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The 10 Best Yacht Rock Albums To Own On Vinyl

Climb aboard for the smoothest records you'll ever own.

In 2006, a group of buddies produced a series of short videos called “Yacht Rock.” The videos defined yacht rock as a genre of smooth music, born out of Southern California between 1976 and 1984, and featuring exceptional musicianship with roots in R&B, jazz and folk rock. Its stars: Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Toto and Steely Dan.

The last 11 years have tested the genre’s buoyancy. Since 2006, yacht rock has been co-opted by Big Radio, whose yacht playlists include flimsy AM gold like Bertie Higgins and California corporate rock like the Eagles. Luckily the originators of the term, through their podcast Beyond Yacht Rock, have helped to set the parameters of the genre.

Good yacht rock is frequently credited to many of the same names: established players like multi-instrumentalist Jay Graydon, producer David Foster, percussionist Victor Feldman, and hard-working-studio-band-turned-80s-superstars Toto. And it’s heavier on R&B and jazz than folk rock, incorporating the work of Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and others.

With that, here are the 10 best yacht rock albums to start your collection - or, shall I say, to christen your vessel.

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Record reviews.

Toto: Toto IV (1982, Columbia)

The album that shot Toto into superstardom is a perfect primer for the yacht rock sound. “Rosanna,” with drummer Jeff Porcaro’s iconic shuffle technique, makes multiple left turns, a crucial component of most yacht songs. You’ll know this album for “Rosanna” and No. 1 smash “Africa,” but the slow groove of “Waiting For Your Love” shows the band’s ability to dip into soul and R&B, a trait that helped them on cuts like “Human Nature” and “The Lady in My Life” off another yacht rock album, Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Toto could also bring the heat with mid-tempo stunners like “Make Believe” and “Good For You.” A deep listen of Toto IV reveals a group of professionals rarely wasting notes.

Boz Scaggs: Silk Degrees (1976, CBS)

If yacht rock is a marriage of jazz, R&B and singer-songwriter folk rock, Boz Scaggs’ breakout Silk Degrees is one of the earliest attempts at matrimony. Boz employed David Paich, David Hungate and Jeff and Joe Porcaro for the album, and their work here would set a template for the Toto sound (combine “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle” and you get something near “Rosanna”). There’s a few too many strings here, Boz gets a little too lyrical (Yacht Rock isn’t necessarily a lyricist’s genre) and the bass is so up front that it can feel like disco. But if you want to know the roots of yacht rock, Silk Degrees is a good choice.

Michael McDonald: If That’s What it Takes (1982, Warner Bros.)

Two crucial instruments in yacht rock: the Fender Rhodes keyboard and McDonald’s husky, blue-eyed soul tenor. If That’s What it Takes, McDonald’s solo debut after leaving the Doobie Brothers, has plenty of both. “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” is essential yacht, a chill-out anthem featuring half of Toto, who also appear on the ballad “That’s Why” and slightly discofied “No Such Luck.” McDonald’s buddy Loggins co-writes “I Gotta Try,” one of many yacht anthems about fools looking to change their luck. And make no mistake: McDonald is the poster boy for fools constantly searching for small victories.

Kenny Loggins: High Adventure (1982, Columbia)

Loggins isn’t always yacht rock. Sometimes, like on High Adventure, he’s far too tender (“The More We Try”) or he’s far too heavy (“Swear Your Love”). But there’s a lot of yacht rock range on this enormously fun album, from the Latin-tinged “Heartlight” to the gritty “If It’s Not What You’re Looking For.” Then there’s Loggins’ version of “I Gotta Try” and, finally, a quintessential yacht rock hit, “Heart to Heart.” Loggins is a little lighter and slightly more soulful on his 1979 album Keep the Fire, which includes the stunning “This Is It.” He’s certainly an essential artist in the yacht canon, but always step lightly with Loggins. The guy is a chameleon.

Dane Donohue: Dane Donohue (1978, Columbia)

There are countless yacht rock albums either lost in bargain bins or available only as imports, from the 1980 self-titled album by Airplay (listen to the quintessential “Nothin’ You Can Do About It”) to 1978’s Blue Virgin Isles by Swedish singer Ted Gardestad. Dane Donohue’s 1978 self-titled debut is another, featuring Graydon, Feldman, members of Toto and Los Angeles studio professionals like Larry Carlton, Jai Winding and Steve Gadd. “Can’t Be Seen” has a distinct yacht sound, as does the crisp “Woman,” which features backing vocals from J.D. Souther and Stevie Nicks. You’ll tell quickly that Donohue is a third-rate vocal talent for the genre (McDonald or, say, Al Jarreau would elevate these tracks), but the point is the smooth, polished sound. Yacht rock is a player’s genre.

Steely Dan: Aja (1978, ABC)

Steely Dan’s importance to yacht rock can’t be overstated. They introduced the world to McDonald (“Any World [That I’m Welcome To]” off Katy Lied ) and curated an inner circle of studio professionals versed in jazz, R&B and soul, who would later perfect the yacht sound. Arguably the Dan is smoothest on the 1980 smash Gaucho , but Aja finds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen comfortably hitting a middle-ground stride. You’ve probably heard much of the album already, from the slithering journey of “Deacon Blues” to the percolating “Peg,” but what’s amazing about Aja is its ability to position Steely Dan as a mainstream hit factory while remaining expansive and adventurous (the title track, “I Got the News”).

Patti Austin: Every Home Should Have One (1981, Qwest)

Yacht rock is popularly considered a white man’s genre, but its roots are in the R&B and jazz that manifest itself as yacht soul on outstanding albums like Austin’s Every Home Should Have One. Examples? “Do You Love Me?” sounds awfully like Loggins’ “I Gotta Try.” And one could imagine McDonald singing “The Way I Feel.” “Love Me to Death” could have been a Michael Jackson outtake, or it’s just a rewrite of “Off the Wall.” The album’s high point is the slow burn “Baby, Come to Me,” which includes James Ingram’s smooth delivery, plus Toto’s Lukather on guitar and Foster on synthesizer. Check George Benson’s Give Me the Night and the Pointer Sisters’ Special Things for more examples of yacht soul.

Al Jarreau: Breakin’ Away (1981, Warner Bros.)

If there’s an album that showcases the yacht rock sound at its cleanest, Breakin’ Away may take the trophy. All of the pertinent studio personnel is on the album, from Toto to Graydon - who’s on as producer - laying down an adventurous, crisp template for Jarreau ( R.I.P .) to deliver his sharp, joyous tenor, complete with plenty of scatting. “We’re In This Love Together” and the title track (with Earth, Wind & Fire horns, a Graydon specialty) are mid-tempo yacht rock beauties. Elsewhere Jarreau experiments with jazzier flavors, but the musicianship is still top-notch. Check out Jarreau’s Jarreau from 1982 as another prime yacht rock attempt; both are albums you’ll want to spin on a bright summer morning.

