Lil Yachty - Lil Boat [Red]

Lil Yachty's Lil Boat sails in on red vinyl, the bright, bubblegum-tinted 2016 mixtape that turned a red-braided kid from the Atlanta area into one of rap's most talked-about new voices.

Arriving just as a new wave of internet-born rappers was rewriting the rules, Lil Boat chose melody over menace. Yachty sang as much as he rapped, stacking wobbly, Auto-Tuned hooks over twinkling, almost nursery-rhyme beats, and every grumble from the purists only made his fans louder. It came out through Quality Control, the label home of Migos, and that connection shows up all over the guest list.

Minnesota is the centrepiece, a woozy posse cut with Quavo, Young Thug and Skippa Da Flippa trading verses over a lazy, rolling beat. Wanna Be Us, featuring thegoodperry, floats on sugary chords and a hook that sticks for days, while Never Switch Up shows off Yachty's knack for turning a simple phrase into a chant.

There is a real sense of fun running through the whole tape, a cheerful refusal to take rap's tough-guy posturing too seriously, and that attitude rippled out through a whole generation of younger artists who followed in its wake.

On red wax, it looks exactly as playful as it sounds.