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Lil Yachty Drops New 21 Savage Collaboration in SoundCloud Spree

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Lil Yachty just surprised fans with a flood of new music on SoundCloud, including a fresh collaboration with 21 Savage.

Late at night, on a SoundCloud page named ‘Concrete Leak System,’ the Atlanta artist released 14 new tracks. Among this collection, the standout piece is the crossover “Part of the Plan” featuring 21 Savage, along with another notable collaboration with Vory.

Yachty later clarified on X (formerly Twitter) that these tracks are part of an official release, not leaks, putting to rest any confusion.

However, over the weekend, Lil Yachty stirred some controversy. After criticizing the current state of Hip Hop, he was seen in the studio with viral rapper Ian. Fans were quick to call him out for hypocrisy, given his previous statements decrying the lack of creativity and originality in the genre.

A video circulating on social media showed the duo seemingly working on new music, humorously set to the theme song from Jeopardy!. This did not sit well with some fans, who recalled Yachty’s past remarks like, ‘Hip Hop is in a terrible place. The state of Hip Hop right now is a lot of imitation. It’s a lot of quick, low-quality music being put out. It’s a lot less risk-taking, it’s a lot less originality… People are too safe now. Everyone is so safe. I’d rather take the risk than take the L.’

Critics didn’t hold back. One user wrote, ‘Nvm I don’t really mess with him anymore. This guy said Hip Hop is in a terrible state and then went to do a song with a colonizer [three crying emojis] we’re cooked.’ Another said, ‘Lmfaoo y’all ain’t got no dignity man it’s so sad to see.’

Ian, a 19-year-old rapper from Dallas, has been gaining attention thanks to his viral hit “Figure It Out.” His style, influenced by the likes of Yeat, Playboi Carti, and Gucci Mane, has made him a polarizing figure, characterized by an unapologetic suburban persona rapping about the usual themes of money and drugs.

As of now, Lil Yachty hasn’t addressed the backlash regarding his studio session with the internet sensation.

Lil Yachty’s latest SoundCloud spree has thrilled fans with new music, but his actions continue to stir the pot in the hip hop community.

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Critic's Notebook

Lil Yachty and 21 Savage: Atlanta Shows a Range of Hip-Hop

By Jon Caramanica

• July 27, 2016

Every year, XXL magazine, the leading hip-hop publication, publishes its Freshman issue, in which its editors crown 10 up-and-coming rappers. It’s become something of a state of the union for emergent hip-hop movements, and the selection process helped the magazine become the first mainstream rap outlet to acknowledge the impact that the internet has on hip-hop taste.

This year’s freshman class was eclectic and wide-ranging, including a pair of Atlanta rappers working at opposite ends of the genre’s creative spectrum: the schoolboy crooner Lil Yachty and the hardened tough 21 Savage. A video interview filmed for the package underscored their differences: Lil Yachty, hair in his signature red braids, noted that the rappers in this year’s class are young: “I just got out of high school,” he said, gleefully. Cut to 21 Savage, with a tattoo of a dagger between his eyes, who good-naturedly retorts: “I ain’t go to high school. I was in juvenile.”

Later, Lil Yachty asserts that everyone selected for the group has his own sound. “I make positivity music,” he said, then added, “the opposite of 21.” 21 Savage grabbed the alley-oop and put down the dunk. “Yeah,” he said. “I make murder music.”

That both Lil Yachty and 21 Savage are thriving at the same time is a testament to their hometown’s wide influence, and its increasingly centerless sonic approach. Both released new projects recently: 21 Savage has “Savage Mode,” a mixtape made in collaboration with the producer Metro Boomin, and Lil Yachty has “Summer Songs 2,” his second mixtape this year.

“Summer Songs 2” deepens the deluge of Lil Yachty music during the last eight or so months. He has a vivid signature approach: sing-rapping with heavy digital manipulation, somewhere way past the saccharine Auto-Tuned warble of T-Pain, in an outlandishly naïve voice. It’s as if storytime at the children’s bookstore went rogue, or the inverse of a Kidz Bop song. “We are the youth!” he exults on “Intro (First Day of Summer),” both emphasizing his novel sound and acknowledging how it must come off to the uninitiated: “I’m playing through your house like a doorbell and you hate it.”

