After a five year wait, Playboi Carti has finally released his much-anticipated album “MUSIC,” and the wait was absolutely not worth it. The album is a mess, totaling 30 uninspired songs with zero progression. Every transition is a jarring move into a different style, ending up feeling more like a poor mixtape than an album from an established rapper.
Playboi Carti first rose into the rap scene in 2017 with his single “Magnolia,” before releasing his self-titled debut mixtape the same year. His second album, “Die Lit” debuted at no. 3 on the Billboard 200, but his biggest success was with his third album, “Whole Lotta Red.” In the past few years he has released multiple singles and collaborated with Travis Scott, Kanye West, and the Weeknd, all while postponing his album “MUSIC” for multiple years.
The album opens with “POP OUT.” It’s one of the best songs on the album, with a great beat, and a few great verses, but it gets dragged down by some repetitive and poorly rapped verses. “RATHER LIE” with the Weeknd is another of the best songs, delivering the same R&B and rap combination that we saw with the Weeknd and Carti’s other collaboration, “Timeless.” It does leave something to be desired though, with Playboi Carti being almost absent from the song besides some backing vocals.
A general trend for this album is that the best songs are the ones with features. “CRUSH” is probably the best song on the album, creating a really amazing almost orchestral sound with the epic production and reverberating lyrics. “GOOD CREDIT” has a really great Kendrick Lamar verse, with some actual lyrical interest beyond Carti’s odd ramblings. Overall the features help to break up the lackluster lyrics and delivery of this slog of an album.
I think that the production of the album is actually really good, especially with the more industrial sounding beats like “POP OUT” and “OLYMPIAN,” although the latter let me down a little bit with Carti’s singing. I feel like he didn’t do the beat justice, and didn’t flow very well, leading to just a bit of a mediocre performance. There are times when it’s the fault of the producer however, like on “OPM BABI”, which is certainly the worst song on the album. DJ Swamp Izzo, the producer, plays his producer tag over six times, and utilizes an awful boom or gunshot noise that permeates the song at the worst possible times, completely off beat.
The album overall was a huge letdown, completely not worth the five year wait. It was a disjointed mess of an album that should have been half the length. The highs were mediocre at best and the lows were some of the worst songs I’ve heard in a long time. Carti tried to do too much with the album, and ended up doing too little with each song. He spent five years on this album, and probably should have spent more time on it. Next time Carti, just don’t release it.
