Lil Yachty – “Royal Rumble” (Feat. KrispyLife Kidd, RMC Mike, Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, Dc2Trill, & Icewear Vezzo)

Lil Yachty – “Royal Rumble” (Feat. KrispyLife Kidd, RMC Mike, Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, Dc2Trill, & Icewear Vezzo)

For the past few years, the Atlanta rap star Lil Yachty has been making tracks with the best rappers that the thriving Michigan underground has to offer. Yachty was arguably the first mainstream rapper to recognize the talent of people like Sada Baby and Rio Da Yung OG, and when he records tracks with guys like that, it usually brings out the best in him. For a few months, Yachty has been teasing the release of something called Michigan Boat Boy — presumably a whole mixtape of team-ups with rappers from Detroit and Flint. We still don’t have that, but now there’s a new song where Yachty shares the beat with six different Michigan artists.

Yesterday, Yachty dropped a video for a new song called “Royal Rumble,” where he raps alongside KrispyLife Kidd, RMC Mike, Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, Dc2Trill, and Icewear Vezzo. (The actual Royal Rumble was a week earlier, and it was ass, Bad Bunny top-rope splash or no.) That’s a lot of rappers, and the song itself is pretty chaotic. Yachty’s verse descends into incoherent mumbles. But plenty of the other rappers on the song pick up his slack. My favorite of the verses comes from Flint’s RMC Mike, a man who sounds like he drinks a steaming mug of lava with his breakfast every morning.

If nothing else, this is another cool indication that Lil Yachty, who is currently developing a heist movie based on the card game UNO, really cares about rap music, in all its changing permutations. Michigan rap is great. Yachty knows it, and he wants in. The aesthetic of the video is pure Michigan, too. Yachty and his friends deliver their verses — sometimes not even bothering to lip-sync — in a snowy parking lot and an unfinished basement. AMD Visuals directs. Check it out below.

Michigan Boat Boy, the YouTube description promises us, is coming soon.

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