Lil Yachty’s excellence doesn’t originate in his choice of words, or even in the rhythm he delivers them — he has created an alternate universe in which traditional narratives of rap excess are reframed as fantastical kiddie stories. His gun talk sounds like the musings of a wide-eyed outsider. His simile choices — “just got a new bitch, white with a little black like dice” — are appealingly bizarre. And on the whole, his songs are dreamlike and entrancing, from the soothing lullaby “Idk” to the deeply inspiring “Life Goes On.” Dipping into his pseudo-falsetto, he recalls the woodlands specter Bon Iver.

When Lil Yachty tries straightforward rapping, as on “For Hot 97” — an implicit retort to criticisms of his rapping skill — he’s less centered, and less convincing (though the boast “money so old, check its colon” is hilarious). And even if “Summer Songs 2” is, on the whole, less effective than “Lil Boat,” the mixtape he released in March, it too takes the toughness of Atlanta hip-hop and repackages it with a sweet, sticky taffy coating.

Following the mid-to-late-2000s reign of T. I. and Young Jeezy, hard-edge street rappers have had a more difficult time gaining wide attention. That’s partly because of the seemingly ubiquitous influence of the Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane , the most effective tweaker of hip-hop orthodoxies in the 2000s.

Gucci Mane’s influence hovers over both these artists, though more abstractly than directly. Lil Yachty has mainlined Gucci Mane’s vocal quirk — a penchant for odd rhyme structures cloaked in unlikely melodies — and distended it to absurdist lengths; he has also signed with the label owned in part by Coach K, one of Gucci Mane’s former managers. And 21 Savage released an EP last year called “Free Guwop,” in honor of Gucci Mane, then still in federal prison.

While in recent years Atlanta has had a string of impressive street-oriented rappers from Trouble to Alley Boy to Peewee Longway, not one has risen as quickly as 21 Savage. In part, that’s because he’s benefiting from the same sort of internet-driven interest as Lil Yachty. Online fame doesn’t discriminate: A street rapper with visual flair can be just as much an object of fascination as an art-school-esque outsider.

“Savage Mode” is committedly grim. Metro Boomin, responsible for so much triumphalist music in partnership with the Atlanta kingpin Future, restrains himself to a set of beats telegraphing slow, meaningful menace. They’re an apt fit for 21 Savage, who’s given to short, clipped phrases delivered with a hiss. “They say crack kills,” he deadpans on “No Heart,” before shrugging, “My crack sells.”

That song, bleak and relentless, is one of the mixtape’s best. “Seventh grade I got caught with a pistol, sent me to Panthersville,” he raps, referring to his time in juvenile detention. He then relates, in unprintable fashion, what eighth and ninth grade were like.

Many of this mixtape’s songs — “Bad Guy,” “No Advance,” the title track — are like this. But at the end, 21 Savage softens his approach. “Feel It” is a love song, a pledge of fealty to a dedicated woman: “All my dog ways, had to put them in the kennel.” And the album’s closer, “Ocean Drive,” starts as a story about a rough childhood — “My uncle taught me how to scrape the bowl/ And my auntie still smoking blow” — but metamorphoses into something more transcendent. The hook, rendered with melody and digital effects, is optimistic, as if 21 Savage has heard a small part of Lil Yachty that he can use for himself.

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Lil Yachty Drops New 21 Savage Collaboration Amid 14-Song SoundCloud Spree

Lil Yachty just dropped a slew of new songs on SoundCloud, and among them is a new collaboration with 21 Savage .

During a late night rollout on a SoundCloud page named ‘Concrete Leak System,’ the Atlanta hitmaker released 14 new cuts — a highlight of the package is the aforementioned crossover, “Part of the Plan,” as well as a collab with Vory .

Lil Boat later confirmed these are part of an official release (as opposed to a leak) in a post on X (formerly Twitter.)

Listen to the song with 21 below and check out the full drop here .

https://twitter.com/lilyachty/status/1797322550889828506

Over the weekend, Lil Yachty came under fire for hitting the studio with viral rapper Ian after criticizing the state of Hip Hop .

The 26-year-old made waves when a video surfaced on social media showing him in the lab with the divisive rapper.

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While the audio had been hilariously edited with the theme song from Jeopardy! , it appeared as though the pair were working on music together.

The link-up didn’t sit well with fans, with some accusing Yachty of being a hypocrite given his recent comments about Hip Hop’s perceived lack of creativity and originality.

One user even shared the following 2023 quote by the rapper to illustrate the point: “Hip Hop is in a terrible place. The state of Hip Hop right now is a lot of imitation. It’s a lot of quick, low-quality music being put out.