Pages: Pages (1981, Capitol)

Before Richard Page and Steve George formed half of mid-1980s MTV stars Mr. Mister, their buttery voices were integral components of the yacht rock sound, contributing backing vocals on countless tracks. Their 1981 self-titled release (they also released a self-titled album in 1978 that’s more funkified) is pure yacht. Graydon produced half of the album, and Jeff Porcaro shows up frequently behind the kit. The flip-side of the album is more adventurous, but side A is pound-for-pound the best example of the genre you’ll find on vinyl, and one of the best finds of the sound (Pages’ previous Future Street is a little more proggy but still a treat). Seize Pages and you’ll soon find yourself on some roof deck singing along with Page and George.

Christopher Cross: Christopher Cross (1979, Warner Bros.)

Critics may scoff at Cross’ self-titled debut, a massive success that won five Grammys and scored four top-20 hits, but the album is impeccably performed and produced. Nearly everyone involved on the album is a yacht rock mainstay, from producer Michael Omartian down to the usual suspects, Graydon, Feldman and McDonald, who contributes those iconic backing vocals in “Ride Like the Wind.” “Never Be the Same” and “Say You’ll Be Mine” are both solid mid-tempo hits for the era. And then there’s “Sailing.” It’s actually a sonic outlier for the yacht rock genre, heavy on acoustic guitar and strings. But its message fits the genre (a fool searching for inner peace), and yeah, it’s still undeniably smooth.

• the 10 best

Timothy Malcolm can be found in a variety of publications across the New York metropolitan area. His writing can also be found there. He enjoys guessing No. 1 hits of the 1980s, visiting breweries, trying any beverage once, watching baseball and hiking for long distances across the Hudson Valley and Catskills of New York.

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Yacht Rock: Album Guide

By David Browne

David Browne

Summer’s here and time is right for dancing … on the deck of a large nautical vessel. During the late Seventies and early Eighties, the radio was dominated by silver-tongued white-dude crooners with names like Rupert and Gerry, emoting over balmy R&B beats, swaying saxes, and dishwasher-clean arrangements. Though it didn’t have a name, the genre — soft rock you could dance to — was dismissed by serious rock fans as fluffy and lame. But thanks to a web series in the mid-2000s, the style — belatedly named “ yacht rock ” — has since spawned a satellite-radio channel, tribute bands, and a Weezer cover of Toto’s “Africa.” Is the modern love of the music ironic or sincere? Hard to say, yet there’s no denying yacht rock is a legit sound with a vibe all its own that produced a surprising amount of enduring music perfectly at home in summer. (John Mayer even tips his own sailor’s hat to the genre on his new “Last Train Home” single, and even the aqua-blue cover of his upcoming Sob Rock album.) The resumption of the Doobie Brothers’ 50th anniversary tour, postponed last year due to COVID-19 but scheduled to restart in August, is the cherry atop the Pina colada.

Boz Scaggs, Silk Degrees (1976)

Before yacht rock was an identifiable genre, Scaggs (no fan of the term, as he told Rolling Stone in 2018) set the standard for what was to come: sharp-dressed white soul, burnished ballads that evoked wine with a quiet dinner, and splashes of Me Decade decadence (the narrator of the pumped “Lido Shuffle” is setting up one more score before leaving the country). Add in the Philly Soul homage “What Can I Say,” the burbling life-on-the-streets homage “Lowdown,” and the lush sway of “Georgia,” and Silk Degrees , internationally or not, set a new high bar for Seventies smoothness.

Steely Dan, Aja (1977)

The sophisticated high-water mark of yacht, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s masterpiece is the midway point between jazz and pop, with tricky tempo shifts, interlocking horn and keyboard parts, and pristine solos. Not settling for easygoing period clichés, these love songs, so to speak, are populated by a sleazy movie director (the gorgeous rush of “Peg”), a loser who still hopes to be a jazzman even if the odds are against him (the heart-tugging “Deacon Blues”), and a guy whose nodding-out girlfriend is probably a junkie (“Black Cow”). The most subversive cruise you’ll ever take.

The Doobie Brothers, Minute by Minute (1978)

The Doobies got their start as a biker-y boogie band, but they smoothed things out for Minute by Minute . Highlighted by “What a Fool Believes,” the unstoppable Michael McDonald-Kenny Loggins co-write, the LP piles on romantic turmoil, falsetto harmonies, and plenty of spongy electric piano. But it also proves how much personality and muscle the Doobies could bring to what could be a generic sound. McDonald’s husky, sensitive-guy delivery shrouds the unexpectedly bitter title song (“You will stay just to watch me, darlin’/Wilt away on lies from you”)  and honoring their biker roots, “Don’t Stop to Watch the Wheels” is about taking a lady friend for a ride on your hog.

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Further Listening

Seals & crofts, get closer (1976).

The Dylan-goes-electric moment of yacht, “Get Closer” validated the idea that folkie singer-songwriters could put aside their guitars (and mandolin), tap into their R&B side and cross over in ways they never imagined. In addition to the surprising seductiveness of the title hit, Get Closer has plenty of yacht-rock pleasures. In “Goodbye Old Buddies,” the narrator informs his pals that he can’t hang out anymore now that he’s met “a certain young lady,” but in the next song, “Baby Blue,” another woman is told, “There’s an old friend in me/Tellin’ me I gotta be free.” A good captain follows the tide where it takes him.

Christopher Cross, Christopher Cross  (1979)

Cross’ debut swept the 1981 Grammys for a reason: It’s that rare yacht-rock album that’s graceful, earnest, and utterly lacking in smarm. Songs like the politely seductive “Say You’ll Be Mine” and the forlorn “Never Be the Same” have an elegant pop classicism, and the yacht anthem “Sailing” could be called a powered-down ballad. Fueled by a McDonald cameo expertly parodied on SCTV , the propulsive “Ride Like the Wind” sneaks raw outlaw lyrics (“Lived nine lives/Gunned down ten”) into its breezy groove, perfecting the short-lived gangster-yacht subgenre.

Rupert Holmes, Partners in Crime (1979)

The album that made Holmes a soft-rock star is known for “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” which sports a made-for-karaoke chorus and a plot twist worthy of a wide-collar O. Henry. But what distinguishes the album is the Steely Dan-level musicianship and Holmes’ ambitious story songs, each sung with Manilow-esque exuberance. The title track equates a hooker and her john to co-workers at a department store, “Lunch Hour” ventures into afternoon-delight territory, and “Answering Machine” finds a conflicted couple trading messages but continually being cut off by those old-school devices.

Steely Dan, Gaucho (1980)

The Dan’s last studio album before a lengthy hiatus doesn’t have the consistency of Aja, but Gaucho cleverly matches their most vacuum-sealed music with their most sordid and pathetic cast of characters. A seedy older guy tries to pick up younger women in “Hey Nineteen,” another loser goes in search of a ménage à trois in “Babylon Sisters,” a coke dealer delivers to a basketball star in “Glamour Profession,” and the narrator of “Time Out of Mind” just wants another heroin high. It’s the dark side of the yacht.

