Let's Start Here is the fifth studio album by the American rapper Lil Yachty, released on January 27, 2023, through Motown and Quality Control Music.

After releasing his October 2022 single "Poland" to positive critical reviews, a low quality version of Let's Start Here was leaked on the Internet under the unofficial name Sonic Ranch in December 2022, which lowered Lil Yachty's morale.

He was also inspired by a variety of musicians, including Pink Floyd and their 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, which many critics said Let's Start Here drew comparisons to.

Let's Start Here was promoted by the Field Trip Tour across North America and Europe and performances at Rolling Loud and on Saturday Night Live.

The album received generally positive reviews from music critics with some praising Lil Yachty's take on the psychedelic rock genre, but others believed it was repetitive and not experimental.

[5] In October 2021, he appeared on a remix of Tame Impala's song "Breathe Deeper" from the latter's The Slow Rush (2020) deluxe box set.

[22] He had planned for his second studio album Lil Boat 2 (2018) to be Let's Start Here, but he was too nervous to experiment and felt insufficiently experienced with alternative music.

[17] The album was mainly produced by Patrick Wimberly, alongside Lil Yachty himself, Jacob Portrait, SadPony,[21] Justin Raisen,[23] Magdalena Bay,[24] Jam City,[22] and Teo Halm.

[30] Despite this, Robert Christgau argued that the album is not psychedelic rock, and instead aligns with "unusual hip-hop" and R&B, referencing tracks like "We Saw the Sun" and "Running Out of Time" as defining examples.

[41] The Guardian's Sasha Mistlin called Lil Yachty a "psychedelic genre-hopper" and that his intent of no longer being a trap artist was clear.

[29] Fred Thomas of AllMusic said the album is "more loud guitars than 808s" and Lil Yachty created ways to express himself using any sounds he likes.

Thomas further commented that the album isn't "completely void of rapping" and contains "live instrumentation heavy on slick jazzy guitars, big drums, and fantastical synths.

"[31] For Exclaim!, Alex Hudson wrote that the album has a "charmingly naïve quality" to it and contains "golden pop melodies, towering space rock and ambient synth fuckery.

[44] Jenkins said the song is "an attempt to jam every idea housed in Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon into a single seven-minute performance.

[29] It was compared to Tame Impala and DeMarco alongside the following "Running Out of Time",[31] which opens with a warble[32] and an extended jazz intro[43] that continues into a 1970s-inspired dance groove underscored by a funk bass.

[29] The spoken word and ambient "Failure" exhibits Lil Yachty honestly reflecting on his experience through the ups and downs of being successful.

[44] The track also contains a heavily Auto-Tuned wobbling falsetto from Lil Yachty, which Hudson said "effectively connect[s] his origins in bubblegum trap with this more recent fascination with far-out psychedelia.

[43] Lil Yachty officially announced Let's Start Here on Instagram on January 17, 2023, posting the album's cover art, title, and release date.

[5] Created by Jon Rafman,[48] the cover is an AI-generated photograph of men and women wearing suits in a boardroom with "contorted facial features and warped smiles".

[3] Lil Yachty's Instagram caption referred to the album as "Chapter 2", and Variety called it "a potential redux" of the leaked Sonic Ranch.

[52][53] Following its release, high-profile musicians such as Questlove, Mike Dean, Saul Williams, Flea, Rapsody, A-Trak, John Stamos, Nate Smith, and others praised Let's Start Here on Instagram.

[58] Jeff Ihaza of Rolling Stone believed the album feels "as cohesive a project as any artist has released in the streaming era" and said Lil Yachty has the ability to "turn familiar source material into something entirely new.

"[13] For AllMusic, Thomas thought that Lil Yachty's emotive singing on psychedelic rock instrumentals still displayed "the bold personality and curious spirit he showed on trap beats".

[44] Sputnikmusic said the album is "messy, ridiculous, admirable in its ambition and absolutely insane in its execution" and called it "a big departure" for Lil Yachty.

"[45] Spectrum Culture's Connor Flynn believed that Lil Yachty used melodies and flows not heard before in psychedelic rock, but also thought that some parts of the album felt clumsy.

"[7] In a review for HipHopDX, Barglowski said that the album is "exciting at the first listen because the style is new to Lil Yachty himself" but the sound "tends to dull over time with repetition.

[28] Let's Start Here debuted at number nine on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 36,000 album-equivalent units (including 4,000 copies in pure album sales) in its first week.

[69] All tracks from the album debuted within the top 50 of the US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, with "The Black Seminole" placing at number eight on the chart.