Pursuit of Happiness: Yatta Bandz Finds Peace Through Drake, Juice WRLD and Acceptance
Speaking to Okayplayer, the Bay Area rapper explains how music helps him preserve his emotional equilibrium.
Photo by Bryan Berry. Photo illustration by Okayplayer.
With earnest loverboy songs like “Outta Time,” Yatta Bandz isn’t beating the simp allegations. He also, apparently, doesn’t care to.
“I appreciate people that even have anything to say about me ‘cause if nobody's talking about you, that means nobody cares,” he tells me on a humid July afternoon. Since Yatta broke out with songs like “Unseen Scars” in 2021, he’s made a career out of audio venting sessions that turn into melodic chronicles of heartbreak. He’ll continue with his forthcoming project, One & The Same. Due for release this Friday, the project explores the idea that, even though experiences may be different, the feelings at the center of them are universal.
“Not every situation is the same, but a million people can relate to one song that's centered around [an emotion] that they've felt,” he says. Listening to his catalog, you never have to guess what Yatta’s been through, because, like other lucid songwriters, he’s turned art into an emotional regulatory device. Speaking to Okayplayer for the latest edition of "Pursuit of Happiness," Yatta explains how music helped free his emotions.
See what Yatta Bandz has to say about the power of songwriting, acceptance, good music, and more below.
Yatta Bandz: When my moms and pops separated, I used to carry a little bit of anger towards him. These days, I’m just not letting things anger me as much. I’ve realized that just because something bad happens doesn't mean it's the end of the world.
Something might not go my way, but at the end of the day, you're not always gonna be able to get what you want. Once you start coming to terms with that, it's like it kind of starts making you appreciate what you do have based off what you did control or what came because you did something.
At the end of the day, your life is gonna go how your life is supposed to go and you can only make decisions that are going to make things either better or worse. But as long as you stay true to yourself, you just have to appreciate everything.
Anytime I'm going through something, going through beats always helps calm me down. When I'm sad, I listen to XXXTentacion a lot. Not his crazy songs, but like his chill music. Juice WRLD, too. Always Drake. Since I was young, Drake always had a song for whatever mood I was in that day.
Everybody goes through certain emotions, whether it's like pain, heartbreak, being in love with somebody, somebody not loving you back. Those are all things that some of us go through at some point in our lives. Emotions are what tie everybody together as people.
When I was younger, I was kinda bottling all my emotions. It was easier for me to talk about them through a song than to talk to somebody else. It was just me talking to the beat, knowing it's not gonna say anything back. And I was getting something good in return.
