Yeat's World

I met Yeat less than 10 minutes ago, and he’s already going viral. The world has just learned that Queen Elizabeth II is dead, and within minutes of her passing, Twitter is on fire with memes about how she’ll never get to hear Yeat’s unreleased music. (Truly a fate worse than death.) Soon, his name is trending alongside hers. Meanwhile, Yeat is trying on a Louis Vuitton jacket in a drafty Los Angeles warehouse, completеly unfazed by what’s happening online. Hе’s getting used to moments like this. Every few days, he finds himself at the center of a new viral storm, like the time a Swedish pole vaulter broke a world record while his song “Money So Big” inexplicably played in the background. These things usually happen by accident, and Yeat doesn’t find out until later. Unlike most viral artists, defined by their mastery of the internet and its culture, he doesn’t spend much time on social media. In fact, he rarely engages with society at all. He’s suspicious of new friends, he hates parties, and most days, he doesn’t even leave the house. Instead, he ducks away in his home studio, recording deliriously chaotic rap songs all day. So far, it’s worked out for him. The 22-year-old rap phenom, born Noah Oliver Smith, has made millions by constantly releasing new music. He’s racked up over a billion streams, debuted two consecutive projects in the Billboard top 10, and received co-signs from stars like Drake and Lil Uzi Vert. By most metrics, he’s rap’s rookie of the year, and the numbers only tell half the story. Yeat is an ad-lib-spewing mad scientist at the bleeding edge of an experimental new era for rap. Throwing song structure norms and basic laws of the English language out the window, he’s making explosive, hallucinatory rap music for a restless generation that’s running for the mosh pits. (If you don’t understand all the words, it’s because he made them up.) As Lil Uzi Vert put it, “Yeat is a walking X pill. He sounds like what's going on outside right now.” He rode a viral wave to conquer rap’s wild new underground, and now faces a new challenge: proving he has staying power in the mainstream. So far, he’s laid low, rarely speaking (or even showing his face) in public. Most details about his life have been kept under wraps, and if he had it his way, everyone would just assume he’s from outer space. After all, he typës likë hë crash-landëd herë from anothër planët. No one knows shit about the man behind the music, and he’s been happy to keep it that way. Until now. The enigmatic artist has finally agreed to let a journalist into his world for an in-depth profile. Yeat shows up to his first-ever magazine cover shoot well before 2 p.m. (he’s a punctual guy), wearing a black leather trench coat and boots, even though it’s a 100-degree September day in L.A. With his girlfriend Symone by his side, he rifles through a rack of designer clothes, before something catches his eye. It’s a black balaclava, custom-made by the brand Who Decides War. Yeat pulls it over his head and likes what he sees, nodding in approval. That is, until noticing a row of sparkly flowers stitched on top. “I don’t like the sparkles with the flowers,” he mutters. “It’s kind of a weird vibe.” At his request, the flowers are removed. “That’s fye,” he nods, puffing on a strawberry mango vape. An hour later, Yeat tracks me down in a hallway near his dressing room. Apparently he’s had a change of heart. He doesn’t want to do a sit-down interview anymore. His new plan? iMessage. “I could just text you,” he says, trying to get out of a plan we had agreed to months ago. “You could just ask me a bunch of questions. I’ll answer all of them.” Sensing this interview will never happen if we don’t do it right now, I pull my phone out of my pocket, start a new voice memo, and begin asking questions on the spot. Somehow, it works. It’s unclear if he’s too stunned to fight back, or too polite to walk away in the middle of a conversation, but he plays along. Right away, it’s obvious that Yeat’s reclusive image isn’t an act. Speaking quietly, he says the following over the next few minutes: “I don’t party.” “I don’t like being friends with a lot of people.” “I like doing shit by myself.” “I don’t trust a lot of people, so my circle’s hella small.” His solitary ways have worked out well for him so far, and the mystery has only added to his buzz. “I think that’s a big part of it,” he acknowledges. “Keeping it mysterious made people more attracted to it. They want to know about it.” He pushes back on the notion that he’s a “quiet” guy, though. According to him, it’s just never felt natural to share his life online. “I don’t like social media, so I’m never on there, and I don't be with the internet shit,” he says, scoffing at his peers who focus on social media fame over all else. “They’re, like, begging for attention. But if you beg, you're not going to get attention. If you don’t beg, you get more attention. I just do the opposite. It works out.” Yeat is hurtling toward rap superstardom, yet he seems completely