Lil Yachty Explains Reasoning For His Women-Only Tour Band
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Several months ago, Lil Yachty promoted auditions for women musicians only to join the accompanying band for his Field Trip Tour. This week, the 26-year-old rapper revealed why he decided to go that route.
“My life is surrounded by women — my two assistants, my mother as a manager, a lot of my friends are women,” Lil Boat told Grammy.com. “Women really help me throughout my day. I just think that women are so powerful. I feel like they rule the world. They are the most important aspect to this world and they don’t get enough credit or shine, especially Black women. So that was my aura behind it. I just wanted to showcase that women can shred just as good as men.”
The Atlanta artist’s band is composed of bass player Téja Veal, drummer Monica Carter, guitarist Quenequia Graves, keyboardist Kennedy Avery Smith, and two vocalists named Lea Grace Swinson and Romana R. Sainti. He had glowing reviews for all the ladies on his ensemble.
“They’re all so talented, so they all learned it very quick,” Yachty said. “I gave [the music] to them early and gave them the stems. When it was day one, they all knew the songs. Even my new guitarist that came in later than everyone, she came in knowing the music.”
Lil Yachty revealed that the preparation for this tour is intensive due to the live setting changes he’s making to his latest album Let’s Start Here. However, his women-only band is making it an easy process. “The rehearsal for this tour was a little different because I’m reconstructing the whole album,” he said. “I’m moving everything around and changing all the transitions and trying to make it trippy. So it’s a process of me figuring out how I want to do things. But they’re so talented and so smart, all I have to do is tell them what I want, and they’ll do it instantly.”
The Field Trip Tour, supporting Yachty’s January album Lets Start Here., kicked off on Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C. The North American leg of the tour will continue until Nov. 8 in Atlanta before going overseas to Europe up until the final date, Dec. 17, in Vienna, Austria.
Let’s Start Here. was Lil Yachty’s most daring work to date, embracing psychedelic rock and jazz more so than he ever did in his career. The 14-track LP featured Teezo Touchdown, Fousheé, Justine Skye, and more. Listen to Let’s Start Here. below.
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