Lil Yachty & Despot – “Rain”

Lil Yachty & Despot – “Rain”

Here is one truly random-ass collaboration. Lil Yachty is an Atlanta rap mainstay who releases a lot of music. His psych-rock experiment Let’s Start Here. came out earlier this year, and he’s been cranking out a ton of singles ever since. Despot, meanwhile, is a New York rap cult hero who almost never releases music; he’s notorious for his absolute refusal to ever drop an album. Yachty and Despot sound nothing like one another, but now they’ve got a new song together.

Despot, a former Definitive Jux affiliate, hasn’t release a single of his own since he came out with “House Of Bricks” eight years ago. Last year, he was on billy woods and Preservation’s album track “Versailles,” but other than that it’s been radio silence. Despot was also one of the stars of the short-lived HBO reality-ish show Chillin Island last year, and Lil Yachty was a guest on that show, so maybe that’s the connection here. Yachty, meanwhile, has gone all of 12 days since he last released music — in this case, two songs with fellow Atlanta rap star JID.

The new Yachty/Despot collab “Rain” was produced by Sadpony, a beatmaker who’s worked on hits like Drake’s “Search & Rescue” and 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj’s “Trollz.” Sadpony is also the brother of Sky Ferreira/Charli XCX producer Justin Raisen, and both Sadpony and Raisen worked on Yachty’s Let’s Start Here. On “Rain,” Sadpony comes up with a stop-start synth-beat with a whole lot of negative space, and both Yachty and Despot get reflective. The two rappers don’t really switch their styles up, and they make for a very strange clash of styles. Listen below.

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