Say Something
A listener’s companion to Lil Yachty’s “Let’s Start Here.”
1.
During the NFL season, Paul Moore’s Sunday mornings are like clockwork. His alarm rings at 9:30 and he’s setting fantasy football lineups by 9:35. The groggy teenage reluctance that colors his typical mornings is absent. By 9:45 he’s reviewing his prop bets and parlays. By 9:50 he emerges from his room and checks the fridge before heading downstairs to don his Vive headset and watch the early games in VR. This Sunday, however, his dad was waiting, with a different plan in mind.
“Morning Pauly!” Mr. Moore said to his son who appeared in the stairway precisely on time. “Want to watch some football?”
“I’m gonna watch on the Vive, thanks tho,” Paul mumbled without looking up from his phone.
Paul shuffled across his mother’s kitchen floor, eyes down, crocs squeaking on the spotless tile. He planted himself in front of the fridge, and for an eternal thirty seconds he stood there while his thumbs danced dutifully on his iPhone screen. It was 9:52. Eight minutes until lineups locked for the early games.
From across the open-concept kitchen-dining-living room, Mr. Moore watched his son standing motionless in front of the fridge. Over the past few years, Paul had developed the habit of freezing in the middle of doing things to tap on his phone. Mr. Moore coined the term “glitching” to describe this phenomenon. Paul was currently glitching in front of the fridge.
“You’ve watched on that thing every week this season,” Mr. Moore said from across the room. “At least sit down for the early window with me. There’s eight games on RedZone, I have that on the big screen. The Hawks are on my laptop. We can compare fantasy scores on our phones. It’s a total-immersion NFL experience in here!”
Mr. Moore waited for a response. It often took 15 or 20 seconds to get one from his son who always had one last text to send. Mr. Moore had coined a term for this, too: “lagging”.
Unable to bear the lag, Mr. Moore finally put all his cards on the table. “I’m making French toast at halftime.”
Paul’s head lifted fractionally from its slumped position. He pocketed his phone and opened the fridge doors. While he scanned its contents he spoke into the cold, glowing box. “I’m down for French toast. Sounds bomb. But honestly, I think I’ma watch on the Vive. There’s a simulcast I want to put on over the player POV cams — you don’t get that up here.” Paul shut the fridge without taking anything, pulled his phone back out, and squeaked across the kitchen to the basement door. “Ping me when toast is ready,” he said without breaking stride.
“Will do!” Mr. Moore lobbed toward the basement door as his son disappeared into the abyss.
Mr. Moore double inhaled and let out a long sigh. He grabbed his coffee from the coffee table and sat there, smelling it, while the 70-inch 4K Ultra HD flatscreen, his laptop’s liquid retina display, and the screen from his iPhone 20 projected a flickering, multicolored balm onto his dejected brow.
2.
The two raw eggs in the bowl Mr. Moore stood over were old, with translucent whites and yolks that looked sun bleached. He gazed at them, resolutely isolated and yet so exposed, their thin membranes sealed hermetically and yet only a fork’s poke away from complete unraveling.
“Bijan Robinson cuts upfield!” Jim Nance’s voice pulsed out of the living room speakers, “… makes a man miss at the thirty five! And he could, go, all, the…”
Mr. Moore looked up in time to see his fantasy opponent’s starting running back score his second touchdown of the first quarter. He set down the fork he was preparing to mix the eggs with, grabbed the kitchen counter with both hands, closed his eyes, and hung his head. He waited a beat, noticing how heavy his head felt — 9 lbs, according to the neck-pillow ad he’d seen on ESPN that morning. When he opened his eyes the old eggs were staring at him.
“Don’t give me that,” Mr. Moore thought. The eggs didn’t blink.
“You know what? Fine!” Mr. Moore straightened up, sipped his coffee, and let out an exaggerated “ahhhhh.”
“I’ll do it,” he growled, glaring down his nose at the unflinching eggs, “I’ll go down there. I’ll say something. Watch.” He set his coffee cup down and spun it gently until it was positioned exactly in the center of one of the counter’s tiles. Reflexively organizing things was a procrastinatory tic of his. That and ArmorAll-ing the dashboard of his dad’s ’69 Plymouth, which had been left to him in the will. Mr. Moore glanced at the garage door, shook his head as if flicking rain water from his hair, then turned and strode across the room, through the basement door.
3.
The smell struck Mr. Moore first. It was confusing. Weeks-old Taco Bell wrappers, which somehow still smelled appetizing, mixed with the smell of a used medical cast. He stepped delicately down the carpeted steps.
The sound struck him next. It was… joyous. Mr. Moore couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a laugh with his son. Paul’s giddy, exhausted giggles rippled off the walls, up the stairs, straight through his chest.