“It’s a lot less risk-taking, it’s a lot less originality… People are too safe now. Everyone is so safe. I’d rather take the risk than take the L.”

Another added: “Nvm I don’t rly fw him no more. This n-gga said Hip Hop is in a terrible state and then went to do a song with a fucking colonizer [three crying emojis] we’re cooked.”

A third critic said: “lmfaoo yall ain’t got no dignity man it’s so sad to see.”

A 19-year-old rapper who emerged from Dallas, Ian has been blowing up of late thanks to his viral hit “Figure It Out.” The song encapsulates the jarring juxtaposition that has made him such a polarizing figure: an unapologetically suburban white kid rapping about money, cars and drugs in the style of Yeat , Playboi Carti and Gucci Mane .

Lil Yachty has yet to respond to the backlash over his studio session with the internet sensation.

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How Lil Yachty Ended Up at His Excellent New Psychedelic Album Let's Start Here

The evening before Lil Yachty released his fifth studio album,  Let’s Start Here,  he  gathered an IMAX theater’s worth of his fans and famous friends at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City and made something clear: He wanted to be taken seriously. Not just as a “Soundcloud rapper, not some mumble rapper, not some guy that just made one hit,” he told the crowd before pressing play on his album. “I wanted to be taken serious because music is everything to me.” 

There’s a spotty history of rappers making dramatic stylistic pivots, a history Yachty now joins with  Let’s Start Here,  a funk-flecked psychedelic rock album. But unlike other notable rap-to-rock faceplants—Kid Cudi’s  Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven  comes to mind, as does Lil Wayne’s  Rebirth —the record avoids hackneyed pastiche and gratuitous playacting and cash-grabbing crossover singles; instead, Yachty sounds unbridled and free, a rapper creatively liberated from the strictures of mainstream hip-hop. Long an oddball who’s delighted in defying traditional rap ethos and expectations,  Let’s Start Here  is a maximalist and multi-genre undertaking that rewrites the narrative of Yachty’s curious career trajectory. 

Admittedly, it’d be easy to write off the album as Tame Impala karaoke, a gimmicky record from a guy who heard Yves Tumor once and thought: Let’s do  that . But set aside your Yachty skepticism and probe the album’s surface a touch deeper. While the arrangements tend toward the obvious, the record remains an intricate, unraveling swell of sumptuous live instruments and reverb-drenched textures made more impressive by the fact that Yachty co-produced every song. Fielding support from an all-star cast of characters, including production work from former Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Justin Raisen, Nick Hakim, and Magdalena Bay, and vocals from Daniel Caesar, Diana Gordon,  Foushée , Justine Skye, and Teezo Touchdown, Yachty surrounds himself with a group of disparately talented collaborators. You can hear the acute attention to detail and wide-scale ambition in the spaced-out denouement on “We Saw the Sun!” or on the blistering terror of “I’ve Officially Lost Vision!!!!” or during the cool romanticism of “Say Something.” Though occasionally overindulgent,  Let’s Start Here  is a spectacular statement from hip-hop’s prevailing weirdo. It’s not shocking that Yachty took another hard left—but how exactly did he end up  here ?

In 2016, as the forefather of “bubblegum trap” ascended into mainstream consciousness, an achievement like  Let’s Start Here  would’ve seemed inconceivable. The then 18-year-old Yachty gained national attention when a pair of his songs, “One Night” and “Minnesota,” went viral. Though clearly indebted to hip-hop trailblazers Lil B, Chief Keef, and Young Thug, his work instantly stood apart from the gritted-teeth toughness of his Atlanta trap contemporaries. Yachty flaunted a childlike awe and cartoonish demeanor that communicated a swaggering, unbothered cool. His singsong flows and campy melodies contained a winking humor to them, a subversive playfulness that endeared him to a generation of very online kids who saw themselves in Yachty’s goofy, eccentric persona. He starred in Sprite  commercials alongside LeBron James, performed live shows at the  Museum of Modern Art , and modeled in Kanye West’s  Life of Pablo  listening event at Madison Square Garden. Relishing in his cultural influence, he declared to the  New York Times  that he was not a rapper but an  artist. “And I’m more than an artist,” he added. “I’m a brand.”

