Artist: Yeat
Album: 2093
Release date: 16th February 2024
Yeat initially showed a lot of promise due his viral rise in 2021. Releasing multiple long projects that had dark, party songs that felt inspired by Future or Playboi Carti. His first label release, Up 2 Më was the project that best showed off his delirious vocal inflections and ear for interesting beats. Yeat was not reinventing the mould, but instead carving a niche for a certain sound he could dominate.
Since then Yeat has released two other projects and a lot of songs, but overwhelmingly it felt as if he mostly was hitting a redundant note. His music was good, but not particularly distinct. There were glimpses into something a bit more like the popular track Nun I'd Change which feels like a predecessor to the overall direction he'd take with this album.
I approached 2093 somewhat cautiously, given I could probably point towards the number of really interesting Yeat songs released since Up 2 Më on one hand. But 2093 actually feels like it has a vision and cements Yeat as not just a trendy artist, but one who has an interesting vision for contemporary music.
In some ways the 2093 aesthetic seems familiar, with its cover art evoking cyberpunk, sci-fi and The Matrix to me. It's interesting in how it feels influenced by '90s electronic and electronic adjacent genres like techno and industrial to feel fairly standalone in the hip-hop landscape. While Yeat had previously been no stranger to interesting production choices which sometimes borrowed from electronic music, the direction he takes on 2093 is really cool and mostly uniform.
Yeat's lyricism is not going to blow anyone away and covers topics of wealth, excess, drugs and power. It positions him as this sort of futuristic "Psycho CEO" character who is running the future and has enough wealth and influence to shut everyone down. It takes boasting to cartoony levels, casually referencing billions. It's an exaggerated aesthetic that fits in with the sonic palette on offer.
Having Future as a guest is a big get for Yeat, given he's clearly one of his biggest influences but also in that specifically the drugged out delirium of Future's DS2, a pioneering moment in trap music, is specifically what feels like a forebear to Yeat's vision on 2093. With Drake and Lil Wayne lending the other two guest spots it posits Yeat as an unassuming powerhouse in hip-hop, able to carry most of the album himself and only bringing in established A-listers to guest.
The highlights on 2093 are among the very best output from Yeat. Breathe is a highlight early in the tracklist that features a mantra and driving techno inspired beat. ILUV has robotic vocal samples and a grinding industrial sort of influence on production. It features more ambitious, well realised tracks too like Power Trip and Tell Më which are rare Yeat tracks to clear 4 minutes, let alone 3.
It's very exciting to see that Yeat has steered away from a career path that saw him seemed destined to end up fading away as another underground flavour of the month rapper. 2093 is not perfect, it could still do with cutting a few tracks as in its second half it does start to feel occasionally redundant. Mostly though, the interesting production choices and uniformly neon lit aesthetic featuring quirks in both vocal performance and production which are not being seen elsewhere in the genre. 2093 is the level up that Yeat needed.