Yeat’s new album 2093 is a head trip.
Full of sludgy beats and outlandish lyrics, it’s a delirious-ass project, and after consuming all 78 minutes of it, it’s impossible not to feel at least a little disoriented (and I mean that in the best way possible). Any good Yeat album is kind of like a sci-fi movie, offering a brief escape to a strange world where everyday norms are flipped upside down, and 2093 is the epitome of that.
Yeat’s whole shtick is that he’s some kind of an alien who came to Earth from another world (the Twizz planet, as he’ll proudly tell you), and we all know that’s a marketing gimmick, but 2093 really does sound different from anything else happening on the charts right now. He’s moved on from the typical “rage” sound of his early albums and is now experimenting with something far heavier and even more dystopian.
Over the weekend, I put the album on loop, and (by design) it put me in a strange headspace. Instead of composing myself and overthinking anything, I jumped in right away and wrote down all my thoughts in the order they came to me, meeting the music on Yeat’s own wavelength. Here are some unfiltered first thoughts on a beautifully unhinged album.
If Yeat's vision of life in 2093 comes true, we’re doomed
Yeat doesn't have an optimistic view of the future.
In his vision of life in 2093, something has gone terribly wrong and the world is on the verge of collapse. Committing to a post-apolocyptic theme, the album is full of apathetic lyrics and decaying beats, and the whole thing sounds like a glitching dispatch from the future, complete with off-kilter, metallic sound effects and fuzzy vocoders. It's all very ominous.
Yeat describes living in a “dystopian society” and says he longs to “feel like a real human” on “Nothing Changë,” which could either be a cry for help from a self-medicating drug addict or the urgent plea of a superintelligent AI who just wants to feel something, depending on how you look at it. Either way, 2093 is “hell on Earth.” (If his predictions of the future come true, we're honestly better off dead.)
He’s always made escapist rap music, and it’s tempting to describe 2093 as a work of pure science fiction, but he also toys with real-world reference points, repeatedly bringing up things like Elon Musk and SpaceX. The album just dropped at a weird point in history when innovations like ChatGPT and the Apple Vision Pro are threatening to upend the human experience (or at least dramatically change the mechanics of our daily lives). So from that perspective, 2093 might not feel so out-there when we look back on it in a few years.
Maybe it’s just a dark fantasy. Or maybe Yeat is making unsettling, dystopian music to reflect a world that’s hurtling in that direction, one technological “advancement” at a time. If so, let’s just hope the real 2093 isn’t as hellacious as Yeat thinks it’ll be.
Yeat has a very complicated relationship with capitalism
When I interviewed Yeat in 2022, he told me he was indifferent about his financial success. “I’m not really that greedy person. I don’t spend much money. I’m chilling,” he said at the time. But on 2093, Yeat’s relationship with money is a lot more complicated.
On some songs, he sounds as unimpressed by his growing bank account as he did in the interview, like on “Shade,” where he raps about getting stacks of cash that he “never even asked for.” Or on “Keep Pushin,” where he repeatedly claims that he “don't need no money.” But throughout the rest of the album, money is all Yeat wants to rap about. In fact, if there’s one prevailing lyrical theme on 2093, it’s that Yeat is a rich CEO with a bottomless bank account.
His flexes include: buying a jet because he got bored (“Breathe”), literally pissing diamonds (“More”), and purchasing the entire contents of the Earth (“Bought The Earth”). On "Nothing Changë," Yeat even manages to burn through a million dollars in four quick purchases: a $250,000 chain, a $250,000 plane, a $500,000 Cullinan, and a $250,000 butler. And on “Team CEO,” he claims, “I got billion dollar money, live inside a turtle.” (Honestly, I have no idea what that last one means, but having enough money to live inside a turtle sounds pretty rich to me.)
So, is Yeat a money-hungry capitalist fiend or not? Honestly, it depends on when you ask him. Sure, he contradicts himself constantly, but what’s more relatable than realizing the concept of money is flawed, only to get bored and blow a bunch of cash on things you don’t actually need?
Lil Wayne blessed his alien grandson
Lil Wayne has a lot of children in the rap game. And his children have children. And now his children’s children are starting to have children of their own. Not to get too deep into the Lil Wayne family tree, but rap’s original self-described alien has inspired a whole generation of eccentric rappers like Young Thug, who have in turn influenced another generation of artists, with Yeat chief among them. (There might actually be another generation or two in between, but who’s counting?)
One of the coolest things about Wayne is that he isn’t above collaborating with the generations that he birthed, which he does here on “Lyfestylë,” the best song on the album after “Breathe.” First, Yeat sets things up with a catchy verse, rapping about (what else?) diamonds and demons. Then Wayne grabs the baton in full stride, sliding in with an appropriately unhinged verse about spitting acid alongside his “sick and twisted evil bastard” protegé. He even makes sure to fit in a diamonds and demons bar of his own. Yeah, he’s still got it.