 As Sheldon Pearce pointed out in his Pitchfork  review of Yachty’s 2016 mixtape,  Lil Boat , “There isn’t a single thing Lil Yachty’s doing that someone else isn’t doing better, and in richer details.” He wasn’t wrong. While Yachty’s songs were charming and catchy (and, sometimes, convincing), his music was often tangential to his brand. What was the point of rapping as sharply as the Migos or singing as intensely as Trippie Redd when you’d inked deals with Nautica and Target, possessed a sixth-sense for going viral, and had incoming collaborations with Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen? What mattered more was his presentation: the candy-red hair and beaded braids, the spectacular smile that showed rows of rainbow-bedazzled grills, the wobbly, weak falsetto that defaulted to a chintzy nursery rhyme cadence. He didn’t need technical ability or historical reverence to become a celebrity; he was a meme brought to life, the personification of hip-hop’s growing generational divide, a sudden star who, like so many other Soundcloud acts, seemed destined to crash and burn after a fleeting moment in the sun.

 One problem: the music wasn’t very good. Yachty’s debut album, 2017’s  Teenage Emotions, was a glitter-bomb of pop-rap explorations that floundered with shaky hooks and schmaltzy swings at crossover hits. Worse, his novelty began to fade, those sparkly, cheerful, and puerile bubblegum trap songs aging like day-old french fries. Even when he hued closer to hard-nosed rap on 2018’s  Lil Boat 2  and  Nuthin’ 2 Prove,  you could feel Yachty desperate to recapture the magic that once came so easily to him. But rap years are like dog years, and by 2020, Yachty no longer seemed so radically weird. He was an established rapper making mid mainstream rap. The only question now was whether we’d already seen the best of him.

If his next moves were any indication—writing the  theme song to the  Saved by the Bell  sitcom revival and announcing his involvement in an upcoming  movie based on the card game Uno—then the answer was yes. But in April 2021, Yachty dropped  Michigan Boat Boy,  a mixtape that saw him swapping conventional trap for Detroit and Flint’s fast-paced beats and plain-spoken flows. Never fully of a piece with his Atlanta colleagues, Yachty found a cohort of kindred spirits in Michigan, a troop of rappers whose humor, imagination, and debauchery matched his own. From the  looks of it, leaders in the scene like Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, and YN Jay embraced Yachty with open arms, and  Michigan Boat Boy  thrives off that communion. 

 Then “ Poland ” happened. When Yachty uploaded the minute-and-a-half long track to Soundcloud a few months back, he received an unlikely and much needed jolt. Building off the rage rap production he played with on the  Birthday Mix 6  EP, “Poland” finds Yachty’s warbling about carrying pharmaceutical-grade cough syrup across international borders, a conceit that captured the imagination of TikTok and beyond. Recorded as a joke and released only after a leaked version went viral, the song has since amassed over a hundred-millions streams across all platforms. With his co-production flourishes (and adlibs) splattered across Drake and 21 Savage’s  Her Loss,  fans had reason to believe that Yachty’s creative potential had finally clicked into focus.

 But  Let’s Start Here  sounds nothing like “Poland”—in fact, the song doesn’t even appear on the project. Instead, amid a tapestry of scabrous guitars, searing bass, and vibrant drums, Yachty sounds right at home on this psych-rock spectacle of an album. He rarely raps, but his singing often relies on the virtues of his rapping: those greased-vowel deliveries and unrushed cadences, the autotune-sheathed vibrato. “Pretty,” for instance, is decidedly  not  a rap song—but what is it, then? It’s indebted to trap as much as it is ’90s R&B and MGMT, its drugged-out drums and warm keys able to house an indeterminate amount of ideas.

Yachty didn’t need to abandon hip-hop to find himself as an artist, but his experimental impulses helped him craft his first great album. Perhaps this is his lone dalliance in psych rock—maybe a return to trap is imminent. Or, maybe, he’ll make another 180, or venture deeper into the dystopia of corporate sponsorships. Who’s to say? For now, it’s invigorating to see Yachty shake loose the baggage of his teenage virality and emerge more fully into his adult artistic identity. His guise as a boundary-pushing rockstar isn’t a new archetype, but it’s an archetype he’s infused with his glittery idiosyncrasies. And look what he’s done: he’s once again morphed into a star the world didn’t see coming.

