Hi, everyone. Chartthony Toptano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Playboi Carti album, MUSIC.

Here we have a brand new LP from rapper, songwriter, in demand artist, hip hop's current It Boy, Mr. Playboy Carti. Coming through with a project that is almost five years in the making, MUSIC.

Really one of the most highly anticipated releases in recent memory. You do have to give it to those Carti fans. Their devotion to him may borderline on disturbing sometimes, but they're at least patient enough to have stuck with him while this record came together. Certainly, many fanbases would have moved on at this point, having waited so many years, especially with so many copycat artists these days flooding the zone with their own mid to respectable takes on Carti's trademark sound, the aggressive, distorted, cycling, trippy beats he tends to favor, his experimental approach to flows and vocal inflections, the dark, elusive and mysterious ways in which he presents himself, too. All of which he slowly developed after having blown up off of his self-titled mixtape back in 2017.

But even with Carti's last official full-length album being almost five years old at this point, his many imitators haven't even come close to lapping him in terms of relevancy. And that is despite a very frustrated fan base being subjected to countless leaks, teases, album title changes, singles, pushbacks, weak features, and for some reason, fit pics.

But then all of a sudden, we got MUSIC here, which was just announced in a flash last week, dropped the following Friday, and now it's here. And despite there having been so much time for this project to incubate effectively, it still sounds so rushed and inconsistent. I mean, in some ways, not much has really changed since the release of Carti's last record, Whole Lotta Red in 2020. Because, and I know many would disagree with this, that album in its own right was a pretty inconsistent disjointed project. I mean, among its 24 songs, there really was no through line guiding all of the tracks overall. I mean, a majority of the tracks on this thing didn't even sound mixed and mastered the same as quite a few were actually quite painful to listen to.

By comparison, I will say the overall mix job on music here is slightly better. Even "Cocaine Nose", which sounds like an ultra-distorted throwback to the Whole Lotta Red era with a looped metal guitar licks and all. The track "Opium Baby", I would say, it feels like it could have come from that same album, too, to an extent.

And, yeah, throughout the rest of the album, there are some familiar Cartiisms here and there, like the track "Olympian" sounds like something that could have been one of the synthier cuts to land on his 2017 Die Lit album. That is, if it were updated with his throatier, froggier delivery style that he's been favoring as of late.

But honestly, tracks like these are more the exception than the rule. In this very hefty 30 song tracklist, whose worst moments sound near effortless and pretty thrown together. Look, I know there are some hype standouts and singles and big features in this album that have been a huge point of discussion around on this album for sure. But we cannot allow those flashes in the pan to 100% dictate all the discourse around this album. Because, again, there are 30 songs on this project, and they all collect relatively contribute to this album's overall quality.

Looking at this project as a whole, I feel like I'm pulling up the floorboards on a house and just seeing termites just devastating all of the wood that the entire house is built on. Because once again, like with a Whole Lotta Red, and that album was packed with all that "vamp" shit and so on and so forth.

With MUSIC, I just don't really feel like there's a lot of vision pulling these songs together because they're either so short and directionless and underdeveloped that their inclusion on this album is insulting, or I'm just left feeling like Carti and company could have just done more with the track "We Need All the Vibes", for example, is a track that just sounds like an old, stale, Young Thug summer jam that was sitting in the vault, and Playboi Carti just contributed a couple bars to the second half of it, and that's it.

There's also "Rather Lie" featuring The Weeknd, which sounds like the other side of a coin we already caught wind of from "Timeless" on Abel's recent full-length album. It's like they came up with two variations on the same song idea, and I think Carti got the weaker of the two variations here.

There's "Twin Trim" featuring Lil Uzi Vert as well, which this track doesn't even have a Carti verse on it. It just seems like a bunch of synths and groups from the Lil Uzi Vert vsthe World era, but it's somehow landing on this album for some reason. I've seen it described as an interlude, but an interlude from what to what? Because it just sounds like one more ungroomed random song in a sea of other ungroomed random songs. This isn't even the worst Uzi Vert track on the record. There's also the song "Jumping", which feels like one of those tracks that you get on a posthumous record after a rapper has passed away and a label tasks two or three producers with assembling a track out of a leftover verse or something that was just in the vault. Just chop a few lines together, get them all punched in, and then after that, just repeat a few so that it makes a refrain or a chorus and just extend it out so it feels like a song. It's like I'm hearing a Frankenstein monster being assembled of a bunch of different random lines rather than a full and complete verse. Of course, filling in the gaps here and there, we have Swamp Izzo, who is screaming all over this record, and I will mention again a little bit later into the review.

But yeah, from here, we have more tracks on the record that sound rushed and short-winded, but just shouldn't be. Like "Toxic" featuring Skepta, who is obviously a very interesting feature inclusion for this record, but the song that he's on just trails right off as soon as he appears.

The songs "Walk", "Over Early", and "Dis 1 Got It", sound like short, incomplete future demos. Meanwhile, the track "Charge Dem Hoes a Fee" actually does have Future on it. I don't think I've ever heard a song with this much star power because it does have Future. It does have Carti. It has Travis Scott on it as well. Yeah, all those names, and yet the whole thing sounds like it was produced and assembled on a moldy potato.

We also have other tracks like "Fine Shit" as well as "Philly", which also features Travis Scott. These are more tracks that feel less like songs and more like rough sketches of songs. Because I mean, as much as Travis and Future and Thugger and Kanye may obviously be very big influences on his sound and his style, he very much lacks the follow-through to really pull together a sound and a song and a vision in the way that they have in the past. We are not talking about Utopia or DS2 or Jeffrey levels of focus here. If anything, we're in like that Donda 2 ballpark, which, mind you, I do think there is a certain appeal in that in some of the most weird, wild, and exciting tracks this album has to offer, like on the opening track, "Pop Out", where Carti sounds absolutely insane with production that features all of these hyper-distorted ringing synthesizers, splashy pieces of percussion, and also Carti's raspy, screamed verses and choruses to, pop out, pop out. He's absolutely out of control on this track and does a great job of channeling this pure visceral energy when he wants to.