uninterested in the perks of success. One of his favorite things to rap about is getting money, but he downplays these motivations in-person. Although he spent “a cool 3 mil” on a house, a few cars, and some watches, he says he’s “saving the rest,” explaining, “I feel like I’m cool where I’m at. I’m obviously going to make way more money, but I don't need that much money. I’m not really that greedy person. I don’t spend much money. I’m chilling.” It’s clear that a rockstar lifestyle isn’t for him: “I don’t really think anything like that’s cool. I just kick it, watch TV, play video games, and make music.” The extravagant parties can wait; Yeat has work to do. Describing his average day, he reveals that he does everything by himself at home, noting, “I record myself in my house, in my own studio. I don’t like going to studios and having someone else record me. So I mix and engineer everything myself.” He made it this far by quite literally living in the studio, and he’s not willing to let the distractions of fame change that. “I don’t really do nothing besides music,” he shrugs. Forget the memes and the viral trends for a moment. The real secret to Yeat’s success is his unorthodox approach to making music. More specifically: the way he layers his voice into the beats he raps over. Take a song like “Talk,” for example. The high-pitched melody at the center of the beat isn’t an instrument; it’s Yeat’s own voice, pitched up and looped over keys. And whenever the kick drum hits, whoo sounds erupt in the background (once again, Yeat’s own voice). He gets praised for picking great beats, but they wouldn’t be nearly as compelling if it weren’t for all the vocal layers he adds himself. “Yeah, I be adding my voice to the beat,” he says, before hitting me with the first head-spinning revelation of the day: He actually records his ad-libs before laying down the rest of his vocals. “I do my ad-libs first, and sing on it or whatever. Then I rap on it.” Yeat is stretching the idea of ad-libbing to the extreme, building on the innovations of Atlanta artists like Young Thug, Migos, Jeezy, T.I., Lil Jon, Gucci Mane, and Future. Rather than adding embellishments to his own raps, he interacts with each element of the beat itself. Have you ever heard a rapper do a call-and-response with a flute? Go listen to what Yeat pulls off on “Wat it feel lykë.” “He’s a one-man band,” says BNYX, the Philadelphia producer responsible for half the beats on Yeat’s new EP Lyfë. “It’s crazy.” As the story goes, Yeat stumbled on this unique approach while growing up in Portland, Oregon. Or did he? “People don’t know where I’m from,” he says, clearly annoyed. He’s been called a “Portland rapper” by everyone from Pitchfork to The New York Times, but he was actually born in Irvine, California and grew up in nearby Fullerton. It wasn’t until he turned 14 that he moved to Portland with his family. “I feel like I’m starting a new wave. People are already copying me.” “I only went to high school there, so I guess people think that,” he says of his time in the Pacific Northwest. “But no, I’m not really from there. I don’t live there now, and I wasn’t born and raised there. I was born and raised in L.A., I’ve been here most of my life, and I live here now.” Yeat grew up in a household full of music, thanks to the influence of his Romanian mother and Mexican-American father. His mother played songs from artists like T-Pain around the house, and his father was a musician who used to play in a rock band. It wasn’t until his teenage years, though, that he considered making it himself. That’s when he started dropping acid, which he credits for helping him realize that he can do anything he sets his mind to. (“Psychedelics made me think different,” he reflects.) And as a high schooler living in Portland, he already knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life: rap. But first, he needed a name. He wanted it to be a single word—something that sounded new but somehow recognizable at the same time—so he thought of Yeat “on some high shit,” as he explained to Hakeem Rowe of Our Generation Music. “I came up with it when I was 16,” he says now, pointing out that it doesn’t actually mean anything. “It was just random. I was trying to make a name that nobody would make before, but feel like they heard before.” “I met aliens before, when I was 11.” As Lil Yeat, he started self-releasing music on SoundCloud in 2016 (the majority of which has since been deleted) before ditching the “Lil” a couple of years later. By the time he graduated high school, he had a small but loyal underground following, so he moved to New York City to seriously pursue a career in music. Even in those early home recordings, you could hear the foundation of Yeat’s current sound. Melodies have always come naturally to him, and the influence of Atlanta stars like Young Thug and Future (who he says are his two favorite rappers of all time) were clear. However, he would soon find his own sound in a new context. At the time, there was a lot of talk