Our weekly podcast includes in-depth analysis of the new albums we find extraordinary, exciting, and just plain terrible. This week, Reviews Director Jeremy D. Larson hosts Staff Writer Alphonse Pierre and Contributing Editor Dylan Green to talk about Lil Yachty’s unlikely trajectory from SoundCloud rap ambassador to trippy funk explorer, and why his new album Let’s Start Here. doesn’t totally hit the mark.
Listen to this week’s episode below, and follow The Pitchfork Review here. You can also check out an excerpt of the podcast’s transcript below.
Jeremy D. Larson: On the new album’s first song, “the BLACK seminole.,” there’s one lyric that stood out to me: “This part I’ve seen in my dreams/Love is not a lie/It just feels like a Tarantino movie scene.”
Dylan Green: Oh, my God. What does that mean?
Larson: Is he talking about Inglourious Basterds? [laughter] Grindhouse? It speaks to the almost-specific nature of this album, like we’re almost getting a clear image of exactly what he’s talking about, but he stops just short of creating this world that feels like you can fully inhabit it.
Green: But really, what movie is he talking about?! I don’t want to be like Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
Larson: Tough love between those two.
Green: I don’t want my life to end like the couple did at the end of Inglourious Basterds, where she burns the movie theater to the ground. Like, what do you want, Yachty? [laughter]
Larson: What do you think his favorite Tarantino movie is?
Alphonse Pierre: Probably Pulp Fiction?
Larson: Jackie Brown? Underrated.
Pierre: That’s the movie he should have watched before this, because I feel like he would have gotten some different influences from that Blaxploitation era that Tarantino was pulling from.
Green: Oh, shit!
Larson: Man, that would’ve been great. Some more Isaac Hayes, some more Shaft.
Pierre: That’s the sound they needed, a little bit more funk.