The following track, "Crush", I thought was also a highlight, and while this one may not necessarily be like a genius feat of songwriting, it does feature a crazy combination of disparate sounds that make for a pretty unique experience with Carti's whispering flows, these sliding Game Boy type lead synth melodies, grand gospel style choruses, very rigid, almost industrial type hip hop beats, some very aggressive 808s, too. It's total dystopian chaos.

Now, compare that to "K-pop", which the album flows into immediately after. And with that track's more skeletal layers, the atmospheric synthesizers, Carti's squeaky vocal delivery. I mean, the song is passably eerie, but it just doesn't really feel like it's bringing that much to the table, especially on this very abrupt ending. Compare that to the following "Evil Jordan", which I do think on some level is a step up, sure, as Carti's performance on the mic actually does sound organic rather than piece together. His allusions to being in his rock star and emo phase right now are cute. The beat actually builds up some momentum on the groove side. The hype Swamp Izzo adlibs are very aggressive and attention grabbing. There's something about that stuttering, repeating, shrill little synth line that stands out among all the other beats here, too.

But beyond that, I feel like once again, with this cut, we are just overselling what is actually being delivered to us here. Because while, yes, it is slightly weirder than the average track you'll get out there in the mainstream these days, is it substantively interesting? Not really. And is it detailed and layered enough to warrant repeating all that many times? No, absolutely not.

However, I forgot in this section of the review, I think I'm supposed to be talking about the highlights on the album. There is "Mojo Jojo", which is a Kendrick Lamar highlight where Kenny mostly provides adlibs on the track in a very odd intro where he's almost worshiping Carti in a weird way. Oh, yeah, I need that Carti, my favorite Carti, that alien Carti. I need that Carti, you know. The chemistry between both of them on the track is very odd and forced. It's like Kendrick is trying to create that weird Baby Keem, kooky, crossover type of energy. But I just don't really feel like, creatively speaking, he has that rapport with Carti. It doesn't work in the same way on this track, especially with Carti taking himself as seriously as he does.

"Backdoor" is another track on the record that features Kendrick Lamar, more Kendrick Lamar, frankly. It's like we're being subjected to one of his smoother ballad-type cuts over a beat that sounds lifted straight out of the Drake, Nothing was the Same era, which I think Carti's very spotty, inconsistent flows failed to dominate the space of. But yeah, as far as Kendrick's contribution on this track goes, it's less than stellar. I feel like he's dropped at least several very key and impressive tracks in a similar style as of late, be it "Luther" or "30 for 30". I feel like those tracks would have had to have been just absolutely disappointing crud for me to think of this track more than twice after I'm done recording this review.

There's also "Good Credit", too, as far as Kendrick Lamar features are concerned on this project. On this one, Kendrick is at least more in his rat bag, actually delivering a verse. It's the most impressive of the three tracks here that I'm mentioning. There's a great key change in the cut as well. But I feel like, once again, Kendrick is operating at a lower gear than usual and almost trying to match Carti's super inconsistent flow style, allowing for the beat and the adlibs to take over and interrupt him at points. The whole thing feels like a straight up flex, maybe an extension to one degree or another. The recent victory lap he's been on post his Drake beef. That is until he starts going on about Playboy Carti being his evil twin, which not only feels weird because on some level it is odd and hypocritical of Kendrick Lamar posturing morally as much as he has in recent months to be collaborating with Carti this deeply and unabashedly on these tracks. I don't think he's calling him his evil twin for no reason, but even that, I feel like he's giving Carti too much credit, because I feel like even an evil twin version of Kendrick Lamar could give us a solid 16 on a track like this, and we're not even getting that.

Look, not to single out Kendrick Lamar. Obviously, I expected more from him going into this project, but honestly, I don't think any guest on this record brings a particularly great feature performance. I mean, Travis Scott brings quite a few guest performances to this record, and even what he offers, I feel like, is pretty average by his usual standards. I mean, all things considered, it truly is Swamp Izzo who sounds the most excited to be on this. Every other appearance from every other person, even Carti, much of the time, just comes across as repetitive, casual, low stakes, low energy, which, yeah, when those are the standards Carti is setting for his own record, why wouldn't everybody else follow suit?

Okay, I swear there are some highlights on this record. There's "Crank", which I feel like is a prime example of Carti when he is at his best here and giving us tracks that essentially sound like the rap equivalent equivalent to a chaotic horror movie soundtrack.

There's "Like Weezy", which I enjoyed quite a bit as well and features this very prominent sample of Rich Kidz' "Bend Over" with its very bright, cheery, super sweet lead melodies, which let Carti come at the track with a happy-go-lucky, almost silly type of energy, especially with bars on here where he's going on about a spitting on a bitch like Pac. He sounds absolutely just out of his mind on this song.

There's also "HBA", which is another moment in the tracklist where I feel like Carti is most definitely channeling some high otherworldly energy over a hype instrumental where he's just purely operating off of intuition, a gut feeling, and that's it. Again, moments like these are where this album truly feels locked into its greatest strengths.

The issue is, though, that is not where most of the album is at. As much of this record is unfocused, is sloppy, is inconsistent, rushed, thrown together, messily pieced together.

Yeah, Carti really managed to give us an album on this one that makes a record as bloated and as all over the place as Whole Lotta Red sound like it actually really truly had a point to it, which is why I'm feeling a strong 3 to a light 4 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Playboy Carti. Forever.