Jun 6, 2024 https://www.complex.com/music/a/com...ocial&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=musictw Habitual Line Steppers What happens when you put two genre-bending artists together to discuss the songs that changed them? A sprawling conversation about therapy, fatherhood, sex, and why no one sounds like Otis Redding anymore. Photography by T-Bone Fletcher In 2020, Lil Yachty sent a DM to James Blake. He was so geeked about Blake’s fourth album, Assume Form, that he felt compelled to reach out. “I just wanted to tell him that the album was f---ing flawless,” says Yachty. Blake never saw the message so he didn’t respond—he wasn’t using IG at the moment, he says—but Yachty’s reachout planted a seed, and eventually the universe conspired to bring them together via a mutual friend, Cam Hicks. “I've been a fan of Yachty for years,” says Blake. “And when I heard his last record [Let's Start Here], I was like, this is really a turn. Not many artists are brave enough to do something that’s kind of opposite of the last thing they did.” An intro turned into an experimental studio session, which turned into another session, which then turned into multiple sessions to create a joint album that’s different from anything they’ve done as solo artists. Titled Bad Cameo, the ambient record merges Yachty’s ear for unexpected melodies with Blake’s soulful tone and sharp production skills. The music is trippy, ethereal, and deep, maybe the deepest Yachty’s gone. “We got a really vulnerable side of Yachty in some of those sessions,” says Blake. We weren’t able to observe them in the studio together, but we imagined that if we put them in a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills and prompted them to share songs with each other (“passing the aux”), it would simulate some of the private convos they had while making Bad Cameo. Thankfully we were right, and prompts ranging from “what’s the first song you memorized?” to “what’s the song you love that everyone hates?” yielded a playlist of genre-expanding (and defining) music. But it also allowed both to get introspective and heady. Read on to see what songs elicited a layered conversation touching on the importance of therapy, Yachty’s relationship with his daughter, and why Blake doesn't play music during sex.