Going Deeper

Michael mcdonald, if that’s what it takes  (1982).

Imagine a Doobie Brothers album entirely comprised of McDonald songs and shorn of pesky guitar solos or Patrick Simmons rockers, and you have a sense of McDonald’s first and best post-Doobs album. If That’s What it Takes builds on the approach he nailed on “What a Fool Believes” but amps up the sullen-R&B side of Mac’s music. His brooding remake of Lieber and Stoller’s “I Keep Forgettin’” is peak McDonald and the title track approaches the propulsion of Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind.” With his sad-sack intensity, McDonald sounds like guy at a seaside resort chewing over his mistakes and regrets – with, naturally, the aid of an electric piano.

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Kenny Loggins, Keep the Fire (1979)

Loggins’ journey from granola folk rocker to pleasure-boat captain embodies the way rock grew more polished as the Seventies wore on. Anchored by the percolating-coffeemaker rhythms and modestly aggro delivery of “This Is It,” another McDonald collaboration, Keep the Fire sets Loggins’ feathery voice to smooth-jazz saxes and R&B beats, and Michael Jackson harmonies beef up the soul quotient in “Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong.” The secret highlight is “Will It Last,” one of the sneakiest yacht tracks ever, fading to a finish after four minutes, then revving back up with some sweet George Harrison-style slide guitar.

Dr. Hook, Sometimes You Win  (1979)

Earlier in the Seventies, these jokesters established themselves with novelty hits like “The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone,’’ but they soon paddled over to unabashed disco-yacht. Sometimes You Win features three of their oiliest ear worms: “Sexy Eyes,” “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman” and “Better Love Next Time,” all oozing suburban pickup bars and the somewhat desperate dudes who hang out there. The album, alas, does not include “Sharing the Night Together,” recently reborn by way of its sardonic use in last year’s Breaking Bad spinoff El Camino .

Carly Simon, Boys in the Trees  (1978)

As a trailblazing female singer-songwriter, Simon was already a star by the time yacht launched. Boys in the Trees features her beguiling contribution to the genre, “You Belong to Me,” a collaboration with the ubiquitous Michael McDonald. The Doobies cut it first, but Simon’s version adds an air of yearning and hushed desperation that makes it definitive. The album also packs in a yacht-soul cover of James Taylor’s “One Man Woman” and a “lullaby for a wide-eyed guy” called “Tranquillo (Melt My Heart),” all proving that men didn’t have a stranglehold on this style.

Anchors Aweigh

More smooth hits for your next high-seas adventure.

“BREEZIN’”

George Benson, 1976

The guitarist and Jehovah’s Witness made the leap from midlevel jazz act to crossover pop star with a windswept instrumental that conveys the yacht spirit as much as any vocal performance.

“WHATCHA GONNA DO?”

Pablo Cruise, 1976

Carefree bounce from a San Francisco band with the best name ever for a soft-rock act — named, fittingly, after a chill Colorado buddy.

“BAKER STREET”

Gerry Rafferty, 1978

Rafferty brought a deep sense of lonely-walk-by-the-bay melancholy to this epic retelling of a night on the town, in which Raphael Ravenscroft’s immortal sax awakens Rafferty from his morning-after hangover.

“REMINISCING”

Little River Band, 1978

The Aussie soft rockers delivered a slurpy valentine sung in the voice of an old man looking back on his “lifetime plan” with his wife. Innovative twist: flugelhorn solo instead of sax.

“WHENEVER I CALL YOU ‘FRIEND’ ”

Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks, 1978

After its ethereal intro, this rare genre duet grows friskier with each verse, with both Loggins and Nicks getting more audibly caught up in the groove — and the idea of “sweet love showing us a heavenly light.”

“LOTTA LOVE”

Nicolette Larson, 1978

Neil Young’s sad-boy shuffle is transformed into a luscious slice of lounge pop by the late Larson. Adding an extra layer of poignancy, she was in a relationship with Young around that time.

“STEAL AWAY”

Robbie Dupree, 1980

Is it real, or is it McDonald? Actually, it’s the best Doobies knockoff — a rinky-dink (but ingratiating) distant cousin to “What a Fool Believes” that almost inspired McDonald to take legal action.

“TAKE IT EASY”

Archie James Cavanaugh, 1980

Cult rarity by the late Alaskan singer-songwriter that crams in everything you’d want in a yacht song: disco-leaning bass, smooth-jazz guitar, sax, and a lyric that lives up to its title even more than the same-titled Eagles song.

“BIGGEST PART OF ME”

Ambrosia, 1980

Ditching the prog-classical leanings of earlier albums, this trio headed straight for the middle of the waterway with this Doobies-lite smash. Bonus points for lyrics that reference a “lazy river.”

“I CAN’T GO FOR THAT (NO CAN DO)”

Daryl Hall and John Oates, 1981

The once unstoppable blue-eyed soul duo were never pure yacht, but the easy-rolling beats and shiny sax in this Number One hit got close. Hall adds sexual tension by never specifying exactly what he can’t go for.

“COOL NIGHT”

Paul Davis, 1981

The Mississippi crooner-songwriter gives a master class on how to heat up a stalled romance: Pick a brisk evening, invite a female acquaintance over, and suggest . . . lighting a fire.

“KEY LARGO”

Bertie Higgins, 1981

Yacht’s very own novelty hit is corny but deserves props for quoting from not one but two Humphrey Bogart films ( Key Largo and Casablanca ).

“AFRICA”

The same year that members of Toto did session work on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, they released the Mount Kilimanjaro of late-yacht hits.

“SOUTHERN CROSS”

Crosby, Stills, and Nash, 1982

The combustible trio’s gusty contribution to the genre has choppy-water rhythms and enough nautical terminology for a sailing manual.

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A beginner’s guide to yacht rock in five essential albums

Yacht rock, soft rock – call it what you will. Here are five brilliant albums that define the genre in all its bearded, Hawaiian shirted glory

Was there really ever a genre called yacht rock ? Prior to the 2005 online comedy series of the same name, what we now know of as yacht rock was simply soft rock, largely of the 1970s variety, but occasionally dipping into the 80s as well. It was music that was smooth, slick and did little to challenge the listener in the way that heavy metal or punk rock would. Yet  sold in the multi-millions, made superstars of its creators, and was beloved by industry professionals for the stellar musicianship and high production values. And above all, it was detested by the critics.

Today, yacht rock is the ultimate guilty pleasure genre. Its patron saints - almost exclusively men, generally bearded – never appeared on posters that graced adolescents’ walls. Yet bands and artists such as The Doobie Brothers , Loggins & Messina and Christopher Cross made sweet, soulful music featuring some of the finest musicians of the era and sounding so, so perfect in the process.

Unlike prog, hair metal or krautrock, the boundaries of what constitutes yacht rock are blurred. There’s little to link the jazzy noodlings of Steely Dan , Boz Scaggs’ smooth pop and the later, 80s pop-rock of Hall & Oates beyond the fact that the various members of Toto appeared on many of these albums, making them kind of a yacht rock mafia.

