To celebrate their birthday, most people receive gifts from their loved ones. To celebrate his birthday, Lil Yachty gives gifts to everyone else. The young rapper turned twenty-two last Friday and released his fourth annual birthday mix. With a total of 11 fresh tracks, Lil Yachty’s Birthday Mix 4 uses everything Yachty is good at to produce a musically diverse and emotional varied mix.

This mix is at the high-standard befitting of an internationally renown rapper and the opening track immediately establishes this. Combining a soulful sampled jazz singer with a mean beat, Yachty shows an uncharacteristic anger. It is raw and real, with Lil Yachty proclaiming that he’s the richest underdog there is in the game. The mix then shuffles through a series of different sounds and emotions. Some tracks are slow and downbeat, highlighting a softness and sensitivity in the young rapper. These include “Smile for Me”, with its gentle keyboard melody, and the acoustic guitar driven “Song For U”. Other tracks experiment with wild digital production techniques. The track “Lean then Dip” uses a ping-pong delay effect to have Yachty’s purposefully autotuned voice bounce from ear to ear. “On Some” pounds the listener with these huge and sharp synths that boom in the low-end and shimmer in the high-end, like a hip/hop version of Flume.

However, this variety and range doesn’t mean the mix is experimental or different to standard Lil Yachty’s. There are numerous tracks that sound perfectly in place with the rest of his releases. Trap beats layered over simple instrument loops provide a firm foundation for bars and verses. Tracks like Balmain Jeans (Ft. Playboi Carti), Lost It and Set It Off (Ft. K$upreme) all highlight Yachty’s unique and unorthodox rapping style as well as his strength as a collaborator. It is also important to note that the mix is relatively under produced in comparison to his studio releases. While this doesn’t give it the same Billboard chart, radio-play sound, it does make the mix sound closer and more personal to the artist himself. As a result, the birthday mix feels more Lil Yachty than his main releases. While it doesn’t have the same quality or appeal as his hits, Lil Yachty’s birthday mix still has the same quality and appeal of the artist himself.

Tracklist:

Underdog (0:00)

Lean Then Dip (2:23)

Rose Gold On My Teeth (4:06)

Balmain Jeans (Ft. Playboi Carti) (5:07)

On Some (6:54)

Smile For Me (8:24)

Set It Off (Ft. K$upreme) (10:56)

On Me (12:36)

Hang Out The Window (13:00)

Lost it (14:29)

SONG FOR U (15:30)