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Kodak Black, Lil Uzi Vert, Denzel Curry, Lil Yachty and 21 Savage’s 2016 XXL Freshmen Cypher

The 2016 XXL Freshman rollout is underway. From the cover to Desiigner's "Timmy Timmy Turner" freestyle that went viral to the electrifying New York City Freshman show , the 2016 class has been holding their own and proving why they earned their spots. The second cypher of this year's bunch features more artists than usual—Denzel Curry, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, 21 Savage and Kodak Black—and makes for an interesting collabo, all over a beat produced by Sikwitit.

First up is Denzel Curry . The 21-year-old South Florida spitter wastes neither time nor breathe when rattling off rhymes about reaching rap's upper echelon.

"Rest in power, it's all about power/Squeeze two lemons together and really all you have is sour/Diesel, niggas will smoke your ass to have the juice/Ridin' around in an all black Coupe/Couple of pigeons that's ready to shoot," Curry starts off.

Next up is Philly's own Lil Uzi Vert , who improvised and used his cypher partners as quick comedic material.

"All these niggas stealing my style, can I get my flow back?/Yeah, bop on that bitch like Kodak/Bitch you know dat/I push your shit all back/Told that bitch I got money, aye/Countin' up hundreds is nothing, aye/Told that lil bitch I got money/Told that bitch that it's nothing, aye," he rhymes.

Atlanta's red-haired wonder Lil Yachty tackles the beat next and although he's the youngest in the bunch, he's anything but shy when it comes to dropping his 16.

"When I was struggling through the pain/When I had no ice/When there was no food but rice/All of these bitches they want me but they thinkin' one night/Fuck 'em, I give a fuck what you saying/Bitch nigga know I ain't playin'/I'm bout my fetty/Mama, we ready/Fuck up that nigga if he talkin' to heavy," Lil Boat delivers.

Also repping the A, 21 Savage steps forward, double cup in hand, to adlib and freestyle over the beat in a rough yet relaxed manner only he can pull off. Uzi and Yachty even hype him up by adding in his signature adlibs in between his bars.

"Hold up, Rolly on my wrist/Rolly on my bitch/30 on my waist/30 to your face/60 to your face/90 to your face/that's a closed case," 21 serves.

Last but definitely not least is Pompano Beach upstart Kodak Black . As always, the self-proclaimed "project baby" keeps it real and raps about what he knows best, being on the chase and beating the case.

"Now homie, I'm the one who let your starving ass eat/You was hungry I ain't have to let your sorry as eat/My cousin G got out for manslaughter last week/Gave my dawg a buck fifty/That nigga brought me back three," Kodak raps.

Who had the best verse in this 2016 XXL Freshmen cypher? Let us know and stay plugged into XXL for the last cypher of the year featuring Harlem's Dave East and Chicago's G Herbo dropping tomorrow. And check out Desiigner, Lil Dicky and Anderson .Paak's cypher here.

Watch the 2016 XXL Freshman cypher below.

See Behind-the-Scenes Photos From the 2016 XXL Freshman Shoot

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"XXL Freshmen 2016 Cypher - Part 1" lyrics

Kodak black, 21 savage, lil uzi vert, lil yachty & denzel curry lyrics.

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Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert: In 2016, the Kids Took Over Rap

By Matthew Ramirez

The first time I heard Hawaiian Punch-braided teen rapper Lil Yachty was, fittingly, in a viral video . There’s no way in a million years would I have thought the artist behind what I assumed was literally a joke song could be a respectable rapper, but once I poked around his SoundCloud, I thought he had a sincerity that made him more than a novelty. Even so, I never imagined he’d play on the radio, or end up in a Sprite commercial with LeBron James. Then, not long after, I came across another meme featuring Yachty. He was in the top left quadrant of an Instagram post that blew up: the “No one over 30 can name all 4 of these n***** w/o Google” meme. Despite being 27 years old, I only recognized Yachty.

It was a shocking moment of feeling irrelevant, like my rap fandom had finally led me outside of the moment. The meme pushed me to eventually find out about Lil Uzi Vert, who sits to the right of Yachty in the quadrant. They’re both rascally young kids, except Yachty is more earnest and open, and Uzi—aided by his nasal tone and frantic delivery—is brattier, though far from what any old-fashioned hip-hop head would call hard. He’s Sum 41, while Yachty is Blink-182. Like “Fat Lip,” I heard Vert’s “Money Longer” in DJ sets and on the radio, and thought it was a fun, disposable radio song with a killer hook … that didn’t necessarily signal career longevity, I thought as I pressed my copy of To Pimp a Butterfly to my chest.

