Aside from his music, Atlanta’s Lil Yachty got somewhat of a popularity boost when Kanye West picked him to appear in the Yeezy Season 3 fashion show. The rapper’s trademark red braids made another appearance related to the fashion industry thanks to designer Alexander Wang. Yachty may be one of the few actual rappers who appear in Wang’s 2017 Beyond Reality campaign, which uses some visual trickery.
“It’s about observing and toying with our society’s current obsession with social media,” Wang told Vogue. “We wanted to propose both real and fabricated narratives in order to create doubt, whether what you see is real or not, or maybe even something in between. The original spark came from scrolling through my own feed; that feeling that makes you stop or second-guess something. I embrace this obsession just as much as anyone else. The fact that the campaign is only released through social media, but is also a commentary on it, blurs the line even more.”
As such, the version of Yachty captured by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s lenses is authentic, while it appears celebrity impersonators for Drake and Snoop Dogg were added to the mix. Yachty appears in scenes next to models Anna Ewers, Lexi Boling, and Binx Walton as part of Wang’s “Wang Squad,” while what seem to be partially obscured images of Drake and Snoop fill in other shots.
The Alexander Wang placement adds to increased visibility for Yachty, who’s been making headlines after drawing criticism from J. Cole, Shia LeBeouf, and Kodak Black.
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