Letter To the Editor: My beef with Lil Yachty

To the Editor:  

What’s my beef with Lil Yachty? First of all, allow me to clarify and say that I do understand that PAC is on a budget that can’t afford most artists.

Second, I understand that a survey was done and rap music came back as the most popular. I understand the logistics of it, I do, but this is the third concert that PAC has put on that has been either an artist I don’t know or an artist I don’t like.

Sure, the concert tickets are free, but the money to pay for him came out of my student fees. It came out of yours and everyone else’s as well.

It came out of your pocket, your student loans, your scholarships whether or not you wanted it to and whether or not you wanted Lil Yachty to be here, so, yes, I did pay for Lil Yachty to come here and perform.

What a waste of my money. Now, I truly don’t know Lil Yachty like some of my classmates do, so when the concert was announced, I did my research.

The results: horrifying. I can’t understand him, and it’s like listening to music in another language. Remember the part in The Fault in Our Stars when Peter Van Houten plays Gus and Hazel the Swedish rap song?

Remember how shocking it was to actually hear the music they played in the movie? Van Houten tells Gus and Hazel,”Who the hell speaks Swedish?

The important thing is not whatever the nonsense the voices are saying, but what the voices are feeling” (pg. 188). Even if Lil Yachty is saying nonsense, I don’t think Lil Yachty is feeling anything particularly important.

I swear when these current rappers produce songs, you can hear Tupac rolling over in his grave in the background. What I mean is, don’t you remember when you were in middle school and you would turn on Eminem and you could just feel every word that Eminem was feeling?

Aren’t Mac Dre’s songs the best because they made you feel like you could relate to him even though you didn’t know him? Don’t you think that African Americans in LA in the 90s felt every word that NWA spit into the microphone?

Such artists are still popular because their songs are about something. What is Lil Yachty rapping about besides, drugs, women, alcohol, and the occasional drive-by? Even so, the question remains, what do you feel when you listen to Lil Yachty? The good beat? Drunk? High?

Maybe it makes you wish you had millions of dollars to blow on Bugatti’s, women, and clothes, but to what effect? Do you relate to Lil Yachty? I don’t. Music in the 20th Century was revolutionary not only because of the instruments and the pure musical experimentation but because of the things that those artists felt.

Music used to have this incredible ability to change and empower us. Music used to take us on a journey, a sort of out of body experience, and now? Artists have no class and no shame as they brag about their bodies, how everybody desires them or to be them, their money, and how intoxicated they are.

I know that music in the 60s and 70s used to talk about marijuana and drinking, but at least the lyrics were good and you could understand them. Whether I can or can’t understand his lyrics, my beef with Lil Yachty is that I don’t feel anything when I listen to his songs.

He doesn’t make me want to hold up a lighter or the flashlight on my phone, sway back and forth and cry my eyes out as I scream the lyrics to every song. It’s not worth it to me to attend unless I’m drunk enough that I don’t care, and that really isn’t worth it.  

Sincerely,  

A Disgruntled Student