But there I was, being an old. Career longevity doesn’t necessarily matter to the rappers in that meme quadrant—Yachty, Vert, 21 Savage, and Playboi Carti—who are all 24 and younger. (Yachty is just 19 years old, making him the most relevant rapper alive who maybe doesn’t remember 9/11 happening.) On the surface, they don’t seem like they have a lot in common either thematically or sonically, but as a unit they comprise an unofficial movement of devil-may-care, youth-oriented rap. It ranges from the squawky but commercial-leaning Vert to the more eccentric Yachty, from jokesters like Houston’s Ugly God to gangsta rappers like 21 Savage. You can draw a line from Yachty to Wintertime or Playboi Carti to NBA YoungBoy based on the same cocktail of youth, the ease with which they repel rap fans 25 and older, their prodigious use of social media, and the insouciant ideas, twisted through the swagger of recent guys like Future, Migos, and Young Thug, swimming throughout their output. The snarkiest might call it shithead-teen rap, even if some of the principal artists are technically in their 20s.

Artists in this group earned their stripes through trial by fire—they were sent to the principal’s office, a.k.a. the interview chair of Ebro, Hot 97’s resident rap reactionary. (They were even dissed by J. Cole , the leader of the debate team.) On Ebro’s show, Yachty and Vert went so far as to insist they weren’t rappers. That’s a fine amount of logical hoops to jump through, even if they do court more of a rock-star image. (See this amazing, Beatlemania-esque viral video where Uzi is chased by adoring fans at a festival.) But hey, they were ready to own it. Yachty has a song called “King of the Teens”; on “Shoot Out the Roof,” he rapped, “You ain’t Uzi, you ain’t Carti, damn sure not me.”

These guys, along with some others, signaled another changing of rap’s tide. This has been a recurring wave for a few years: As far back as 2007, Soulja Boy broke through with “Crank That” and inspired a thousand “is this real rap” conversations. In 2012, Chief Keef inspired a thousand more “is this real rap” conversations before everyone started making drill; in 2013, Migos inspired even more “is this real rap” conversations before everyone started doing the Migos flow. So it goes. These guys are obviously inspired by Migos, as well as the frenetic style of Young Thug (another rap contrarian), but they’re younger, weirder, and maybe even more popular among the kids, who are always alright, even when they’re wrong. Here are some of our favorite songs by these renegade kids from 2016.

Lil Yachty, “1 Night” Where it all started for me. Still an irresistible, silly earworm.

Lil Yachty, “Minnesota” ft. Quavo, Young Thug, Skippa da Flippa This was the song that made me believe there was “more” to Yachty. While his verse retains his characteristically sloppy charm, the beat—an exercise in minimalism—propels “Minnesota,” which features two dudes who might be called the fathers of this scene, and one guy adjacent to it.

Lil Yachty, “All In” ft. Kodie Shane, Big Brutha Chubba, Kay The Yacht, Jban$2Turnt, TheGoodPerry, $oop, K$upreme, Byou Notable because it introduced me to Kodie Shane, and is my favorite song on Yachty’s uneven Summer Songs II tape. It’s also a good rap song, a team cipher that runs six essential minutes and has a wistful, youthful “seven years later and I got the same friends” hook.

Lil Uzi Vert, “You Was Right” Lil Uzi’s other big radio song, this is both one of his most outwardly rappity-rap tracks, and one of his most introspective. It’s a perfect dance song, too.

Lil Uzi Vert, “Ps and Qs” After two mixtapes and a joint mixtape with Gucci Mane, this remains my favorite Lil Uzi Vert track on the strength of its beat alone. More rap songs should prominently feature accordions.

Lil Uzi Vert, “Do What I Want” Speaking of more memes, I was cold on The Perfect Luv Tape until I saw Russell Westbrook rap along to this in his car. (Later, he replicated the spot for a Jordan commercial .) That’s when I knew he’d be all right in Oklahoma City.

21 Savage, “X” ft. Future By virtue of age (24) and style (cold, sobering gangsta rap), 21 Savage is the odd man out in this scene, but he belongs because he confused a lot of older people when he first came out. Plus, his “ issa knife ” moment became a meme, and he’s such a character he influenced a wack rapper—the shameless 22 Savage—in his wake. This is a fun, real-world hit, and while nothing 21 Savage does could be labeled “bratty,” the “I’m just flexing on my ex-bitch” hook thematically lines up with guys like Uzi.