about how SoundCloud rap (and hip-hop’s new underground in general) was “dead” after the decline of viral artists like Lil Pump and the tragic deaths of stars like Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, and Juice WRLD. But in their place, a new generation of artists, like Summrs, Autumn!, SoFaygo, and SSGKobe were reshaping the scene, and Yeat found community with them. He became particularly close with Slayworld, a collective that reimagined the underground and popularized a new subgenre called pluggnb. Yeat clarifies now that he wasn’t a formal member of the since-disbanded crew (“I was never in that”) but he says he’s “still cool” with members like Summrs. Yeat’s music started to mutate at that point—the tempos got faster and the beats got more explosive and synthy. Maybe it was because of all the ecstasy that he rapped about taking. Or maybe he was just inspired by popular new trends in the underground. (Probably both.) Either way, he got his hands on chaotic beats from producers like Synthetic, F1LTHY, TRGC, Sharkboy, and BenjiCold, and discovered a winning formula of catchy one-liners (“This song already was turnt, but here's a bell”), off-the-wall observations (“She said she need a big ol’ booty, called up Bob the Builder”), and wild sound effects. In 2021, Yeat’s life turned upside down. After self-releasing a well-received underground album (Alivë) in April, his music started breaking through to the mainstream with June’s 4L. Suddenly, he had escaped the echo chambers of underground Discord servers and niche rap Instagram pages, and tracks like “Sorry Bout That” and “Money Twërk” were reaching the public consciousness through viral dance challenges and memes. By August, he dropped “Gët Busy,” which took over TikTok (thanks to the bell) and even caught the attention of artists like Lil Yachty and Drake. He had a fresh new sound, a unique look, and an unusual name. Of course memes and internet buzz followed. Everything about him felt new, and once people realized the music was great, too, he was out of here. Record labels couldn’t resist a combination like that. Yeat and his manager Nextel (who has been by his side for years) took calls from executives, before releasing Up 2 Më with distribution by Listen To The Kids and Geffen Records in September 2021. Shortly after that, he signed a longer-term contract with Zack Bia’s Field Trip Recordings in partnership with Geffen Records, where he remains today. Five years after cracking open a laptop and making his first songs, Yeat finally had a sound, an audience, a budget, and major industry connections. All he had to do was jump back in the studio and keep experimenting. It’s 10:46 p.m. on a muggy night in Burbank, California. I pull up to a nondescript warehouse and immediately know I’m at the right place, because one of Yeat’s “Tonkas” (a Mercedes-Benz GLE) is parked outside. Entering through a large steel door, I walk down a dimly lit hallway, and the first thing I see is a man holding a pistol in the air. It’s Yeat. He’s dressed in all black, with a very serious look on his face, but fortunately, I’m in no imminent danger. We’re on the set of a Lyrical Lemonade music video shoot with director Cole Bennett for “Out thë Way.” Yeat is here with a very small crew (his girlfriend and brother) and after 15 minutes on set, I still haven’t heard him say a word. Standing in front of a large green screen, he nods attentively as Bennett instructs him how to hold his arms, mirroring the director’s every move. “It’s a wrap!” Bennett suddenly yells from behind the camera. Just like that, less than 20 minutes after Yeat arrived on set, the video is complete—a new Lyrical Lemonade record. It’s a natural pace for Yeat, an artist who moves at the breakneck speed of the internet. (In the past 12 months alone, he’s released three projects.) Yeat knows his audience well. Attention spans are at an all-time low, and if he waits too long between releases, he risks losing buzz. (“People forget,” he reminds me.) Fortunately, he makes music constantly and never has to worry about running out of songs to share. “I feel like I drop more than everybody—more than a lot of rappers,” he says, explaining that it usually only takes him “10 to 20 minutes” to make each song. After all that recording, he has a lot of unreleased music. “My computer alone has 16,000 [songs],” he reveals. As nonchalant as he appears at a glance, he’s actually much more calculated than he lets on. “What makes Yeat so special is how well strategized he is without the audience ever needing to take notice in that,” Bennett tells me later. “His attention to detail is far more dialed in than most artists.” Moments after wrapping the video shoot, Yeat opens a gift from Drake—a pair of then-unreleased NOCTA x Nike Hot Step Air Terra sneakers in black and gold—and immediately puts them on his feet. “Drake shows a lot of love,” he says. Drake first supported Yeat on Instagram in August 2021, quoting the viral “here’s a bell” lyric from “Gët Busy.” A month later, at his