Lil Yachty’s psychedelic new album, Let’s Start Here, is doing better than anyone could have expected. Fans — including Questlove — gave it rave reviews as it landed at No. 1 on three separate Billboard charts. However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t risky, and because it was such a departure from his usual output, it’s made the rollout and tour planning more difficult than it would have been otherwise.
Yachty detailed those difficulties in a new cover story in Billboard, explaining why putting together a tour was more complicated than normal. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he said. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”
The album also had a rough rollout since it leaked over the holidays. He’d turned it in nearly a year before its release but because Quality Control’s Coach K wanted to ensure the availability of physical media, it was held for the vinyl since pressing plant turnaround time is around seven months. However, the album leaked on Christmas under the name Sonic Ranch, which Yachty called “depressing and frustrating.”
He also said further leaks of the art, release date, and tracklist meant “I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” Fortunately for him, it seems fans have absolutely accepted the album and now, all that’s left to do is finish planning that tour with his all-female backing band.