Playboi Carti, “Fetti” ft. Da$h and Maxo Kream He didn’t quite taste the mainstream success of his peers in that four-quadrant meme, but Carti quietly released some good music this year. My favorite song of his remains his 2015 track “Fetti,” which predicted a lot of the “slowed-down-Migos-flow” stuff that really blew up in 2016.

Kodak Black, “Vibin in This Bih” ft. Gucci Mane Kodak hit too many legal troubles to truly blow up in 2016, and he’s yet to repeat the viral highs of 2015 jams “Skrt” and “Ran Up a Check.” His feature on “Lockjaw” was one of rap’s finest moments this year, but that’s definitely a French Montana song. On this song from Lil B.I.G. Pac he teams up with grandfather figure to all these guys, Gucci Mane, to trade spirited verses and establish himself as a “take me seriously” member of this team.

Madeintyo, “Uber Everywhere” A totally goofy and fun radio song, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’m not really checking for more Madeintyo songs, unless something really comes out and knocks me off my feet.

Trill Sammy, “Martin” Trill Sammy flies under the radar, but he secretly has millions of YouTube views on his songs and defiantly sticks out in a weird Houston scene whose most visible stars, Travis Scott and Sauce Twinz, sound nothing alike. “Martin” is a grating (and great) piece of “repetitive phrase rap” that sticks in your head. And I secretly enjoy his “ Uber Everywhere ” freestyle more than the real thing.

Amine, “Caroline” This is more in the vein of D.R.A.M.’s 2015 hit “Cha Cha,” but this crude yet joyful hit (53 million YouTube views and counting, appearing in the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100) was the sleeper song of the year. Amine earns points for taking the song to Jimmy Fallon and dropping an anti-Donald Trump verse at the end.

Ugly God, “Water” Houston’s 20-year-old Ugly God is the most genuinely weird artist out of all these guys. He’s like an evil Lil Yachty. The first reaction to an Ugly God song is to want to dismiss it as a joke, except Ugly God is an ace at writing hooks and has a genuinely funny personality. He’s impossible to hate.

Ugly God, “Booty From a Distance” Speaking of funny, Ugly God’s “ I Beat My Meat ” wears its iPhone ringtone sample too heavily to register as more than a novelty, but his “Booty From a Distance” is a great story song. Maybe it’s the Houston connection but I can’t help but think of Bushwick Bill when I listen.

Kodie Shane, “Hold Up” ft. Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Yachty I like Kodie because her music is fun and she has a great personality, but I also give her credit for hijacking the one Famous Dex song everybody liked (“Drip From My Walk”) and re-contextualizing it out of the view of the intolerable Chicago rapper who was primed to blow up like Yachty and Uzi, but was caught on camera beating a woman . This is a good little song that features the two biggest stars of the scene.

Wintertime, “Thru It All (Remix)” ft. iLoveMakonnen The Florida rapper’s most popular song, no doubt boosted by the appearance of iLoveMakonnen. It mixes atonal sing-song rapping with an ultra chill beat—it’s not as commercial as Yachty and less outrageous than Ugly God, but it treads the middle ground between easily digestible and borderline avant-garde.

NBA YoungBoy, “38 Baby” While NBA YoungBoy is more or less making traditional gangsta rap, he’s still only 17, and thriving on a post-Chief Keef, post-Bobby Shmurda wave that altered the fabric of gangsta rap by virtue of persistent youth alone, which makes him adjacent to this scene. This is a great song with a simmering, throwback West Coast sample, though of course the young rapper hails from Louisiana. (Unfortunately, like Keef and Shmurda, NBA YoungBoy is dealing with some serious-sounding legal issues .)

Migos, “Bad and Boujee” ft. Lil Uzi Vert As of this writing, this song sits at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100, which would make it the highest charting single of Migos’s career. Anecdotally, it’s also a song where people have decided to “come around” to Vert—his voice sounds right at home amid the distinctive tones of Migos, atop a pristine Metro Boomin beat with an inescapably catchy hook. While D.R.A.M. and Yachty’s “Broccoli” is a bigger hit (and peaked at No. 5), this is the first time it feels as if this “sound” propelled a song forward, rather than relying on a “who are these guys?” curiosity factor to reel people in.

This post Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert: In 2016, the Kids Took Over Rap first appeared on SPIN .

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Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty & Denzel Curry's XXL Freshmen Cypher 2016

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