Back in January, the Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty released his new LP Let’s Start Here., and it’s one of the most-discussed albums of the year thus far. On Let’s Start Here., Yachty almost entirely turns his back on rap music, shooting instead for a wiggy live-band psych-rock sound, recorded with help from members of bands like Chairlift and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Plenty of commentators, including our own rap columnist Jayson Buford, heard Let’s Start Here. as Yachty’s misguided attempt to be taken seriously. But Yachty himself insists that Let’s Start Here. is the kind of music that he really wants to be making.

In a new Billboard feature, Lil Yachty literally says, “Fuck any of the albums I dropped before this one.” Yachty has released eight major-label albums and mixtapes since his 2016 debut Lil Boat. Some of them are pretty good! But Yachty doesn’t seem to think so:

I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other shit. It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the shit I was making did not add up to the shit I listened to… I just wanted more. I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.

In the Billboard story, Yachty explains how he got to this place:

I came into music in a time where rap was real hardcore; it was real street. And a bunch of us kids came in with colorful hair and dressing different and basically said, “Move out the way, old fucks. We on some other shit.” I was young, and I didn’t really give a fuck, so I did do things that may have led people to the assumptions that I was a mumble rapper or a SoundCloud kid or I don’t appreciate the history of hip-hop. But to be honest, I’ve always been so much more than just hip-hop…

There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references. They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.

Yachty names Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Tame Impala’s Currents as two of the main influences on Let’s Start Here., as well as the Pink Floyd classic Dark Side Of The Moon, which Yachty heard for the first time in 2017: “I think that was the last time I was like, ‘Whoa.’ You know?” Before releasing the new album, Yachty played it for some of the rap-world people he respects, including Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Post Malone, Drake, Cardi B, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky, and Tyler, The Creator. Yachty says, “Their reactions boosted me.”

In the Billboard piece, Yachty says that he’s now making “electronic pop shit” and that he’s made hundreds of songs since finishing Let’s Start Here. He also says he’s put together an all-female backing band to play the album tracks live. Yachty also says that he isn’t necessarily done with rap and that he “would love to do a project with Tyler.”

The full feature is worth your time, and you can read it here.