Lil’ Yachty and Why Artists Need to Know Their History
They may not need to know everything about their genre’s past like hip-hop traditionalists say, but they need to know enough to make artistic decisions they can stand behind
Hip-hop is at an interesting point. It’s been around for longer than you might think, having gone through countless styles and fads in it’s remarkable 43 year history. Amazingly, it has grown in popularity the entire time. This is in no small part due to hip-hop’s obsession with celebrating it’s history as something holy. Although it sounded completely ridiculous when KRS-One said that he was a prophet founding a new hip-hop religion — and that he had written a mammoth Gospel of Hip-Hop as its sacred text — it’s really not that unusual for hip-hop culture. More than any other genre, hip-hop has always been about dedicating yourself to it and having it consume you. For it’s followers, its something holy. It’s no accident that on the show The Get Down, which explores the birth of hip-hop, the Grandmaster Flash character is a kind of spiritual guru who teaches in riddles and demands extreme obedience from his disciple. The real Flash is a consultant on the show and actually sees himself this way. There’s one central rule in hip-hop: above all, you must respect the culture.
But now the sanctity of hip-hop is being challenged as artists are starting to become successful who not only don’t know the music’s history, but almost revel in their ignorance. The most recent controversy involves Lil’ Yachty, who was almost bragging when he admitted that he couldn’t name five Biggie or 2Pac songs. Needless to say, people were pretty disgusted. Anderson .Paak sub-tweeted Yachty, saying “don’t be cocky in the fact that you don’t know anything about hip hop history. Real artists are students of the game first.” Yachty’s response was basically “fuck you, I’m super rich, so why should I care?” Perhaps this should be expected from a 19 year old bubblegum rapper. But his lack of interest in hip-hop’s history hasn’t stopped him from blowing up, becoming the self-proclaimed “king of teens” (a ridiculous nickname if there ever was one) and gaining a huge, young following, many of whom likely don’t know their history, either. For those obsessed with keeping the culture sacred, this is heresy.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Lil’ Yachty’s music is completely awful, but his back-and-forth with Anderson .Paak raises some very important questions: To what extent does an artist need to have knowledge of the music’s history to make great art? And is it fair to place such rigorous demands on young artists to know decades worth of tradition before they’re deemed worthy enough to make something of their own?
In a way, hip-hop itself is responsible for this. Although it’s been expected that anyone who’s going to be embraced by hip-hop must be a student of the culture, the culture hasn’t always been inviting to newcomers. For decades, southern rappers were dismissed by the reigning hip-hop establishment, which was almost exclusively based out of New York and to a lesser extent, California. This goes all the way back to Outkast being booed at the ’95 Source Awards and Andre 3000 declaring “the south’s got somethin’ to say” before angrily walking off stage. So it makes sense why southern rappers like Yachty have largely defied the rules of what hip-hop elites say is acceptable. Now that Atlanta has become the new mecca of hip-hop over the past few years, critics who wish that all roads still led to New York are angry that artists from other regions aren’t wedded to New York’s tradition. It’s hypocritical.
The idea that someone can’t create anything meaningful without knowing their genre’s entire history is very ivory-tower academic and it doesn’t match up to the real world. We’ve seen countless rappers make great work in spite of not knowing some of the genre’s most celebrated artists. When Lupe Fiasco flubbed A Tribe Called Quest’s lyrics on VH1 hip-hop honors, the internet went nuts. His defense? He didn’t grow up with Tribe’s music and wasn’t that familiar with it. Later that same year he dropped The Cool, one of the better rap albums of the past ten years.
But even aside from hip-hop culture’s unrealistic demand to know it’s entire history, I have to wonder if this approach doesn’t stifle creativity in a broader sense. Forcing an artist to memorize and worship an entire canon before they are allowed to create is an impossible standard because the canon is endless.
And what about music scenes that are so young that they don’t have much of a history to latch on to? I’m thinking specifically about ’80s DC hardcore, one of the most vibrant scenes in rock history. One of the reasons this movement is so fascinating to look back on is because of how new everything was for everyone who participated in it. The entire community was basically pushed forward by Bad Brains blowing people away at their shows, many of who were teenagers that ended up starting bands trying to match their intensity. These bands attempted to create something radically new — punk was only a few years old at that point, so they didn’t have a large tradition to draw from. They weren’t overly skilled — most of the bands had very little knowledge of music theory to draw from. They were tapping into a new energy that was so explosive that it almost didn’t matter what was happening before their movement began. This almost naive attitude was one of the main reasons the scene flourished.
But what differentiates the ’80s hardcore movement from someone like Lil’ Yachty (besides the obvious stuff) is a very strong sense of purpose. Their scene may have been incredibly young, but they had ideological reasons for everything they did and much of that was based on some idea of music history. They may not have had much of a canon to draw from, but they knew what they were fighting against. For them the enemy was the popular music of their era, which they felt was slick, pretentious and unconcerned with real life. They knew that you can’t make great art without having some idea of what you care about and what you’re trying to accomplish.
I think Yachty knows this deep down, but he’s already painted himself into “the carefree rapper” corner. Beneath this facade, however, he’s starting to reveal what he’s really all about. In a recent interview, the normally aloof Yachty positioned himself against what he calls “serious rap,” which he finds to be extremely boring. And on Hot 97, before the worst attempt at a freestyle in history, he said that he doesn’t take hip-hop seriously and that he doesn’t even consider himself a rapper.
Again, even though I think his music is terrible, I get what he’s trying to do. By saying that he doesn’t consider himself a rapper, he’s trying to free himself from the expectations that come with that title — if you’re a rapper, you’re traditionally supposed to be able to freestyle, have amazingly intricate lyrics, and be able to talk about serious issues. Since Yachty doesn’t do any of that, he doesn’t want to feel shackled by those demands. He’s trying to set himself apart from this traditional notion of a rapper in the same way that the DC hardcore bands were fighting against the image of the larger than life rock gods of the ’70s. But since he keeps on pretending that he’s only doing his thing and that he’s not trying to make some larger point his music just comes across as insignificant.
Although the obsession with the hip-hop canon is way overblown, that doesn’t mean music knowledge isn’t vitally important for an artist. They may not need to know their genre’s entire history like hip-hop traditionalists say, but they need to know enough to make artistic decisions they can stand behind. As much as Yachty likes to act like he’s just being himself, there’s no such thing as being yourself without making choices — you need to decide what you’re for and what you’re against.
