The MUSIC that does exist is somewhere in between, a flawed, contradictory, inflated, loud, exciting, mainstream-ified, uncomfortable, nostalgic event, but one that is still fixated on the music above all. It might go down as the purest distillation of Playboi Carti.
Carti uses his vocal stylings to drop rubbery cadences over tracks that flit between grinding industrial noise (“Cocaine Nose”), 8-bit vaporwave (“Like Weezy”), and throwbacks to classic Dirty South hi-hats (“Radar”). Cobbled together by a phalanx of producers, these sounds wash over Carti’s performances in a raging yet sensuous churn. .... For Carti’s fans, his words are just ear-tickling frisson, and glitter to toss on the digitized delights. But wealth porn dreams have hidden meanings.
From underground hero to untouchable force, Playboi Carti cements his spot as rap’s feral frontrunner.
Music is a cyclone of weird turns, big ideas, and choices that don't really make sense together, but are still somehow enjoyable under the banner of blissful confusion that Playboi Carti has made his brand from the start.
From its title to its intent to its thematic and aesthetic through-lines, Music is all-encompassing, abstract, and opaque. One occasionally gets lost in the too-muchness, but for an artist with this much to offer, a rangy hodgepodge is more enticement than shortcoming.
The hook-filled I Seeeeee You Baby Boi plays to Carti’s more melodic instincts. .... Tracks like these are simple in the best way, complementing his loose, spontaneous rapping style, but over the course of this album’s 30 tracks the lack of vision becomes apparent and the inconsistency becomes egregious.
Across 30 tracks there are some lapses – Dis 1 Got It and Walk can’t break out of Future cosplay, Twin Trim is a witless Lil Uzi Vert showcase, and Munyun is rather tepid and polite for a blown-out speaker-botherer. But for most of the 77-minute running time, Carti meets the expectations he made so high for himself.
Whereas his last album, the scene-defining “Whole Lotta Red” from 2020, had a single-mindedness that verged on hardcore, “Music” is less focused, and attempts to solve several problems at once.
If you’re so inclined, you can certainly make a better and more concentrated version of MUSIC simply by firing up the streaming platform of your choice and playlisting all of its standout cuts. There sure are enough on offer to make it worth your while, and you can also sidestep the ungainly sequencing that disrupts the record’s progression in the process.
The number of songs and the length would be a bit more understandable if there weren’t also the feeling that some of these songs are woefully undercooked and underdeveloped, but it feels like a true russian roulette to engage with the totality of Music when you get a song that feels kinetic and lively and progresses, only to then be met with a bonafide voice memo that repeats one idea over and over.
The MUSIC that does exist is somewhere in between, a flawed, contradictory, inflated, loud, exciting, mainstream-ified, uncomfortable, nostalgic event, but one that is still fixated on the music above all. It might go down as the purest distillation of Playboi Carti.
Carti uses his vocal stylings to drop rubbery cadences over tracks that flit between grinding industrial noise (“Cocaine Nose”), 8-bit vaporwave (“Like Weezy”), and throwbacks to classic Dirty South hi-hats (“Radar”). Cobbled together by a phalanx of producers, these sounds wash over Carti’s performances in a raging yet sensuous churn. .... For Carti’s fans, his words are just ear-tickling frisson, and glitter to toss on the digitized delights. But wealth porn dreams have hidden meanings.
From underground hero to untouchable force, Playboi Carti cements his spot as rap’s feral frontrunner.
Music is a cyclone of weird turns, big ideas, and choices that don't really make sense together, but are still somehow enjoyable under the banner of blissful confusion that Playboi Carti has made his brand from the start.
From its title to its intent to its thematic and aesthetic through-lines, Music is all-encompassing, abstract, and opaque. One occasionally gets lost in the too-muchness, but for an artist with this much to offer, a rangy hodgepodge is more enticement than shortcoming.
The hook-filled I Seeeeee You Baby Boi plays to Carti’s more melodic instincts. .... Tracks like these are simple in the best way, complementing his loose, spontaneous rapping style, but over the course of this album’s 30 tracks the lack of vision becomes apparent and the inconsistency becomes egregious.
Across 30 tracks there are some lapses – Dis 1 Got It and Walk can’t break out of Future cosplay, Twin Trim is a witless Lil Uzi Vert showcase, and Munyun is rather tepid and polite for a blown-out speaker-botherer. But for most of the 77-minute running time, Carti meets the expectations he made so high for himself.
Whereas his last album, the scene-defining “Whole Lotta Red” from 2020, had a single-mindedness that verged on hardcore, “Music” is less focused, and attempts to solve several problems at once.
If you’re so inclined, you can certainly make a better and more concentrated version of MUSIC simply by firing up the streaming platform of your choice and playlisting all of its standout cuts. There sure are enough on offer to make it worth your while, and you can also sidestep the ungainly sequencing that disrupts the record’s progression in the process.
The number of songs and the length would be a bit more understandable if there weren’t also the feeling that some of these songs are woefully undercooked and underdeveloped, but it feels like a true russian roulette to engage with the totality of Music when you get a song that feels kinetic and lively and progresses, only to then be met with a bonafide voice memo that repeats one idea over and over.
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