Review Summary: That's too much, man.
Playboi Carti’s music is divisive, to put it mildly. It’s brash, loud, psychedelic, and, crucially, it’s very, very dumb. That’s a feature, not a bug, and anyone who points out otherwise is kind of missing the point. I spend the majority of my workday having no less than three screens of varying importance in front of me, often throwing audio from a youtube video or podcast in for good measure. My brain is fried beyond belief. It’s cathartic to throw on something that can approximate this headspace and vocal stim something nonsensical like "jumpoutthehousejumpoutthehousejumpoutthehous e" without fear of reprisal. While I may not be the target audience for his sophomoric and immature material (I’m nearly two years removed from alcohol and in my mid-thirties), I like to think that I still
get it.
Playboi Carti’s
Music is divisive, to put it mildly. It’s brash, loud, psychedelic, and, crucially, it’s very, very dumb. It also comes after a lengthy wait involving false promises, name changes, and possible restarts, heightening expectations to a place where they would never be met. Predictably, they aren’t, but that’s more damning of the audience than Carti himself, who allegedly is only finally dropping this project due to legal and financial obligations. There’s a gargantuan tracklist, with its thirty songs spanning a laughable hour and seventeen minutes. It’s very clear that this is less of an artistic statement and more of a Mr. Beast endurance challenge.
But Mr. Beast challenges can still be fun, too, supposedly. Whatever the motives of creation and despite the (alleged) heinous actions of its creators, the only thing that truly matters with these sorts of braindead productions is where the spectacle lands on the mid-fire binary.
Here, the answer is maybe mostly fire, but it’s still hard to say. On a song-by-song basis, things fare pretty well. “POP OUT” is a natural evolution on the warped explosions of
Whole Lotta Red and it’s hard to deny the gleefully stupid contrast of Playstation 1 sound design with a full blown church choir belting out “shorty gonna let me crush” on “CRUSH.” Kendrick Lamar makes three different appearances ranging in effort but are all pretty fun, “GOOD CREDIT” being the best. “COCAINE NOSE” has the welcome revelation of being a deep-fried flip of the Goldeneye 64 menu music. The Weeknd makes an appearance on “RATHER LIE” and you can practically feel his relief that he made it out the other side from his cosmically boring,
Hurry Up Tomorrow. “LIKE WEEZY” and “WE NEED ALL DA VIBES” get favorable marks as well, but I can’t quite remember why without hitting play.
And that’s really the problem here: the portions are completely out of control. While tuning out and vibing is a large part of the appeal, you can only do that for so long before checking your watch and remembering responsibilities. 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. It’s not easy to tell which is which with a cursory scan, because the sound design here is rather forward thinking and impressive, making the duds feel like a waste of a decent idea. Luckily, there are instances like the Travis Scott appearances that make this easier to discern because they easily suck, but it’s still an exhausting experience that requires far too much work and attention to parse for being a vibey, psychedelic experience. And yes, there is the stinky stench of Carti’s allegations that adds to the general malaise, which just does not make the effort feel worth it.
Whether or not Carti’s music is your thing,
Music will provide you more than enough (see: too ***ing much) ammunition for your feelings when you strip it down to its raw materials. Maybe this will be another project of his that ultimately ages like wine and finds his artistic pursuits legitimized by copycats and critical reappraisal. But five years is an eternity in today’s attention economy, and he has provided nary a Family Guy compilation or Subway Surfers gameplay clip in that span.
Music is music, as advertised -- he just never specified that it was good.