Certified Lover Boy release party in Houston, Drake even met with Yeat in-person, posing for photos that instantly went viral and amplified his early buzz. “It was late as fuck at night and Zack [Bia] was like, ‘Yo, Drake said let's go to Houston,’ and I was like, fuck it,” Yeat remembers. “So we bought a flight instantly. We got there in like three hours. We were there for the album release party, and then left three hours later. Shit was fire.” There’s been a lot of speculation from fans that the two have unreleased material together, but Yeat says they haven’t made anything yet. He does hint there will be a collaboration in the future, though, divulging, “We’re going to have some shit on the way. In the future. Not yet. I want to make it in-person with him. I don’t want to be sending shit.” Yeat has already received a long list of co-signs, ranging from Lil Yachty to Gunna to Playboi Carti to Earl Sweatshirt. One of his biggest influences, Young Thug, even collaborated with him on 2 Alivë standout “Outsidë,” and the two have stayed in touch during Thug’s current incarceration (Yeat says they’ve spoken within the past two months). His bond with Lil Uzi Vert is the strongest. Having just met earlier this year, the two already released three collaborative songs, and there’s a lot more where that came from. According to Yeat, they’ve made “probably 200” songs together. “That’s my brother,” he says. “He just knows that I’m the new wave. He’s tapping in and showing love.” While filming an episode of Complex’s GOAT Talk to go along with this cover story, Yeat named Uzi the greatest SoundCloud rapper of all time, explaining, “Uzi did a lot for SoundCloud back in the day. He did the most, I think. He put on for that shit. I think he might be one of the people who made it what it is.” When Yeat talks about achievements like meeting his idols and making millions of dollars, he does it in a strikingly nonchalant way, as if these are normal things that happen to normal humans. “It’s not really surreal,” he says. “I knew this shit was going to happen. I already knew it when I was like 16. I’m not fanned out when I link with anyone. I just see everyone I linked up with as friends.” Even Yeat can’t deny how much his life has changed in the last year, though. He’s gone from 16,000 followers on Instagram to nearly 2 million in less than 18 months, and his career has taken wildly unexpected turns every few weeks. Like this summer, when suit-wearing teenagers ran into movie theaters across America while blasting “Rich Minion,” a song he made for the Minions soundtrack. Out of nowhere, the song charted, box office numbers shot up, and Yeat’s voice was inescapable on social media. Viral trends and memes have been an important part of his rise, thanks in part to his own sneakily hilarious sense of humor. In most of his songs, you’ll find at least one stray line, like “I’m richer than all of them nerds” on “Out thë Way,” that’ll make you laugh out loud. Even his fans have been going viral lately. In a short clip released by No Bells blog this summer, a young white male fan excitedly professes his fandom for Yeat, yelling, “Bro, he’s just the goat! Like, it’s Yeat! Who else is fucking with Yeat, bro?” Essentially acting out a Reddit comments section in real life, the fan goes on to trash Playboi Carti’s music before getting in a fight with a Lil Uzi Vert fan. Yeat has never commented on these moments publicly, but when I show him this specific video, he’s unimpressed. “That has 2,000 likes. Not viral,” he says, referring to the original clip on Twitter (it has much higher engagement on other platforms). “Next question.” “I’m moving away from [rage beats] now. I don’t really like that style. It gets old.” Yeat is a futurist. Uninterested in following traditions, he tends to move on from things quickly—even his own innovations. “I feel like I’m starting a new wave,” he says. “People are already copying me. I always switch it up, though.” As promised, the production on his latest EP Lyfë is more varied than his last few projects. He’s experimenting with his voice in new ways, leaning into a deeper vocal tone, and there’s even a full-on rock song (“Can’t Stop It”) where he raps over hard-hitting drums and guitars. Don’t expect Yeat to pivot to rock any time soon, though. Asked if he plans to make rock music in the future, he immediately shuts the idea down, explaining, “I don’t like rock, to be honest. I don’t even really listen to rock.” In fact, he’s not interested in pivoting to any other genres, making it clear he’s fully committed to rap. (Or, at least, his own variation of rap.) “I’m trying to make futuristic rap with a mix of sounds,” he says. “I’m making my own genre. My own style. Alternative mixed with rap. It’s different. Shit’s crazy.” Since blowing up, Yeat has been closely associated with “rage” beats—a synthy production style used frequently by artists like Playboi Carti, Trippie Redd, and SoFaygo. Now, he points out that he was early on the trend, but says he’s already over