Yacht rock, soft rock, call it what you will: the men who made it are laughing all the way to the bank in their Hawaiian shirts and well-sculpted facial hair while the rest of us celebrate their music in all its frictionless glory. Critics be damned, these are the five essential yacht rock albums for those who want to plunge into the genre.

Loggins & Messina - Full Sail (1973)

Kenny Loggins was a boyish-looking yet handsomely bearded fellow with a penchant for country-esque ballads. Jim Messina had been in Buffalo Springfield and country rockers Poco . The pair teamed up to record some of Loggins’ material and ended up becoming an unlikely success story, notching up hits with  1971 single The House At Pooh Corner and the following year’s Your Mama Don’t Dance , later covered by hair metallers Poison.

But 1973’s Full Sail was their apex. Featuring the ultimate yacht rock album cover (two men, one yacht), the album itself contains everything from the calypso frivolity of Lahaina , and the smooth jazz of Travellin’ Blues to the joyously upbeat My Music and hit ballad Watching The River Run . This is yacht rock’s ground zero. Boys, what did you unleash?

Boz Scaggs - Silk Degrees (1976)

An early member of the Steve Miller Band , guitarist and vocalist Boz Scaggs’ solo career had begun 1969. But nothing had clicked with the record buying public until he hooked up with David Paich, Jeff Porcaro and David Hungate, all of whom were on the verge of forming Toto , and recorded his seventh solo album, Silk Degrees . A masterful mix of smooth pop and slick ballads, it spawned hits in the shape of It’s Over , Lowdown , We’re All Alone (made famous by Rita Coolidge) and the pulsating Lido Shuffle , a bona fide dancefloor filler.

Steely Dan - Aja (1977)

Arguments rage as to whether these protagonists of achingly cool and clever jazz rock belong in the yacht rock genre, but hey, if the people who made the Yacht Rock online series say the are, who are we to argue?

Their sixth album, Aja , saw Walter Becker and Donald Fagan stretching out into longer form pieces of music that were funkier and jazzier than they’d ever been before, capping it off with one of the most pristine production jobs ever – such were their levels of perfectionism that six crack session guitarists tried and failed to lay down the guitar solo on Peg to their satisfaction (it was the seventh, Jay Graydon, who nailed it). Bonus yacht rock points: auxiliary Dan backing vocalist/keyboard player Michael McDonald was also a member of The Doobie Brothers.

The Doobie Brothers – Minute By Minute (1978)

In 1974, Steely Dan guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter moved across to hugely successful blues rockers The Doobie Brothers on a free transfer. The following year, he suggested recruiting Dan backing singer/pianist Michael McDonald as a replacement for the Doobies’ ailing guitarist/vocalist Tom Johnstone.

With his blue-eyed soul croon and knack for writing uptempo R&B-infused songs, McDonald helped nudge the band towards smoother waters. By 1978’s Minute By Minute , they had fully transformed from moustachioed chooglers into yacht rock kingpins. The album’s blend of soft rock and R&B reached its apotheosis on the majestic What A Fool Believes – co-written with Kenny Loggins, naturally – which ultimately helped turn McDonald into a bigger star than the band. For the record, the singer’s 1986 Sweet Freedom compilation is also yacht rock gold.

Christopher Cross - Christopher Cross (1979)

When Christopher Cross released his self-titled debut album in December 1979, no-one knew who he was. A year later, he’d racked up four Top 20 hits and swept the boards at the Grammy Awards.

It’s not hard to see why: Cross’ spectacular voice was matched by the brilliance of his songs. Everyone knows Ride Like The Wind , featuring that Michael McDonald fella on backing vocals, but it was the mellower Sailing that hit the No. 1 spot ( Ride… only managed No. 2). A year later Cross’ theme to the movie Arthur won him and co-writer Burt Bacharach an Oscar.

Cross was no slouch as a musician either: Steely Dan had asked him to play on their albums and he even filled in for a sick Ritchie Blackmore at a Deep Purple US show back in 1970.

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Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.

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SOMALI YACHT CLUB Reveals New Album, Premieres New Single

Psychedelic stoner rock trio  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  will be releasing their third full-length, ‘The Space,’ on April 22 via Season of Mist, making it the band’s debut to the label! The album art, tracklisting, and details can be found below. The band is now sharing the first new single, “Silver,” which can be heard at  THIS LOCATION .

‘The Space’ can be pre-saved via all digital streaming platforms  HERE   and pre-ordered  HERE .

The cover artwork, which was created by Dasha Pliska, can be found below along with the tracklist!

Tracklist: 1.  Silver  (5:14) 2. Pulsar (9:05) 3. Obscurum (5:03) 4. Echo of Direction (9:43) 5. Gold (3:31) 6. Momentum (12:29)

SOMALI YACHT CLUB  have previously announced a European tour with MARS RED SKY in March 2022. A full list of confirmed shows can be found below.

SOMALI YACHT CLUB W/ MARS RED SKY 10.03.22 Osnabrück (DE) Jugendzentrum Westwerk 11.03.22 Berlin (DE) cassiopeia Berlin 12.03.22 Dresden (DE) Beatpol 13.03.22 Hannover (DE) Béi Chéz Heinz 14.03.22 Dortmund (DE) JunkYard 15.03.22 Eindhoven (NL) Effenaar 16.03.22 Nijmegen (NL) Doornroosje 17.03.22 Luxemburg (LU) Kulturfabrik Esch-sur-Alzette 18.03.22 Paris (FR) Petit Bain 19.03.22 Karlsruhe (DE) Alte Hackerei 20.03.22 Wiesbaden (DE) Schlachthof Wiesbaden 21.03.22 Basel (CH) Hirscheneck 22.03.22 Innsbruck (AT) p.m.k 23.03.22 Salzburg (AT) Rockhouse Salzburg 24.03.22 Munich (DE) Feierwerk 25.03.22 Leipzig (DE) WERK2-Kulturfabrik 26.03.22 Hamburg (DE) Knust Hamburg

SOMALI YACHT CLUB  is a moniker designed to represent dichotomy and variance. Named after the real-life pirates who attack vessels off the Somalian coast and the peaceful leisure of those with time to kill and money to burn,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  musically embodies the boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy. After over a decade of mesmerizing audiences in their Ukrainian home base and Eastern Europe,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  inked a deal with Season of Mist in 2021 to reissue their back catalogue and release their third full-length,  The Space .

The band’s story began in 2010 when guitarist/vocalist Ihor sent drummer Lesyk a random message on a Ukrainian musician’s forum to play a hybrid of math rock, post-hardcore, stoner and post-metal. Intrigued, Lesyk called bassist Artur to create the band’s first (and only) lineup. The initial jam sessions went so well that the trio decided to move forward on a permanent basis. Relying on albums such as Moccasin’s  The Last Leaf , Ahkmed’s early EPs, Mars Red Sky’s self-titled, the entire Sungrazer discography and the legendary Isis duo of  Oceanic  and  Panopticon , as well as Down, Electric Wizard, Queens of the Stone Age and now-labelmates Weedeater, the  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  sound was formulated.

