Steve 'Flash' JuonSometimes lost media should stay lost.
By no means am I knocking Lil Yachty. The Mableton, Georgia has carved out a very successful lane over the last ten years in rap, one big enough for even the Ever Given to sail through. That success has in turn inspired thousands of lesser clones that start with “Lil” and add any random word after it, then use the same tools that made T-Pain a household name to modulate their vocals. One Lil Yachty is interesting, but an infinite number of Lil Yachtys just clog up the Suez Canal all over again.
The problem with “The Lost Files EP” is that Yachty sounds like his clones. The extended play’s intro is interrupted by gunshots from Digital Nas, who says “I was fin’ to let these just be throwaways but, I’ma do this for the people, cause I’m for the people.” His argument isn’t convincing. If neither he nor Yachty thought enough of the quality of these songs to put them on a full album, why do we need to hear them now? When I hear a rapper say “doo doo doo doo” as a bar and “nigga” with the hard R, I’m absolutely convinced that we didn’t.
The most ironically titled song of this whole presentation is “Adore Me.” Yachty is so adorable he’s done runways at fashion shows, but the muddy bass and machine gun fire of this track isn’t. An unscheduled interruption makes matters worse: “You knew me before you know me, you dig? The nigga with the braids, the red hair, all that shit.” These aren’t bars and this isn’t even bragging. When he says “all these fuck niggaz is corny” and “all these lil’ hoes getting boring” it’s clear he was phoning in the performance. Given the instrumental I can’t blame him. It may actually be the worst Lil Yachty song or performance by him I’ve ever heard.
I just don’t understand why Digital Nas thought releasing “The Lost Files EP” was necessary. The old rule that you can’t judge a book by its cover can be completely thrown out here, just like the recycle bin you see in the art work. DN should have emptied the trash and Yachty should have permanently erased the hard drive by zeroing out every byte from the first gig to the last. Other than the fact one half of this duo is a famous rap star there’s nothing worth preserving for posterity here. That’s the problem I have with a lot of digital preservation in general. There’s this idea that nothing should ever be allowed to be forgotten — even bad games deserve to be studied by future generations. This EP proves the exact opposite. No one can learn anything good from this.