Mr. Moore ducked to look across the basement while his feet navigated the last few steps on their own. The guts of the room were the same as fifteen years ago when he and his wife bought the place: the same washer-dryer, bonus freezer, shelving, the load-bearing pillar in the middle of the room, and the home theater setup that took up the other side of the space. Pasted over these familiar features were more recent additions, the functions of which Mr. Moore didn’t fully understand.
Ten fist-sized plastic circles with green blinking lights were stuck to the walls near the ceiling. These, Mr. Moore assumed, were WiFi hotspots, or spacial recognition sensors to interpret people’s movements. Foam padding on the walls was either for safety or to muffle sounds. Probably safety, seeing as the load-bearing pillar had to be cleaned of blood last year after Paul’s friend, Joey, split his head open on it while shooting bad guys in hyperspace. Mr. Moore knew what the giant machine in the corner was, he’d paid four grand for it. It was a three-dimensional treadmill, complete with straps that kept you in place while you scurried around virtual worlds. It looked like something human scientists would use to restrain a mutant supervillain. A large, square, yoga-mat-looking thing was laid between the TV and the couch. Paul, who still hadn’t noticed his dad’s presence, was resting his bare feet on it now.
Paul matched the decor. His torso was encased in a vest that looked bulletproof. His arms and hands were inside black shoulder-length gloves, and his head, from the nose up, was inside a helmet with techno bug eyes that glowed green. Paul looked like a Chat GPT response to, “Kafka’s giant insect enters the Matrix.”
Despite the theater’s custom surround-sound system, the room was silent, save for Paul’s giggles. And it was dark. The only light came from the green bug eyes, and the blinking hotspots.
“Hehe,” Paul giggled blissfully.
“Hey Pauly.” Mr. Moore entered. No response.
“Pauly,” he said a little louder. Nothing.
Mr. Moore got next to his son, found a space in the body suit and poked him, “Pauly!”
Paul’s grin went limp and his shoulders slumped. “Vive pause,” he groaned. “Open visor.”
The bug eyes slid back over the top of Paul’s helmet. He blinked, adjusting to the darkness of the basement. “French toast?” Paul asked.
“Hey bud. No, not yet.” Mr. Moore parried. “Actually, I was thinking, since Joey’s not over, that I might put on our other space helmet and watch some football with you. You mind?”
“Uh,” Paul winced.
“You might need to show me how to use a button or two, or, if it has buttons. I don’t know. But I pick this stuff up quick.”
“Uh,” Paul winced again, “I mean, I don’t think you’ll like this simulcast. It’s not exactly Nance and Romo. And we’d have to log you in to your fantasy account to get the graphic overlay of your player scores. It’d be a pain in the ass, you know?”
“We’ll figure it out.” Mr. Moore said, planting himself on the couch next to his son. “So, you just put this on like this, right?” Mr. Moore removed his frayed and faded Seahawks cap, the one that fit with the precision only thirty-year-old favorite hats can fit with, and slid the space helmet over his nine-pound head. “How do you turn it on?”
“Oookay,” Paul surrendered. “Before we turn that on, put the vest and sleeves on.” Paul pointed at two hollow manakin arms and a vest leaning against the wall. “And take your shoes off so the haptic mat can sense you.” Once Mr. Moore was properly suited, with his bare feet planted firmly on the mat, Paul reached over and pushed a small button near his dad’s ear.
“You should feel the cranial haptics fire up. When they pulse twice, it’s on. Feel that?”
“Pulse Tw — Oh, haha. Yeah. I think it’s on.”
“Okay, now you just say, ‘Vive, close visor.’ and then we can pair our headsets to the same feed.”
The two sat back into the couch, side by side, wearing bulletproof vests, mechanical sleeves, space helmets and no socks, and, in unison, said, “Vive, close visor.”
Giant bug eyes slid down both of their faces and turned a lush, glowing green.
4.
Mrs. Moore left the keys in the front door while she shuttled two overflowing grocery bags to the kitchen.
“Oh, Jesus Fucking H,” she hissed, realizing that the countertop was full of, something. French toast ingredients? But it was 3:45 in the afternoon. She doubled back to the living room couch, dropped her groceries on the cushions, and scanned the space like an alien sentinel building a target profile.
“Greg!” The shrill frequency slithered through every room in the house. No response.
“Greg!!!” She repeated at a volume that would saturate the back yard, too.
“Paul?!” Paul’s keys were gone. And shoes. And, that’s right, he’d texted saying he was going to Joey’s to watch football. But where the fuck was Greg?
