Playboi Carti ‘Music’ Review: Abstract and All-Encompassing

It’s taken over 4 years for Playboi Carti to supply the follow-up to his landscape-shifting album Entire Lotta Purple. Titling its successor, Music, with devious opacity, the famously withholding rapper provides us one thing new for him: extra. Regardless that Entire Lotta Purple and 2018’s Die Lit have been each an hour lengthy, they nonetheless felt centered and of a chunk. Music is an efficient quarter-hour longer, providing 30 tracks that span myriad kinds and producers. It’s messy and much less cohesive than something he’s launched to this point, but it surely additionally demonstrates the staggering vary of mainstream rap’s most eccentric, experimental, and enigmatic auteur.

The vocal kinds on show all through are maybe Music’s best asset. Carti’s vocal evolution has been the stuff of lore: He debuted a brand new voice on Travis Scott’s 2023 hit “Fe!n” that was shockingly deep and garbled, like he had bronchitis and was additionally drunk. The “Fe!n” voice reveals up right here on “Ok-Pop,” and it’s as if he’s auditioning to be a ventriloquist, or embodied by a demon doing a Sew impression. And he’s hoarse and reptilian but slipperily effeminate on “Radar.”

Carti’s selections may be pointed, as he dips into his child Carti voice on “Opm Babi” and knowingly impacts a Future-esque croak on “Poisonous,” whose title is mainly synonymous with the Future model at this level. Certainly, Carti’s Future aspirations are egregious on Music: He clearly goals to sound like him on songs like “Jumpin” and “Stroll” to the purpose that it’s distracting. For somebody so imaginative at morphing their vocal tone, this sort of mimicry is pointless.

Which isn’t to say that Carti isn’t joyful to range the sounds of his music as a lot as he does his personal voice. “Pop Out,” for one, is a transparent continuation of Entire Lotta Purple’s rage-rap electrical energy, its beat vibrating like barbed wire coming into contact with acid rain. However whereas the earlier album’s blown-out bass and cursed-object vibe are additionally evident on “Munyun,” Carti isn’t simply repeating himself on Music. “Backd00r,” co-produced by Kanye West and Ojivolta, is the antithesis to Entire Lotta Purple’s shifty paranoia, that includes Carti virtually cooing over a swishy Evilgiane-type beat. The result’s the one of the seductive Carti tracks ever.

On “Somewhat Lie,” a fantastically celestial minimize that includes the Weeknd, Carti isn’t any much less approachable, coming off refreshingly relaxed. Elsewhere, there are theatrical, orchestral synths and keys that relay a menacing impact on “HBA” and “Overly.” And the chilly, flitting electronics of “I Seeeeee You Child Boi” is harking back to Swedish collective Drain Gang, whose important progenitor, Bladee, paid tribute to Entire Lotta Purple on final 12 months’s Chilly Visions.

The album’s eclectic aesthetic involves a head with a very jarring transition deep into the runtimes, particularly when the muscular, electric-guitar-looping “Cocaine Nostril” abruptly switches to the polished, bouncy melodic rap of “We Want All Da Vibes,” which provides Younger Thug the highlight for a lot of the music. It’s one in all a number of cuts that might’ve been made and factors towards the patchwork nature of the album’s assemblage.

Equally, “Jumpin” options Lil Uzi Vert repeating “pink tape” advert nauseam, a reference to their album of the identical title that was launched practically two years in the past (the music is probably going a leftover from these classes). Music’s different Uzi monitor, the 90-second “Twin Trim,” is probably the most squeaky-clean, linear groove on the album, and Carti doesn’t even seem on it in any respect.

The bulk the songs clock in at beneath three minutes. It’s not that any of them really feel incomplete or half-baked, however there’s little or no construction or guiding goal to how the album is organized. It’s a giant dump of uncooked recordsdata to feed followers starved of no official releases for near half a decade.

Fortunately, Carti isn’t some bloviating, self-serious drone. He’s a artful and usually humorous trickster. He and Kendrick Lamar, who options on at least three of the songs on Music, have a blast on the pleasant “Mojo Dojo,” with Kendrick volleying exclamatory ad-libs after nearly each Carti line. Carti’s offbeat vocal approaches make lyrics like “I simply placed on my boots/Ain’t apprehensive ‘bout no rain,” from “Evil J0rdan,” sound absurd and foolish. “Crush” hilariously employs a backing choir for a music that hardly correctly begins and is basically Carti muttering “shawty gon let me crush,” with the choir over-emphatically echoing the sentiment. That is emblematic not solely of Carti’s humorousness, however of how a lot pure fashion and leftfield maneuvers are given priority in his music and how inconsequential substance and conventional lyricism are to him.

Certainly, Music, much more than the rapper’s previous albums, is post-language: There’s little or no storytelling happening right here, and many strains are so incomprehensible that they’re being debated on Genius, because the Carti staff has but to launch any official lyrics. However he’s in a position to make investments his distinctive colloquialisms with feeling and import. Carti’s best trick is popping his fragmented, repetitious, stream-of-consciousness phrasings into blistering anthems and piercing confessionals. Calling his verses associational can be too prescriptive.

From its title to its intent to its thematic and aesthetic through-lines, Music is all-encompassing, summary, and opaque. One sometimes will get misplaced within the too-muchness, however for an artist with this a lot to supply, a rangy hodgepodge is extra enticement than shortcoming.