This should be playing in European warehouse raves
Yeat spends a lot of time talking about quitting drugs on 2093, but why does it sound like he’s been spending all his time at raves? Pushing himself far outside the comfort zone of rage beats that dominated his early projects, he chooses dark, industrial beats that sound like they should be playing in a grimy warehouse rave at 4:00 a.m. somewhere in Europe. On “ILUV,” Yeat raps “I love when you rage with me,” but in this context, I picture him saying it in the corner of a swampy club full of molly-popping kids, rather than the “rage” setting that he’s typically associated with (Rolling Loud crowds). Honestly, it’s a compelling pivot, and he pulls it off well. I just hope club DJs pick up on it and start throwing some of these songs into their sets.
… or in sci-fi movie soundtracks
Back in 2021, Vince Staples told the hosts of Drink Champs that he made his self-titled album with the goal of getting as many songs as possible synced in movies. I don’t know if that was Yeat’s intention for 2093, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had Blade Runner playing in the studio as he recorded it, as these songs sound like they should end up on every sci-fi movie soundtrack for the next 10 years. I need to hear this music playing while Keanu Reeves slices up robots on a hoverboard or some shit. Music supervisors, are you listening? Get on the phones, Zack Bia. Make it happen.
Drake is Drake-ing
Drake did it again. And by “it,” I mean: that thing where he jumps into a new sound or subgenre with a popular young rapper and makes it his own. This isn’t his first time working with Yeat (their first collab “IDGAF” is the most-streamed song on For All The Dogs) and he sounds very comfortable on the album’s most sweeping, cinematic song “As We Speak,” rapping a braggadocious verse over dramatic strings. I have no idea why Drake started his verse by shouting out Lil Yachty (did he lift these vocals from an unused Yachty collab?) but it still sounds great.
Donald Glover must have more than 24 hours in a day
How does Donald Glover find the time for side quests like this? Somewhere between making Mr. & Mrs. Smith, helping produce Malia Obama’s first short film, raising cows, and building a whole ass company, he squeezed in a studio session with Yeat and recorded vocals for the outro of “Power Trip.” When I interviewed Glover late last year, he perked up and seemed extra curious when I randomly brought up Yeat’s name (he wanted to know what Yeat’s view of “the meaning of life” was) and now it all makes sense. He was already tapped in.
What about the bars, though?
It's no secret that lyricism is never the most important part of a Yeat album. He’s built in the mold of a rapper like Travis Scott, where production, ad-libs, and melodies take precedence, and he’s generally more interested in figuring out crazy new ways to layer his vocals into beats, rather than coming up with intricate wordplay. (Just listen to all the weird little alien sounds in the background of a song like "Breathe." That's not a part of the beat; it's Yeat's own voice.) Shit, if he can’t find the right word for a given situation, he’ll just make one up. (Shmadonka, anyone?)
On 2093, lyrics once again take a backseat, but there are moments where Yeat proves to be surprisingly clever, rattling off lines like, “If I'm not making money, then I got me some withdrawals” on “Stand On It.” Even when the lyrics look plain on paper, Yeat’s way of viewing the world is so peculiar that he can deliver bars on regular-ass topics in a way that feels weirdly poetic, like, “A cut across your eyes will leave you blind for life.” He's rapping in a low register on this album, more clearly enunciating words, and the lyrics are a little more front-and-center this time. Listen, his lyrics can still use some work overall, and they still don't seem to be something he’s prioritizing first on 2093, but there are glimpses of potential here that might surprise people. He's becoming more well-rounded.
2093 is a lot of things, but “boring” isn’t one of them
2093 isn’t a perfect album. It’s a little too long and the home stretch drags on a bit with some redundant songs. And, yes, Yeat’s songwriting could always improve to better match the ingenuity of his eccentric flows and production (although it is getting better over time). But overall, 2093 is a big success. Instead of sticking to the same stylistic pocket that made him successful (rage), he’s taking big swings at a high-pressure point in his career and pushing his sound in delightfully strange new directions. Full of synthetic, booming sounds, 2093 really does feel like it’s from the future.
Yeat caught fire in the first place because of his unorthodox style, and rather than run that sound into the ground until it becomes stale, he continues to reinvent himself. Because of that, you’ll see comments begging for “the old Yeat,” but that kind of thing happens to anyone on the cutting edge. Instead, he made an album that doesn’t sound like anything else in the mainstream right now, and that’s exciting. By nature, 2093 is a rebellious, outside-the-box album, and it’s refreshing to see a project like this heading to the top of the charts in a sea of formulaic bullshit.
There will always be a need for risk-taking artists who polarize fans and get people to think differently, and Yeat is filling that role right now. Even if 2093 isn’t your cup of tea, you have to admit it’s not boring. And at a time when mainstream rap is in need of a jolt of fresh energy, albums like this are a welcome change of pace. Plus, there are some legitimate hits on here, like “Breathe” and “As We Speak,” which stand on their own. Yeat is showing growth, shedding old habits and picking up new skills. Sobering up, he's more clear and intelligible than he's ever been, without losing any of the off-the-wall charm that brought him a cult fanbase in the first place. This was a pivotal album for him, signaling whether or not he'd be able to turn all of the early-career hype into something with longevity. And by the sounds of it? Yeat isn’t going anywhere.
