ADL: The best and worst tracks on Yeat’s new album

POV: you’re watching the latest Triple-A action film. The protagonist is a morally dubious white man but no one questions it because he sounds cool. There’ll be epic car chases, hot ladies and cameos from Elton John and Kylie Jenner (for some reason) and none of it connects in any discernible way. This is exactly what it felt like listening to Yeat’s sixth album, ADL, released last night. It’s musical Marvel Universe, late-stage rapitalism, and it’s not awful – as long as you switch your brain off.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that critical thinking was ever a part of the Yeat experience – his lyrics have always been a vehicle for explosive energy releases and nothing more. But it is increasingly hard to suspend disbelief when the rage rap golden child has gradually replaced his original lo-fi production for mainstream, arena-ready clarity. Perhaps the biggest example of this came with the release of EsDeeKid collab “Made It On Our Own” last month. With both artists’ nascent grit and Ug rap distortion replaced with triumphant trumpets and what appears to be a children’s choir on the chorus, the track sacrifices everything that made EsDeeKid and Yeat interesting in favour of a song that would fit right at home in a playlist for a padel club in Mayfair. To a slightly lesser extent, ADL is marked by this same sense of artistic compromise.

But the album does nonetheless have some fun moments. Rather than pandering to mainstream appeal, Yeat is most compelling when he returns to his otherworldly home of laser beam synths and Emperor Zurg-like vocals. If ADL is the sonic equivalent of a triple-A blockbuster, these moments are the action scenes that everyone came for.

Below, we break down our three favourite, and three least favourite tracks on the project.

I’m sorry, Joji, we still love you, but who is this track really for? Running with the action film metaphor, “Back Home”’s reverb-clouded melody line and emotionally-vacant piano stabs are the equivalent of the closing credits. But, when the album doesn’t really cover much ground, and what risks it does take are generally missteps, it leaves the listener feeling pretty empty. “I just wanna go home,” groans Yeat on the track’s chorus, and I agree. Go home to your strange alien rage rap planet, Yeat, you were so much cooler there.

I have a lingering suspicion that this collab was motivated more by the optics of having Elton John on a Yeat album, than excitement for what it would actually sound like. Elton, for the most part, is absent here, apart from an intro sampled from 1975 single “Someone Saved My Life”, and a piano line that is presumably also sampled. Meanwhile, Yeat, stripped naked of the superhero costume that is his alien-rap production, mumbles limp solicitations of sex from a girl “outside in a sundress”. “Lose Control” sums up everything disappointing about ADL.  

It’s fitting that Yeat’s lowest moment arrives in a collab with Rampa, frontman of the German tropical house collective Keinemusik, who has received similar criticisms for diluting dance music into a vacuous series of publicity stunts (just take a look at this Keinemusik performance in front of the Pyramids of Giza – and, particularly, the sea of iPhones filming them for the video’s full two-hour-fourteen-minutes’ runtime – to see what I mean). With a vague EDM beat and lyrics that almost entirely consist of “I’d just like to see you naked”, it’s the epitome of background listening.  

Here’s a rare case of Yeat’s sonic diversification actually paying off. With production from hip-hop hitmaker Swizz Beatz, “My Time”’s beat is pretty traditional. But it finds an unlikely sweet-spot with Yeat’s anthemic, auto-tuned rap delivery. It’s sort of like if “Made It On My Own” was actually good. 

While the Kylie Jenner feature does embody the empty optics-above-all approach to music that Yeat pursues on ADL, the track itself is actually pretty good. Yeat reaches a bit of a flow-state as he rattles off straight verses for a surprisingly lengthy three minute runtime. The beat, meanwhile, conjures the image of hulking mecha, its booming 808s shattering the ground beneath it and dystopian synths beaming into the sky above. It’s undeniably epic.

The umlaut never lies. While not necessarily introducing anything new, “Griddlë” also showcases Yeat at his very best. The beat is musical Starcraft, Yeat sounds like he’s from Mars, and Houston melodic trap superstar Don Oliver has his own moment in the spotlight, showcasing his signature FX-drenched, off-kilter rap flows. This one’s sure to go off at the numerous rap festival headline spots that Yeat’s already secured for this summer, which is all anyone really wanted from this album anyway, right?