James Blake and Lil Yachty Make an Odd but Unexpectedly Strong Couple on ‘Bad Cameo’: Album Review
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As this album’s cover artwork suggests — it appears to show a restaurant table with one man drinking tea and eating baked beans, and the other drinking syrup — a full-length collaboration album between British avant singer-songwriter James Blake and psychedelicized Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty might not have been on anyone’s prediction list for 2024.
But even knowing both artists’ predilection for the unexpected, it’s a surprisingly symbiotic alliance. For years — and to his ongoing astonishment — Blake has been a featured guest of choice for some of the world’s top rappers and R&B singers: His sprawling discography includes collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Andre 3000, Travis Scott, Vince Staples and multiple others.
Meanwhile, Yachty was pushing the boundaries of trap even from his early days in the mid-2010s — and burst out completely with the full-on psychedelic rock of last year’s “Let’s Start Here” album, which basically did what its title stated: Since that album dropped, he’s made stylistically far-ranging songs with everyone from rappers J Cole and Flo Milli to electronic-pop savant Fred Again.
Which is a long-winded way of saying these two envelope-pushing artists are much more musically sympatico than it might seem at first, and their personalities offset — and lively up — each other well on “Bad Cameo,” their first joint album.
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