“It was a very naive and simple time,” comments the band. “Ihor, as always, was full of energy and it was not enough for him for the bands in which he played at the time. We just started to jam and found the blend that fits all of us. Also, we always loved bands and particular songs that are eclectic — we get a lot of inspiration from such things. They are fun to play and hopefully fun to listen to.” However broad and varied their influences may be,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  started to forge their own path via their self-released 2011  Sandsongs  and 2013  Desert Walls  EP. The pair laid the groundwork for their formidable full-length debut,  The Sun , which channeled spaced-out, psychedelic jams with churning stoner doom metal. Their amalgamation of all-things stoner continued through the 2015  Sun’s Eyes  EP and 2018  The Sea  full-length, the latter noted by  The Sludgelord  that it “succeeds in taking the listener on that well-known ride of warm tones and meandering melodies” and  MetalStorm.net  stating, “ SOMALI YACHT CLUB  offers up a fresh spin on a rich but well-explored genre and in doing so deliver one of the early highlights of 2018.”

The new year brings forth  The Space . The album was tracked at various points throughout 2021 at Jenny Records near Lviv, Ukraine, with mixing and mastering courtesy of Yaroslav Tseluiko at Jaro Sound in the Czech Republic. The cover depicts a supernova and was handled by Dasha Pliska, who was also responsible for  The Sun  and  The Sea  artwork.  The Space  also completes the trilogy that began with  The Sun  and  The Sea , but, according to the band, there is no unifying theme.

“It’s a bit hard to tell a real story in our music because, let’s be honest — it’s still more instrumental-focused.  The Space  is very loosely connected to a single concept as it has even more abstract and personal lyrical themes. Also, the song ‘Pulsar’ was the first written and named song for this album, so it set a path for the title.”   The Space  finds  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  now in full expanse of their sonic elements, delivering six cuts of atmospheric post-rock/metal with dashes of melancholy and introspection. Ihor’s relaxed, if not smooth delivery runs parallel to his driving, fuzzed-out riffs that are dotted with traces of melody. The rhythm section of Artur and Lesyk is the undisputed anchor, maintaining a careful ebb and flow that embellishes songs that demand room to breathe and require texture and thoughtfulness — notably the 12-minute-plus closer, “Momentum,” which features one of the band’s finest jams to date. Such numbers resulted from  SOMALI YACHT CLUB ’s regular practice sessions that bore more than enough new material.

“We wrote  The Space  pretty much the same way as the previous two,” says the band. “We brought an idea or a riff to rehearsal, play and jam it a lot of times to see if it doesn’t go stale, record demos, listen, think, re-think, change everything and so on. This time we went to the studio with more than enough material — some even didn’t get a proper recording as we understood it needed even more time to mature and be reconsidered. Some ideas became an outtake; some songs were created right in the studio.”

Like their name serving a dual purpose, so does  SOMALI YACHT CLUB ’s output on  The Space . The album contains a regular balancing act between heaviness and soft, clean guitar moments that will place  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  into the echelons of bands who have previously mastered the timeless art of dynamics.  The Space  is the perfect elixir in a time rife with uncertainty, menace and chaos. Alas, the new age of stoner has arrived.

Genre:  psychedelic stoner rock

Line-up : Ihor – guitar, vocals, keys Artur – bass Oleksa – drums

Recording studio:  Jenny Records Producer / sound engineer:  Maryan Kryskuv Mixing & mastering studio and engineer : JARO SOUND / Jaroslav Celujko

Biography:  David E. Gehlke

Cover art:  Dasha Pliska

Pre-sales :  https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/syc-thespace Available formats:  CD digipak, vinyl black and coloured

Links: https://somaliyachtclub.bandcamp.com/ https://facebook.com/Somaliyachtclub https://www.instagram.com/somaliyachtclub/

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by The Yacht Club

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Amazing band and even better people. Check out their latest release on Big Scary Monsters The Yacht Club

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The main reason this band exists. Some of the greatest songs in the genre you will ever hear. The Yacht Club

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Lil Yachty Reveals AI-Generated Album Cover for ‘Let’s Start Here,’ Depicting Demented Boardroom of Executives

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Lil Yachty has revealed the artwork and release date for his forthcoming album, “Let’s Start Here,” set to debut Jan. 27 on Quality Control Music and Motown Records.

Ever the provocateur, the rapper’s new cover art previews an AI-generated image of what seems to be seven executives sitting next to each other in suits. With malformed faces akin to a psychedelic trip down the rabbit hole, the artwork seems unremarkable upon first glance. However, the longer you stare at their faces, they look inhuman, with contorted facial features and warped smiles.

The post is captioned : “Let’s Start Here. – 1/27  Chapter 2. Thank You for the patience,” hinting at a potential redux of an already teased album, collectively referred to as “Sonic Ranch.” On Dec. 25, Yachty’s latest album was leaked by Leaked.cx, much to the Michigan rapper’s disappointment. He took to Twitter later that day to post a half-hearted sad-face emoji to express anguish in the untimely launch of a potentially seminal work within his discography.

In an interview with Icebox last year , the “ Minnesota ” rapper has expressed that his “new album is a non-rap album,” hence the second chapter that he alludes to in his Instagram post. Yachty explains: “It’s alternative, it’s sick!” After recently collaborating with artists such as Tame Impala, he’s been in the process of creating a “psychedelic alternative project… [with] all live instrumentation.”

Slowly shedding major label support, Yachty now has his own label and creative consultant company, Concrete Records and Concrete Family, respectively. Working closely with Concrete Family, Yachty teamed up with the General Mills cereal brand in 2020 for a limited collaboration with Reese’s Puffs and has an undisclosed sneaker set to be released at a later date. Similar to his 2021 mixtape, “Michigan Boat Boy,” which featured almost solely Detroit artists including Rio Da Yung OG and Babyface Ray, Yachty plans to also release a mixtape with the Concrete Boys collective sometime this year.

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Yacht Club Vol. 2

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Latvian Rock Music Association

The goal of lrma is to create, maintain and popularize long-lasting and internationally acclaimed cultural environment in latvia, while promoting latvian rock music as an integral part of the local culture., somali yacht club announce new album and release first track “silver”.

February 19, 2022 Latvijas Rokmūzikas Asociācija News 0

Psychedelic stoner rock trio  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  are now premiering a brand  new song , taken from their upcoming album  ‘The Space’ . 

‘The Space’ will be released via Season of Mist on April 22, making it the band’s debut to the label. Pre-orders are now live  HERE . The album can be pre-saved via all digital streaming platforms  HERE .

SOMALI YACHT CLUB  is a moniker designed to represent dichotomy and variance. Named after the real-life pirates who attack vessels off the Somalian coast and the peaceful leisure of those with time to kill and money to burn,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  musically embodies the boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy. After over a decade of mesmerizing audiences in their Ukrainian home base and Eastern Europe,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  inked a deal with Season of Mist in 2021 to reissue their back catalogue and release their third full-length,  The Space .