Mrs. Moore did a lap around the upstairs. Empty. She stepped off the deck of the primary bedroom and peered over the back yard. Empty. And it needed a mow.
As Mrs. Moore re-entered the open-concept kitchen-dining-living room, she noticed the basement door was ajar. Paul always shuts it. He’d lock it, too, if he could.
She opened the door three quarters and poked her head through. It smelled like burritos and socks. Nose scrunched, she began descending the steps when suddenly the Sock-o Bell smell was overridden in her consciousness by an unexpected sound.
A familiar giggle — giddy, exhausted, one she hadn’t heard in a while — rippled off the walls, up the stairs, straight through her chest.
5. (Author’s Notes)
Press play on Lil Yachty’s 2023 album, Let’s Start Here., and you know immediately that you’re in for a trip to a different dimension. The first sound you hear is a deep, pulsing, undulating, electronic organ, that sounds like consciousness being downloaded onto a hard drive, or a spaceship booting up. The last sound you hear on Let’s Start Here. is the same undulating, electronic organ.
Between these bookends is a swelling, heaving collection of supremely listenable songs — grand gestures and luxurious detours that occasionally wade into neurotic self reflection but always land somewhere close to positive affirmation. It’s friendly music that should steer you clear of bad thought loops should you be, I don’t know, on molly in a festival crowd or something. The album isn’t without its lows (“pRETTy”), but on the whole it’s as cohesive, inventive, and curiosity-piquing an album as you’re likely to hear from anyone in the pop music mainstream this year— and it’s most definitely as cohesive, inventive, and enjoyable a thing as Lil’ Yachty’s ever put out; a pleasant evolution.
There are traces of Yachty’s early work in Let’s Start Here. — the melodic falsetto, drenched in autotune; an overt willingness to be different — but the album is mercifully devoid of him bragging about how much he gets his dick sucked, and also, very notably, of trap drums.
Let’s Start Here. is not rap. It’s only vaguely hip hop. It shares a few recessive genetic traits with the mumbletune vibe rap Yachty came up making, but you need the DNA test to prove it. What Let’s Start Here. really is, is electro-psych-rock for the Euphoria generation. It’s all vibes and feels, with towering crescendos, delicate breath holds, and contemplative interludes including one of Bob Ross caressing would-be painters with dulcet encouragement. It’s thoroughly emo, too, and it features drawn-out sonic explorations that inject elements of psychedelia. Let’s Start Here. gives you the impression that the music multiverse is folding in on itself.
Despite its genre-juking, multi-hyphenate-inducing sound, what the creators (15+ producers, writers, and performers) achieved with Let’s Start Here. is cohesive. The album is woven together by curious spaceship sounds, rock drums and guitar, and Lil Yachty’s trembling autotune. Even more, though, it’s woven together by its epicness, and a potent feeling of otherworldliness — a feeling of treading on previously unexplored ground, buoyantly, like Neil Armstrong must’ve felt walking across the moon in gravity 1/6th that of earth’s. It’s like going on a safari, in space.
If Yachty is the tour guide of this space safari, you can’t very well understand his guidance. The album has few intelligible lyrics. The vocals instead serve as another instrument. Of the lyrics you can make out, the very best is one of the first lines on the album. “African Rambo, with more ammo,” Yachty sings, bigging himself up with a playful non-sequitur.
Co-guiding the safari is Let’s Start Here.’s true revelation, Diana Gordon, who caps the album’s first, and best, song, “the BLACK seminole” with a primal howl that confirms our suspicions: we’re a long ways from earth and not re-entering orbit anytime soon. She reappears on “drive ME crazy!” with an opening verse dripping in swag. Then again on “IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON”, reeling us back in from Lil Yachty’s molly trip with invigoratingly crisp vocals. On an album that occasionally gets caught gazing at the clouds, because, dude, they’re like moving and changing colors, see? Diana Gordon is a grounding presence.
Gordon’s reappearances throughout Let’s Start Here., along with the decidedly rock and roll elements of the production, help the album sound very different from the trap-rap landscape Yachty came up in, and from the monolithic, dictionary-definition “hip hop” that all of modern rap descended from. It’s a brand new flavor combo.
If the inventiveness characteristic of early hip hop has felt noticeably absent from the pop-rap that’s topped charts in the 2020’s, Let’s Start Here. serves as a refreshing call back to those early days, but in spirit only — the rest of it is hardly recognizable as hip hop. It’s a bold new manifestation, a foreign variant, a mission into space. You could even, if you wanted to give a random, very specific example, liken it to the experience someone might have if they plugged in to watch football in virtual reality for the first time, after having only ever watched on a flatscreen — a surprising evolution, chalked full of novelty.
