Lil Yachty Considers Himself the Face of Today’s Youth

The makings of a viral sensation can be hard to pinpoint, but XXL Freshman Lil Yachty thinks he knows why he's become one so easily. He said as much in a new profile by The New York Times.

“I ask myself all the time, ‘How do I always go viral?’” Yachty says in the new piece before coming up with his own answer. “I’m the face of the youth, the new sound. Nobody likes my truth.” Yachty says milennials do. “They relate to me because I’m so like them,” he explained before adding that it was "on a global scale.”

Chasing viral success is the millennial version of searching for the holy grail -- except securing it feels even more impossible. It can seem like you're one or two colorful eccentricities and a knack for well-placed, but bizarre one-liners away from being retweeted onto thousands of timelines and securing lucrative endorsement deals, but most of the time that's simply not the case.

Yachty, whose earned success is still pretty new to the rap game, says he used to take the free flights to New York in order to build a connection with up-and-coming fashion designer Ian Connor and hopefully gain followers in Connor's audience -- his dad worked at Delta Airlines. Although Yachty is enjoying success right now, he still remembers a time when he couldn't even get into Kanye West's studio.

“It just feels like a dream,” he says, explaining that this past January he couldn't even get into the studio with 'Ye. “I sat in the hallway for hours while ASAP Rocky was in there. They wouldn’t let me in. By August, I was working with him.”

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