These are Yachty’s friends—producers, rappers, and usually both, collectively known as Sailing Team. There’s Burberry Perry, the producer Yachty calls his “left hand,” and K$upreme, the rapper Yachty calls his “right.”

K$upreme, for his part, is very excited to have gotten a hold of a Chief Keef-produced beat, a heavy-footed, pounding track that sounds like it wouldn’t be out of place on Keef’s Back From the Dead 2 mixtape. After murmuring a potential flow and gathering some opinions from fellow Sailing Team member Digital Nas, K$upreme freestyles what he’ll tentatively call the “Young Flexing Nigga Theme Song,” which becomes complete upon the addition of a Yachty verse.



This situation, all of his friends in one room making music and talking shit—this was Yachty’s dream.



Less than a year ago, he was still in high school, “cheating on tests and not fucking bitches,” he says. After graduating, he spent the summer in New York with the goal of establishing relationships with those who could help push his music. He lived with a friend who told him to stay as long as he wanted, and began to go out and try to meet the right people—young socialites with an influence. “I scheduled this shit out,” he admits. “I knew I had to reach the people with the following, and the groupies and shit. I had to get to them. The kids look up to those people. That was the first step.” But by the end of the summer he was quickly going broke. “I started getting scared as fuck,” he says.



His bright red hair (which he was reluctant to change) precluded the possibility of a normal job, so he tried college in Alabama. After two months, he dropped out. At this point, he and Burberry Perry had already made the song “1 Night,” Yachty’s first and biggest hit, sitting at 10 million SoundCloud plays hit today but still climbing. Held together by a characteristically cheerful Perry beat, the song is really a simple ballad about staying up all night with girls, made unique by Yachty’s nasal, high-pitched singing voice, which even he says sounds like “a fucking cartoon character.” Its play count owes something to a viral comedy video in which the songs makes an appearance, but Yachty doesn’t give that all the credit.