The band’s story began in 2010 when guitarist/vocalist Ihor sent drummer Lesyk a random message on a Ukrainian musician’s forum to play a hybrid of math rock, post-hardcore, stoner and post-metal. Intrigued, Lesyk called bassist Artur to create the band’s first (and only) lineup. The initial jam sessions went so well that the trio decided to move forward on a permanent basis. Relying on albums such as Moccasin’s  The Last Leaf , Ahkmed’s early EPs, Mars Red Sky’s self-titled, the entire Sungrazer discography and the legendary Isis duo of  Oceanic  and  Panopticon , as well as Down, Electric Wizard, Queens of the Stone Age and now-labelmates Weedeater, the  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  sound was formulated.

“It was a very naive and simple time,” comments the band. “Ihor, as always, was full of energy and it was not enough for him for the bands in which he played at the time. We just started to jam and found the blend that fits all of us. Also, we always loved bands and particular songs that are eclectic — we get a lot of inspiration from such things. They are fun to play and hopefully fun to listen to.” However broad and varied their influences may be,  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  started to forge their own path via their self-released 2011  Sandsongs  and 2013  Desert Walls  EP. The pair laid the groundwork for their formidable full-length debut,  The Sun , which channeled spaced-out, psychedelic jams with churning stoner doom metal. Their amalgamation of all-things stoner continued through the 2015  Sun’s Eyes  EP and 2018  The Sea  full-length, the latter noted by  The Sludgelord  that it “succeeds in taking the listener on that well-known ride of warm tones and meandering melodies” and  MetalStorm.net  stating, “ SOMALI YACHT CLUB  offers up a fresh spin on a rich but well-explored genre and in doing so deliver one of the early highlights of 2018.”

The new year brings forth  The Space . The album was tracked at various points throughout 2021 at Jenny Records near Lviv, Ukraine, with mixing and mastering courtesy of Yaroslav Tseluiko at Jaro Sound in the Czech Republic. The cover depicts a supernova and was handled by Dasha Pliska, who was also responsible for  The Sun  and  The Sea  artwork.  The Space  also completes the trilogy that began with  The Sun  and  The Sea , but, according to the band, there is no unifying theme.

“It’s a bit hard to tell a real story in our music because, let’s be honest — it’s still more instrumental-focused.  The Space  is very loosely connected to a single concept as it has even more abstract and personal lyrical themes. Also, the song ‘Pulsar’ was the first written and named song for this album, so it set a path for the title.”   The Space  finds  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  now in full expanse of their sonic elements, delivering six cuts of atmospheric post-rock/metal with dashes of melancholy and introspection. Ihor’s relaxed, if not smooth delivery runs parallel to his driving, fuzzed-out riffs that are dotted with traces of melody. The rhythm section of Artur and Lesyk is the undisputed anchor, maintaining a careful ebb and flow that embellishes songs that demand room to breathe and require texture and thoughtfulness — notably the 12-minute-plus closer, “Momentum,” which features one of the band’s finest jams to date. Such numbers resulted from  SOMALI YACHT CLUB ’s regular practice sessions that bore more than enough new material.

“We wrote  The Space  pretty much the same way as the previous two,” says the band. “We brought an idea or a riff to rehearsal, play and jam it a lot of times to see if it doesn’t go stale, record demos, listen, think, re-think, change everything and so on. This time we went to the studio with more than enough material — some even didn’t get a proper recording as we understood it needed even more time to mature and be reconsidered. Some ideas became an outtake; some songs were created right in the studio.”

Like their name serving a dual purpose, so does  SOMALI YACHT CLUB ’s output on  The Space . The album contains a regular balancing act between heaviness and soft, clean guitar moments that will place  SOMALI YACHT CLUB  into the echelons of bands who have previously mastered the timeless art of dynamics.  The Space  is the perfect elixir in a time rife with uncertainty, menace and chaos. Alas, the new age of stoner has arrived.

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What’s More Provocative Than Sincerity?

Ryder Ripps built a career as a digital art troll, and now he’s calling out his former boss Kanye West and Bored Ape Yacht Club for bigotry. Is his crusade real?

Ryder Ripps has a reputation as an inveterate self-promoter and shameless appropriator who channels the absurd. Credit... Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

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By Joseph Bernstein

• March 30, 2023

Over his 15-year career, the artist and creative director Ryder Ripps has built websites for the likes of Kanye West, who is now known as Ye, and Kenzo, designed album covers for musicians such as Grimes and Pop Smoke, and shown his work in respected New York galleries. But across mediums, what he does never entirely changes. He finds things online and repurposes them.

It’s gotten him in hot water before but never sued, until recently.

Last spring, Mr. Ripps created a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that looked exactly like Bored Apes — the digital tokens that were hyped in 2021 and 2022 by celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Stephen Curry. Then he named them after himself and sold them. It was the culmination of a monthslong campaign raising awareness about what he says is ripped-from-4chan offensive imagery in the Bored Apes, as well as the artistic vacancy in the speculative world of NFTs.

“It’s not just corny,” Mr. Ripps said of the Bored Apes. “It’s morally wrong.”

Whether Mr. Ripps had committed an act of creative reuse or the theft of intellectual property is, like so much contemporary art, a matter of interpretation.

Mr. Ripps, whose career reached a surreal apex in 2018, when he worked as Ye’s creative factotum, has a reputation as an inveterate self-promoter and shameless appropriator who channels the absurd currents and nasty impulses of digital culture. He has covered a model of the Twin Towers in images of memes and celebrities, sold an NFT featuring an audio file of him and the rapper Azealia Banks having sex, and fabricated an 18-karat gold medallion of Pepe , the cartoon frog that was adopted as an internet hate symbol.

He has not, in other words, gained oodles of trust. Some of his design contemporaries dismiss him out of hand. To them, Mr. Ripps’ Bored Ape project looks like a bid to thrust himself back into the zeitgeist, several years after his intense but fleeting professional relationship with Ye brought his work into the Oval Office, then left him out in the cold. (Last fall, Mr. Ripps also spoke out publicly against Ye’s antisemitic tirades.)

But the creators of the Bored Apes are taking him very seriously: In June, Yuga Labs, the parent company of the Bored Ape project, sued him in federal court for violating its trademarks. Mr. Ripps says that his NFTs are satire and that Yuga Labs — which is the target of a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of artificially inflating the value of the NFTs through celebrity endorsements — is stifling his creative expression.

(A spokeswoman for Yuga Labs said: “We are focused on continuing to innovate and lead in the web3 space, not on the malicious lies and fallacies of an insatiable internet scammer seeking fame and fortune.”)

The NFT boom is over, and the cryptocurrencies that pay for them have crashed. But the closely watched case goes to the heart of pressing new questions about digital ownership.

And it has forced one of the defining internet artists of the 2010s into conflict with a culture he helped shape, one in which the boundaries among trolling, art and commerce are irrelevant. For Mr. Ripps, it isn’t just that the Apes look offensive, it is offensive that the Apes are coming to stand in for all internet art.

