PRAY FOR YG

AFTER CRANKING OUT ALBUMS AT A PROLIFIC PACE FOR MOST OF HIS CAREER, YG HAS LEARNED TO CHILL OUT AND TAKE HIS TIME

- CHRISTINA LEE

For the past year, rapper YG has been pining for the 2021 Ferrari F8 Spider. This canary yellow sports car, valued at over $300,000, goes from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds. It’s easy to imagine such a car in front of YG’s Hollywood Hills compound. “I told myself, when I complete my album, and I feel like I got some records that’s going to be a situation,” YG says, “I’m getting me a Ferrari.”

At the start of the last decade, the almighty algorithms of streaming services threatened to break down lines between hiphop regional identities. Then came YG, one of this generation’s most trusted arbiters of West Coast gangster rap. Remember when DJ Mustard’s ratchet sound exploded in rap, R&B and pop in 2014? YG’s major-label debut, “My Krazy Life,” was ground zero. In “Don’t Come to LA,” he reminds transplants that the Hollywood cliché surrounding his city is just that—a cliché. No wonder he is Suge Knight’s favorite rapper.

All five of YG’s albums have charted on Billboard’s top ten, because in YG we trust: After all, he and the late Nipsey Hussle delivered the Trump era’s most satisfying protest anthem, “FDT.” So going into his sixth album, “Pray for Me,” which drops this summer, YG has every reason to trust his own ear.