense that he deserves mention as a leader in mainstream rap. “I feel like now is that time where I’m coming out of that stage — where I’m presenting me,” he told Apple Music host Zane Lowe earlier this month, explaining why he’s no longer hiding his face with a balaclava mask and dodging media appearances.
Alas, much like the ever-changing and fiercely debated internet underground out of which he emerged, rap-heads continue to wrestle over whether Yeat is truly an innovator or merely the glossy sum of his predecessors’ labors. ADL reveals traces of DNA from Future, Trippie Redd, Playboi Carti, Lil Peep, Travis Scott, and innumerable others who transformed melodic rap from an Auto-Tuned diversion into a vibe-y inflection of late pop capitalism that often doesn’t sound like hip-hop at all, even when one considers that late-Seventies Bronx pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers and the Furious Five did plenty of pitchy harmonizing, too. Yeat’s greatest attribute is how he melds his influences into something uniquely beguiling and irritating, like hyperpop excised of its queer inflections and repurposed for all-night gaming and vaping sessions. Past albums like Lyfë and 2093 were best experienced as hourslong excursions into illegible rage-rap experiences that washed over the listener, with Yeat’s voice muttering his harmonies amid glitchy laptop bangers.
The biggest shift in ADL from Yeat’s past work is that his voice sounds much clearer. Yes, he still touts his appetite for a “bad bitch” in nearly every cut. But he enunciates his words, a technique that not only allows the listener to understand what he’s saying, but also inevitably slows the velocity of his music. On Reddit, fans are complaining that the album signals a shift into the familiar arena dynamics that every platinum rapper post-Jay Hova eventually embraces; after all, Kid Cudi makes an appearance on “No More Ghosts,” a title nod to Cudi’s 2018 collaboration with Ye, Kids See Ghosts. As music journalist Bill Flanagan once wrote about punk’s calcification into New Wave in the Eighties, “There were only two things they could do; they could be like the [Sex] Pistols and break up after one album (and one overdose), or they could be like the Ramones and stand there forever, wearing the same clothes, playing the same song, and never changing.” After conquering the internet underground, perhaps Yeat believes that stadium status is all that’s left.
To his credit, Yeat crafts some nice bangers on ADL, like the trap hammers on “Griddlë,” and the digital bounce of “My Time,” the latter featuring Swizz Beatz’s trademark shouts and ad-libs. Dozens of contributors, including rising producer BNYX® (who delivers a memorable wallop on “What I Want”) ensures that the beats flow in a sweet and gelatinous current. Yeat remains a lyricist of limited depth, incapable of writing a strong bar other than to reassure us that he’s “geeked up” off molly, “Perkies,” or something else. His vocal tone, which he sometimes transmutes into a drunken garble or a childlike chirp, are his best assets, helping him blend and push the tracks along without quite elevating them.
ADL features some oddball guests, from Youngboy Never Broke Again (who strikes a menacing presence on “Face the Flamë”) and Don Tolliver (“Griddlë”) to Joji (“Back Home”), Grimes (“Face the Flamë”), and, inexplicably, “King Kylie” Jenner, whose lazy vocals on “Let King Tonka Talk” have all the charm of Uber Eats stunt casting. Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” is sampled for the opening of “Lose Control.” But rather than use the occasion for harrowing introspection, Yeat simply raps some more about how poppin’ pills makes him lose control.
Amid an hour of bars about how the “only girls I fuck with are tens” and how he’s “bustin’ a nut” on girls’ faces, glimpses of humanity peek through the toxicity. “No More Ghosts” finds Yeat harmonizing “I’m-a fuck you, leave you hollerin’,” then suddenly claiming, “Can’t see you, see me crying.” On “Silk Facë,” he claims that he wants to make changes in his life, only to admit that he’s too high and “can’t feel my face” to follow through. “Up From Here” opens with the warm voice of British singer Tyler Lewis, which inspires Yeat to claim, “I’m at the point of my life, yeah, I’m thinkin’ I need me a wife.” It also leads to the previously mentioned boast about being a generational talent. Longtime Yeat fans may wonder if ADL means he’s abandoning his punkish early work for something pleasingly middlebrow. But for the rest of us, it’s a sign that the rapper has plenty of maturing to do, no matter where his growth ultimately takes him.