According to Mr. Ripps, the Bored Apes have no point beyond grabbing attention and making money, no authentic critical perspective. It’s a criticism others have made about him.

Where Downtown Meets the Internet

Mr. Ripps lives in an old mining town about an hour north of Los Angeles but grew up mostly in New York City. (His parents, the artist Rodney Ripps and the designer Helene Verin, were each painted by Andy Warhol.) In 2009, after finishing a degree in media studies from the New School, Mr. Ripps created Dump.fm, an influential image-based chat platform that recalled the 1990s internet on which he was raised. It established him in a niche but influential community of young, digitally native artists and designers who liked to hang out where downtown met the internet.

VFiles, a web community and cooler-than-thou boutique that Mr. Ripps helped build, was one such place. There, once-fringe young designers like Hood by Air’s Shayne Oliver and Virgil Abloh were discovered by big brands and celebrities.

Patrik Sandberg, a writer and editor who helped create VFiles, credited Mr. Ripps for pioneering the “self-aware internet look,” a kind of retro anti-design that can be seen everywhere now, including places like the cult clothing line Online Ceramics and the website of the cannabis-infused seltzer Loki. But Mr. Ripps quickly left VFiles in 2012 amid a feud with the site’s owner.

“He has a history of burning bridges with every person he ever works with,” Mr. Sandberg said of Mr. Ripps.

(“I don’t agree with the characterization that I’m mean,” Mr. Ripps said in response. “I just want to be heard. I have strong points of view, that’s for sure.”)

Mr. Ripps started his own agency, OKFocus (where one of his early clients was Mr. Abloh’s streetwear brand, Been Trill) and began to try his hand publicly at conceptual art, efforts that would set his reputation in the art world as a chauvinist and a troll.

Mr. Ripps’s first solo show, “Ho,” a collection of large oil paintings of distorted images of the fitness influencer Adrianne Ho, earned condemnation from the feminist website Jezebel. In a 2014 project called “Art Whore, Mr. Ripps paid two sex workers to draw with him as part of a one-night residency at the Ace Hotel. (“This work questions the economics of art, the dynamics of gender and the role of the internet in the production of art,” he wrote at the time.) Rhizome, an influential New York digital art and culture group that had celebrated Dump.fm, denounced the piece as “unthinking, unethical and dull.”

“I was really hurt,” said Mr. Ripps, who expected — and perhaps wanted — a negative reaction from digital media and feminist writers but was surprised that the downtown art community had responded similarly.

The backlash mostly cleaved Mr. Ripps from the gallery world, though Magda Sawon, his gallerist, said she planned to restage “Ho” in Los Angeles this fall. “It was capturing this very early moment of influencers establishing their territory and how protective and corrupt those people are,” she said.

But he had already become an in-demand designer for large brands looking to borrow a little of that downtown edge. From 2013 to 2017 Mr. Ripps designed the branding for Soylent, the meal replacement start-up; made ads for Gucci and Marc Jacobs; and helped produce two songs for Miley Cyrus.

One day in 2014, Mr. Ripps got a call from Ye. He had been looking at the Been Trill website, he said, and he wanted to meet the next day.

If Mr. Ripps had been surfing the tides of creative success, this was a chance to touch the moon. Ye’s centrality to culture had long been obvious to Mr. Ripps, who in 2012 created a website that falsely claimed to be the first public project of Donda, Ye’s creative agency.

Ye had a habit of plucking (and sometimes quickly discarding) young and buzzy talent to work for him, including Mr. Abloh, Jerry Lorenzo of Fear of God, and Matthew Williams, now the creative director of Givenchy, as well as scores of lesser-known figures, like the former Yeezy general manager Laurence Chandler.

Shortly after Mr. Ripps sat down in Ye’s living room, he said, Ye surprised him by turning around an open laptop, which Mr. Ripps said was playing hard-core pornography. He asked Mr. Ripps to explain its significance.

Mr. Ripps improvised an answer about the interplay of art and sex, which seemed to satisfy Ye. Ye then began playing — and then rapping over — a series of demos, a performance that went on for half an hour, Mr. Ripps said. When he was done, Ye sat down and asked to see Mr. Ripps’s prepared ideas.

After that first meeting, Ye and Mr. Ripps would speak at least weekly, for hours at a time on the phone, Mr. Ripps said. Topics included a possible video game in which Ye ascended to heaven to meet his mother and Ye’s disdain for Drake.

“I felt like I was his best friend,” Mr. Ripps said.

Then, after about two months and just as suddenly as Ye had taken an interest, he backed off. Mr. Ripps received an email from Ye saying an exchange between the men had left him “stressed”; shortly thereafter, Ye told Mr. Ripps over the phone that their conversations had gotten too intense. (Ye did not respond to request for comment.)

Until, in late 2017, Mr. Ripps sent a picture of himself wearing a MAGA hat with the text written in Cyrillic script to an old iMessage account of Ye’s. Since the men had last talked, Ye had publicly aligned himself with President Donald J. Trump — a move his fans didn’t know whether to regard as an elaborate art project or a genuine shift toward the right.

Mr. Ripps thought his old collaborator would be amused by a joke about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and a reference to a Russophile trend in fashion. (Mr. Ripps, who had earlier posted to Instagram comically deformed portraits of Mr. Trump, Jared Kushner and Kellyanne Conway, seemed to regard MAGA as a set of potent symbols to manipulate.)

Almost immediately, Ye sent Mr. Ripps the contact card for his assistant — a sign he wanted to talk.

Soon, Mr. Ripps said, he flew him out to the Calabasas, Calif., headquarters of Yeezy, his fashion company. Ye told Mr. Ripps that he needed an interdisciplinary creative mind to hold all of his operations together, from fashion to music. It was as if they’d never stopped talking.

Ye had, by that summer, turned even further toward provocation; in May he drew widespread criticism for saying that slavery was a “choice” in an interview with TMZ.

Mr. Ripps said recently in an interview he didn’t approve of all of Ye’s comments, but that — from his experience in the gallery world — he “understood and sympathized” with someone becoming “controversial for stating his mind.” Within weeks of their meeting in Calabasas, Ye had hired Mr. Ripps at Donda, which encompassed Ye’s wildly ambitious projects extending beyond fashion and music into things like housing and manufacturing.

Mr. Ripps’s work for Ye culminated in October 2018, when, he said, he designed a presentation for Ye to give to President Trump during a private lunch. Though Mr. Ripps did not attend the meeting, the men flew to Washington together.

During the flight, Mr. Ripps said, Ye announced that he wanted to redesign Air Force One; Mr. Ripps googled “Aquatic Jet Israeli,” because, he later recalled, “the Israelis make dope stuff.” Mr. Ripps found a cool-looking glass-roofed aircraft, and showed it to his boss. Several hours later, Ye showed an image of the plane in the Oval Office in front of the president. He called it “iPlane.”

