MUSIC TO MOGUL
TEENAGE LIL YACHTY was already plotting an empire when his single “Minnesota” went viral in 2016. Today, at 23, he’s an exemplar of a modern celebrity: There’s the music, of course, which he releases at a consistent clip, but there are also collaborations with brands like Nautica and Target and appearances in movies like How High 2. He signed an endorsement deal with Sprite and collaborated with Reese’s Puffs cereal. He’s working on a film inspired by the card game Uno. He has a new label imprint called Concrete Boyz. (A nod to the rap moguls of yesteryear, with new signees getting an iced-out chain.)
Yachty earned himself the title of “King of the Teens” early on. As the music industry began looking toward younger stars to navigate changing modes of communication and consumption online, Yachty came to represent the digitalnative music listener. He was also among the first musicians on Twitch, the livestreaming app popular with gamers, and an early evangelist for Discord, the messaging platform popular with online fan communities; recently he helped develop “sound packs,” allowing users to replace the app’s notifications with sounds he created. “I’m so connected on the internet,” Yachty says. “People know I’m on there, and people know me for talking and being goofy. It helps on a lot of my deals, my character.”
There have been a lot of deals. Yachty reportedly made $13 million on endorsements in 2016 and 2017, and he was one of the first rappers to hop on the crypto craze, selling a “YachtyCoin” for $16,050 last December. Early in his career, Yachty met with Quality Control records co-founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee to map out a vision for his career. “One of the biggest things he talked about was being bigger than just an artist — being a mogul,” Yachty explains. “That was something we truly believed in. And that’s what we did.”
“I didn’t want people to think this is two hours of black people whining to each other about why they can’t make it,” Palmer says. “I want to make sure people get a well-rounded idea of what it’s like and what we’re up against.”