After years of teasing and promising and lying, Playboi Carti, the prodigal hype-baiter, has finally returned with a new album, Music. It’s a hulking, convulsing mishmash of tracks spanning production styles and time periods, with some of his most electric raps, frenetic flows, and anarchic song structures to date. The range of bangers is wide enough to soundtrack the next few months of TikTok hype edits while also satisfying your millennial brother who fondly remembers going berserk to Waka Flocka Flame in college. So many new voices, too: Goblin Carti, Evil Warlock Carti, Spitting With Glee Carti, Gargling Broth Carti. The sprawl is part of the album’s appeal, and if anyone could pull off a 30-track marathon in this style, it’s Playboi Carti. But what if we got the chance to go in with forceps and scalpel and carve this album down to perfection? Here’s my attempt.
Excisions
So much of this album feels like it was focus-grouped to thrash live, and “K Pop,” a revision of “Ketamine,” is like rage-rap composed by Hans Zimmer. The guitar bolts and sweeping synths beg you to imagine Carti as some kind of shadow boss, levitating in the sky like SpongeBob going Goofy Goober mode. I can handle only one over-the-top arena epic per album—give me the reckless slaughter of “HBA.”
Carti’s goofy lyrics and toad-mouthed Molly-blurts can’t save the Travis Show from sabotaging the momentum. Send La Flame and this saloon-trap beat back to Astroworld.
Some unnerving lyrics and a beat that feels torpid and trite compared to the rest of the album’s mad chaos.
I’m happy to report that I got exclusive access to the brief Carti sent F1lthy and BNYX®: “Epic Cyborg Space Rage Opera Type Beat.” This is where Music almost stumbles into Utopia territory. It’s all empty theatrics and celestial swishes, with a Travis Scott guest verse so feeble it hits like Grok.
There are some nice little vocal tics between Carti and Lil Uzi Vert, but this instrumental is forgettable. It’s limp in both sound (hits like a cousin of the beat for Future’s half of “Life Is Good”) and lyrics, with dated references to Pink Tape and Narcissist.
The best features on Carti albums lose themselves in the atmosphere, drowned and rewired by the weirdness. Flashback to “Teen X”: Future imitated Carti’s own baby voice so the two were like a family choir tag-teaming in Martianese. “Trim,” featuring Future, sounds way too controlled, too clean. DJ Swamp Izzo tries his best to bring the havoc, but it feels more like Carti guesting on a Future tape.
I’m all for “burnt music,” the synapse-frying shit that feels like mucus in the back of your throat and smells like smoke. But “Cocaine Nose” has all the juddering grotesquerie of Carti’s Whole Lotta Red hits without the relentless assault of “On That Time” or “JumpOutTheHouse.” It feels like Carti heard Destroy Lonely’s If Looks Could Kill and was like, Here’s how you actually do rock-rage, son. Maybe I need to hear it live to get the full effect, but “Pop Out” is my preferred burnout banger here.
There’s nothing egregious about “We Need All da Vibes,” which has some of the most soothing vocals on the tape—I enjoy how Ty Dolla $ign harmonizes with aural afterimages of himself. But it doesn’t feel like a Carti tune and doesn’t have the bionic rattle of his most thrilling songs.
Did they forget to add the Carti verse?
It’s sick when Carti locks in on a few syllables and mangles them beyond recognition: mollys, perkys, mawlis, perkice, malice, perkus. Maybe this is what Fakemink meant when he described his sound as “dirty luxury”: It sounds like Carti’s melting inside a grand foyer with platinum chandeliers and gilded walls. But there’s not much going on beyond that vibe.
Most songs on here showcase some unhinged idea—deranged ad-lib play, gospel backings, a perfect stretch of chewed-up syllables. On an album this length, “Walk” droops like filler. There’s a Bankroll Fresh sample and Carti groaning like he’s president of the Future Fan Club.
Implants
One of the refrains that’s stuck in my head the most is from “Munyun,” where Carti gasps about drugs and wealth before finally settling on “Came a long way, can’t believe I made Forbes.” He repeats it like he’s stuck in a swirling dream, a montage of memories flashing before his eyes. So famous but he’s still thinking about a Forbes list. “Made It This Far,” maybe Carti’s most hyped snippet from the last few years could’ve added another level of “he’s a mortal” vulnerability. It’s a celebration and a confession swathed in bittersweet pixels.
Hey, it’s never too late…
Some Tweaks and Alterations
This would be a perfect song for a reprisal of the baby voice, or his fetus voice—or even something new, the zygote voice? What we got sounds refreshingly vintage but at times flat.
Haters are ragging on the song’s “brainrot” overload, imagining that Swamp Izzo just tripped and fell on the soundboard. But this feels like a reasonable evolution for a man with a knack for avalanching you in ad-libs—maybe he listened to OsamaSon’s “Ref” and got inspired? And I just want even more! Give us a bludgeoning blizzard of producer tags and hype chants so feverish it’s like gabber.
“Evil J0rdan” was my favorite from Carti’s pre-album loosie run, so I’m torn on the new intro. Ripping these “cinematic” live show lead-ins to capture a sense of in-the-moment thrill feels forced. It’s only a matter of time before an artist drops a deluxe album full of TikTok edit intros. How about we keep 10 seconds of it and the stutter-start?
It’s a shame that everyone on the album is an A-lister. What about actually getting SpaceGhostPurrp or an underground weirdo on a track? Or even old friend FKA twigs or protege Ken Carson? It feels like he took some bad LinkedIn advice, like someone told him, if you wanna stay famous, surround yourself exclusively with the richest, most successful people you know.
Finally, let’s rename Music to its working title, I Am Music, which fits the megalomaniac parade better. While it’s a flex to have your album compete in the SEO hierarchy against an entire artform, I Am Music adds a hint of the existential. It captures the way Playboi Carti teleports between inflections, hurling out so many cries and coos and cursive flows that it’s hard to tell if it’s coming from a single person or a swarm of alien spirits. This album, in all of its various sounds and screams, is Carti throwing everything he has against the wall. He is music.