The grandiose presentation , complete with talking points, centered on a message of “Empowering America’s Core” and ended with a Photoshopped image of Mr. Trump and Ye standing in front of a giant Yeezy factory, superimposed in front of the Chicago skyline.

Mr. Ripps said that Ye regarded the meeting as a triumph, and sent Mr. Ripps an email comparing Mr. Ripps to Pablo Picasso, which The New York Times reviewed. (Ye has a habit of comparing people to Picasso, including himself and his architect .)

Then, just as suddenly as before, Ye soured. One day, Mr. Ripps said, he received a call from Ye — who has acknowledged being diagnosed with bipolar disorder but subsequently questioned the diagnosis — saying that he needed to take a break. Mr. Ripps, who had moved to Chicago for the job, received an email several weeks later from Ye’s lawyers informing him that his employment had been terminated. He had lasted four months.

Out of Ye’s orbit, and off his payroll, Mr. Ripps said he started to think harder about remarks he said Ye had made to him in 2018 about studying Nazis. Mr. Ripps is Jewish, and the comments had made him uneasy at the time, he said. But he had dismissed them, hopefully, as more of Ye’s provocative non sequiturs.

“I didn’t want him to be a Nazi,” he said.

And of course, Mr. Ripps’s association with Ye had helped his career. After leaving Donda, he continued to work for clients in the music world, including doing stage design for Pusha T and creative direction for Tame Impala’s tours.

In October 2022, after Ye made antisemitic remarks on social media and in a series of interviews, CNN reported that Ye had a long history of admiring Hitler. The next month, in an interview with NBC News , Mr. Ripps condemned the musician, calling his comments “dangerous and disgusting and actually violent.”

By that time, Mr. Ripps was already months into another call-out campaign against what he saw as bigotry at the center of pop culture.

‘As a Troll I Know It When I See It’

After a furious hype cycle in 2021 and 2022, the Bored Ape Yacht Club became the most prominent set of NFTs. Mr. Ripps was already interested in the technology, which was in his sweet spot of art, tech and buzzy nonsense. In particular, he focused on the way many NFT buyers misunderstood what they were really buying: not a digital image file, but the unique code underneath.

A friend of Mr. Ripps’s showed him an image of a Nazi death’s head insignia side by side with the skull logo of the Bored Apes. They looked, Mr. Ripps thought, exactly alike.

“As a designer I said, there’s no way this isn’t a reference,” Mr. Ripps said. “Every designer Google Image searches for reference. There’s too many matching characteristics for this to be an accident.”

First in a relentless series of tweets and then on a website he built to collate his findings, Mr. Ripps accused BAYC of larding its project with racist and antisemitic imagery and coded messages: One ape wore a headband from “fascist Imperial Japan,” he wrote; one of the co-founders went by the nickname Gargamel, which Mr. Ripps wrote was “a common term used on 4chan to discuss Jews”; the overall project, Mr. Ripps claimed, was an example of “simianization” — disparaging an ethnic or religious minority by comparing them to monkeys.

“As a troll I know it when I see it,” he tweeted on Dec. 31, 2021.

Last year, Mark Pitcavage, a historian and senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, said that the connection between the skull logo and the Nazi skull was tenuous, and that other connections Mr. Ripps made were spurious.

(Since Mr. Ripps first made the accusations, Yuga Labs has repeatedly and at length denied them, without mentioning Mr. Ripps by name.)

But Mr. Ripps kept it up, an arch ironist apparently moved to five-alarm probity by the apes that were saturating the culture and selling for millions.

Last spring, he minted a new NFT that pointed to a copy of an existing Bored Ape image. Since then, Mr. Ripps and several collaborators have minted more than 9,000 such tokens, called “RR/BAYC,” which, according to an official statement, use “satire and appropriation to protest and educate people regarding The Bored Ape Yacht Club and the framework of NFTs.”

In June 2022, Yuga Labs sued Mr. Ripps and his collaborators for “causing actual and monetary harm to Yuga Labs and to the holders of authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.” (The company separately sued Tom Lehman, another collaborator of Mr. Ripps’s and the co-founder of the website Genius; he has settled.)

Tellingly, the Ape creators didn’t sue Mr. Ripps for copyright, which protects creators from having their artistic or intellectual work stolen. Nor did Yuga Labs sue Mr. Ripps for defamation.

Rather, they accused him of violating their trademarks, which protect consumers from buying confusing knockoffs that inappropriately use a word, phrase or design that identify a product. (Think: logos.)

In a blow to Mr. Ripps’s defense, a federal court in California in December denied a request by his lawyers to dismiss the suit on the grounds that it was an attempt to chill his speech. Mr. Ripps has appealed that ruling.

Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in intellectual property law, said the court didn’t buy Mr. Ripps’s argument that his criticism of the Bored Apes justified his use of Yuga Labs’ trademarks. Sixty years after Warhol's Campbell’s soup cans, appropriation art is still unsettled legal terrain — as a copyright case involving Warhol that the Supreme Court is expected to rule on shortly makes clear — and an argument as meta as Mr. Ripps’s can seem nebulous before the cutting simplicity of a trademark claim.

“It’s going to be hard for him to avoid liability,” Ms. Tushnet said. “Courts have always struggled with appropriation art, and the border between art and things that aren’t art.”

(In another recent case, the luxury brand Hermès won a judgment against a Los Angeles artist who sold NFT versions of its famous Birkin bag; the jury found that the NFTs weren’t entitled to First Amendment protection.)

When Mr. Ripps began his efforts, the Bored Ape creators were anonymous. In February 2022, their identities were made public by BuzzFeed News; two of them attended creative writing M.F.A. programs. As a result, Mr. Ripps has softened his stance that the founders are secretly far-right extremists. Instead, he now sees them as unfunny: appropriative pranksters trying a grift.

“They think it’s some fun literary device because they’re writers and they think it’s edgy and interesting,” Mr. Ripps said. “Or it’s some inside masturbatory joke.”

Now, that joke may ruin Mr. Ripps, he said, at least financially. While he still has client work, and in February held a small show of found art in Los Angeles (a collection of cheap, branded knickknacks given to doctors by pharmaceutical companies), most of Mr. Ripps’s life now revolves around the case, on which he says he has already spent “hundreds of thousands” of dollars — “all of my money.” The case is set to go to a jury trial on June 27.

“There are some versions of appropriation art where getting punished is part of the art,” Ms. Tushnet said. “It could be both art and be illegal.”

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Yacht Rock Original Album Series

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5CD set, in card LP replica sleeves. Collects Hall & Oates' "Abandoned Luncheonette" (1973), Orleans' "Let There Be Music" (1975), Chicago's "Chicago 16" (1982), Robbie Dupree's "Robbie Dupree" (1980) and Bread's "On The Waters" (1970). Warner.

Product details

• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.04 x 5 x 0.51 inches; 4.66 ounces
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Rhino
• Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2015
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ January 26, 2015
• Label ‏ : ‎ Rhino
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00QN1ABVS
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #134,256 in Rock (CDs & Vinyl)

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