Yeat Is About to Get His First No. 1 Album By Feeding His Most Hardcore Fans

On June 25, 2024, Yeat devotees were buzzing.

Just four months after their patron saint, the rapper born Noah Olivier Smith, released 2093—his biggest statement to date—he was teasing something new, music that harkened back to the sound they fell in love with when he emerged in 2021. The music being teased would become “FATË”, a song that was instantly seen as a return to form from a sound that was somewhat abandoned on the pop-leaning 2093.

The song would eventually appear as a bonus cut on Yeat’s latest release, LYFESTYLE, which functions as a gift to his fans who have been riding hard for him since day one. In fact even the placement of “FATË”—as an album extra—can be interpreted as a nod to his core fans, a little special treat at the end of Yeat’s latest odyssey. It was as if he was acknowledging the things his fans wanted—monitoring comment sections on snippet pages to see what they were getting excited about.

Yeat, like predecessors turned contemporaries Playboi Carti, Pi’erre Bourne, and Lil Uzi Vert, cultivated his rabid, cult-like fanbase in part by becoming a king of snippets. They became talking points amongst Yeat devotees. Yeatupdates, a popular Instagram page dedicated to all things Yeat, felt something new was on the horizon when the snippet first emerged. “During the 2093 era, he wasn’t really showing any different sounds [outside of 2093]. When he first previewed it, it sounded so good. He changed his sound,” the page’s handler, who would rather stay anonymous, told Complex. Shortly after, he shared another snippet, called “ALL DAY,” which also hinted at a return to Yeat’s signature style. It set the stage for the long-rumored LYFESTYLE, which was released last week.

“Everyone thought LYFESTYLE was going to drop in 2023, but plans changed and it ended up being 2093,” Yeatupdates said. “Some people liked it, some people didn't.” Yeat and his team seemed to be aware that their core audience was split over 2093, that the big reaches for features from Future, Drake, and Lil Wayne didn’t satiate their demands. They simply wanted more Yeat. So, he began dropping snippets that were more in line with earlier releases. The sound resembled early efforts, with sounds featuring layers upon layers of synths, dirty drums, and woozy, narcotized flows from Yeat. He also made a point to link back up with his producer Synthetic, who was involved with a majority of his early releases and helped develop Yeat’s signature sound. He also reunited with Slayworld member Summrs, who appears on standout “GO2WORK.”

With the buzz from the snippets, rumors of LYFESTYLE quickly came to the forefront. “Ever since it was announced that this next project was LYFESTYLE, everyone was just like, ‘Are we seriously going to get this?’,” Yeatupdates said. “It's something that they've wanted so badly.”

Yeat's album LYFESTYLE on track to go No. 1

In February, 2093 landed at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, moving over 70,000 units, and it looks like LYFESTYLE will surpass it. It’s currently projected to sell over 85,000 units in his first week, which would mark his highest tally yet (and his first No. 1 album). As hip-hop sales slog along and artists have trouble selling out their respective tours, Yeat has released what might be his most successful album to date by shrinking the scale of his enterprise. By listening to fans about the sonic direction of LYFESTYLE, he’s being rewarded greatly.

Sources close to Yeat tell Complex that this was intentional; Yeat wanted to galvanize his core fanbase by giving them the sounds and songs they wanted. Words like “diehard” and “devoted” were used again and again. Rather than trying to broaden—recruit new fans and turn them from passive to active listeners—Yeat and his team doubled down on the fans they already had.

Some of those choices include signed CDs with bonus tracks and multiple editions that all feature different songs unavailable on streaming. While announcing a digital deluxe album containing four feverishly anticipated songs on October 22, Yeat wrote on Instagram: “GRA1LS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR 48.” The merch offerings on 2093 were less significant, and there was no vinyl. But with LYFESTYLE, Yeat wanted to move physical product and reward his fans by giving them something to hold onto. Out of the projected 85,000 units, 60,000 are expected to come from album sales. In comparison, 2093 was mostly driven by 58,000 streaming equivalent units, with only 12,000 coming from pure album sales.

“Everything that he puts out, people are going to collect it,” yeatupdates said. “Everything he puts out could maybe be in a museum one day. We buy this stuff because it’s worth something to us now, but could be even more valuable later.”

Another aspect of Yeat’s success is one that’s difficult to organically grow or predict. Quite simply, his fans love his music more than fans of other artists love their favorites. Akademiks recently tweeted: “I was told once.. YEAT has the fanbase who listens to his songs the MOST. So say every artist got 1000 fans. 1000 YEAT fans will play his songs more than 1000 fans of any other artist. Thats a loyal fan base right there. Most YEAT fans supposedly listen to majority solely YEAT.”

This is a hypothesis that yeatupdates believes in as well, and one that anecdotal evidence suggests to be true. “I'm in a group chat with some Yeat fans and they've shown me the total minutes they’ve listened to him and it’s crazy. The difference in minutes between number one and number two is crazy. I enjoy listening to Yeat's music, but these guys are crazy,” he said with a chuckle. Yeatupdates also spoke about a fan that listens to Yeat to fall asleep. Surely, I posited, this is a way to rack up more streams for Yeat. “No,” he explained. “It actually helps him fall asleep. There’s something about his music that’s calming.”

The Year Live Concert Experience

It’s these factors, plus Yeat and his team’s willingness to recontextualize his live shows that has helped this fanbase become one of the most important in music. His team mentioned his show at The Shrine in LA over the summer, where he became the first rapper to perform with the stage in the middle of the venue. In London, Yeat performed at a venue called Drumsheds, an old IKEA warehouse that normally holds raves. It’s on the outskirts of the city, which plays into the Yeat strategy, too. Fans often take public transit or alternative transportation methods to the venues. On the way there and on the way home, they exchange stories, discussing their favorite songs and the items they’ve collected. Merch hauls get revealed. Collectibles get traded.

This kind of talk is easy to chat about but much harder to implement. It’s hollow until it’s put into action and it works. Kevin Shivers, who is a Partner at WME, helps with Yeat’s live strategy. He reflected on this phenomenon. “Yeat attracts such loyal fans because he himself is so loyal to them—everything he does from the venues he chooses, to the bespoke production elements, to the artists he chooses to collaborate with, it's all with the fans at the front of his mind,” Shivers told Complex. “He considers every detail through the lens of how they’ll experience the music…Folks see the community he has brought together and naturally want to be a part of it.”

Yeat is flourishing while others worry that rap as a dominating chart-topper may be in decline. While many of these declarations are perhaps a bit far-fetched, it’s clear that Yeat is an outlier and one of rap’s most bankable stars. With LYFESTYLE, he returned to his core, eager to reward his fans after exploring new directions with 2093. It’s unclear if this sonic shift is here to stay, though. In a story in The FADER from earlier this month, Synthetic suggested that Yeat might be moving back towards the sounds of 2093. Perhaps Yeat will engage with a “one for me, one for the fans” approach, dropping an album that features pushing for new (and more mainstream) sounds, and another that reverts back to his OG stylings.

Synthetic hinted about the next album: “I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but it’s kind of like 2093, but a lot more refined. We’ve been spending a lot of time creating that sound in tandem with the LYFESTYLE sound for a couple months, because he’s been working on these two projects simultaneously, but that’s gonna be our focus for the next three or four months to a year [...] After tour, he really wants to lock in in person and just take our time.”

Yeat may always be searching for the next frontier or a new way to diversify his sound, but with LYFESTYLE, he’s made it clear he’ll always come back to Earth for his day-one fans.