it, explaining, “I’ve been hopping on those rage beats since I first started. I just wasn’t famous [yet]. It’s not like I was copying anybody. But I’m moving away from that now. I don’t really like that style. It gets old. People don’t want to listen to the same shit over and over again.” He’s distancing himself from most things these days. Asked if he still identifies with the underground rap scene that most people associate him with, he responds, “I was never really in that scene. I was just dropping music on SoundCloud. I’m not in that scene.” On his next album, he plans to dive even further into a new lane. “I’m coming way different on the album,” he says, although he can’t quite articulate what exactly that will sound like: “It’s a whole different sound fully. It’s just rap beats mixed with... It’s just a different style. I don’t know. It’s not regular rap beats. It’s a whole different new wave.” One clue about the new direction is the involvement of BNYX, who produced the bounciest, most sonically adventurous songs on Lyfë, including “Talk,” “Out thë Way,” and “Can’t Stop It.” “He matches my new style, and my new flow,” Yeat says. “Every time I evolve, his beats evolve with me.” The respect is mutual. BNYX praises Yeat for having “the best melodies in the game” and says he’s “the most hands-on hip-hop artist” he’s ever worked with. “Whenever you hear the beat glitch or start doubling up, that's him doing that,” BNYX explains. “He’s chopping it up and screwing it and doing all types of crazy shit to it. Yeat is not just like any other rapper.” “Yeat’s attention to detail is far more dialed in than most artists.” — Cole Bennett We won’t have to wait long to hear what they’re cooking up. Unexpectedly, Yeat reveals when he plans to drop it: “The album’s going to be in January or February.” When it arrives, the tracklist likely won’t have many guest features. Lyfë only featured one outside voice (Lil Uzi Vert) and Yeat is notoriously selective about the people he lets into his world. He surrounds himself with a chosen few, like longtime collaborator SeptembersRich, and he’s generally wary of newcomers—a mentality he applies to his own projects. “I’m not really big on features,” he says. “I kind of like people just hearing me. I don’t really need other people on my music. Maybe a couple features, but I don’t like having 20 features on an album. That shit’s kind of weird.” Beyond the album, his future gets hazier. Yeat isn’t the kind of guy who writes down his goals and obsesses over them all day. “I don’t force anything, and I never have goals for nothing,” he explains. “I just make music, and drop it all the time. I don’t really think about anything. I just chill all day.” He does admit there is one achievement he’s eyeing, however. “I will win a Grammy,” he says confidently. “Probably soon. One or two years.” Outside of his own music, he has loose ambitions to grow his record label (Twizzy Rich Entertainment) and wants to start a clothing brand soon, although none of the plans are solidified. “I fuck with fashion. Like, clothes and shit like that,” he says. “I’m going to come out with my own brand, probably in a year or two. But it’s not going to be associated with me. It could just be its own brand. That way it’s not biased. People will buy it if they fuck with me or don’t fuck with me.” As Yeat speaks, his answers get shorter and his voice quieter. It’s clear he isn’t interested in being interviewed for much longer, so I wrap things up. He pulls his balaclava back over his head and disappears through a nearby door. Two weeks later, we connect over text to fill in the gaps from our conversation. It takes him 22 hours to reply to my first text, and once we start, his average response time is around 20 minutes. At times, I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me or not. What inspires you creatively? “Just real lyfe.” Is there a meaning behind the dots over the ë you always use? “Started that randomly.” A lot of your fans want a Playboi Carti collab. Have you connected with him yet? “Na.” What would you do if you met an alien? “I met aliens before when I was 11. They fw me.” Yeat is an elusive character—an eccentric guy who opted out of his reality as Noah Oliver Smith and created his own world instead. It’s why he stays at home all day, making wildly experimental, escapist music. At this brutal moment in human history, can you blame him? One psychedelic, impressionistic ad-lib at a time, he’s offering thrilling relief to millions of young fans. Sure, if you’re looking for insightful musings on the socioeconomic future of America, he might not be your guy. And if you want vulnerable self-reflections from your favorite artists, you’ll need to keep looking. But maybe there’s more to life than the banalities of these dramas. And maybe, as his music suggests, Yeat has figured it out. With that in mind, I ask him one final question, and he hits me back with the only answer he could; the only answer that makes it all make sense. What’s the meaning of life? “Shmadonka.”