Playboi Carti Enters His Pushing-30 Era

I’m almost 30 and I constantly worry about becoming an old hip-hop fan, losing patience with the aggro rap of the new kids, and getting mired in the past. Every time I catch myself, on cloudy days, reverting to the music of my teenage days, of my college team, I stop. I make it a point to continue to discover new artists and stream new music. I’m good at this, better than most people my age. When you grow up with Kanye West in his prime, early Young Thug, Future, early Drake—icons of the most innovative hip-hop era—it’s tempting to be nostalgic with that and become complacent. But you shouldn’t. I’m not saying hip-hop is at its highest point, but it’ll get back there. Keep listening to these new dudes; a unicorn always comes when you least expect it to.

Playboi Carti, 28 (or 29, per Wikipedia), is around the same age as me, so I suspect that he struggles with this as well, despite being one of the greatest rappers of this era—the post-Barter 6 and post-Yeezus era. Who is Carti but an arbiter and translator of taste and ambition? Who is he but the child of Kanye West’s high art dreams, Young Thug’s mystery, Young Jeezy’s ad-libs, and Future’s wounded masculinity? I wondered, when he first came out with the piercingly bouncy “Magnolia,” how his music would progress. Would he go maximally mainstream? Or, would he be the next Gucci Mane, using street aesthetics to craft a kind of absurdity that punched the mainstream in its chest? Carti’s act showed how possible it is to be indebted to your creators but to put your own ferocious spin on their work so that you become original by sheer force. Whether it was the propulsive Die Lit or Whole Lotta Red, he was excellent at making skull-shattering music, allowing pandemic-weary fans to latch onto his disarmingly illogical but sincere music.

His new album, Music, exists in the space between mainstream and hyper specific Atlanta rap music. Some of the results are fantastic; some of them are disappointing. On first listen, you might believe that Music is Carti’s Wu-Tang Forever or Life After Death or The Recession—lengthy albums that might have confused critics when they first came out but become favorites for expert fans. But where those records are messy in their experiments and novel ideas, Carti is reverting to a Spotify-backed superstardom that is the antithesis to his most penetrating music. This one contains his worst instincts; it’s as if his auteurism was focus-grouped. For every great track, there is something that just doesn’t work, that mystifies people—this writer, a fan, included. “Pop Out,” which sounds like an airplane’s engine blowing out in a cloud, is a rage-rap record indebted to some of the work OsamaSon and Nettspend are doing. “Crush” is reminiscent of “Beno” on Whole Lotta Red—but the Kanye choirs make me roll my eyes. I do understand why My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy would have a hold on Carti—it’s a solipsistic concept record from an ambitious, much-maligned Black man—but this feels like the first time Carti has sounded of a certain time. Usually time stops when listening to Carti. He has let nostalgia overtake him. “Philly” gives Travis Scott too much country, despite Carti’s charming verse. “WE NEED ALL DA VIBES” could be a summer smash, but it’s an obvious bid for the radio.

No song is being debated more than “EVILJ0RDAN,” which was released as a loosie in 2024. It is re-purposed as the fourth song on this record, and it features a long intro that fans aren’t feeling. At first, I wondered if they didn’t understand that the track is an obvious callback to “Devil In a New Dress” or “Runaway”—big songs with sentimental instrumental middle sections—but now I think that it’s the first cheesy thing Carti has done in his career. Kanye West partly worked as an artist because of how hard he tried. His striving overachiever mentality became inspiring for all the kids ignored by people cooler than them. In a post-Ye world, that style of music works less: the geek has already inherited the earth. Still, Carti really knows how to use his voice; this album works best when he is almost freestyling, bending structure and creating melodies that are impossible to replicate. He raps “MOJO JOJO” as if he’s hoarse, which allows him to have some fun with Kendrick Lamar’s unnecessary ad-libs. The glee with which he says “she’s a different breed” could be a meme. “OPM BABI” is excellent, oddly sensual, and explosive, the kind of weird song that you found on 1017 Thug and Carti’s own Die Lit; “LIKE WEEZY” is the first song you hear in metrosexual heaven; “OLYMPIAN” is startlingly patient and pleasant; “Wake Up F1thy” is an imperial march.

If Carti ever experiences tranquility of the mind, us listeners will never be able to hear it. I spoke to him for Billboard last year, and it was clear to me that at this stage of his life he wanted to be known as an Atlanta artist. Was that goal too nakedly gratifying? Carti was once Atlanta without having to “prove” it. This album is appetizing, frustrating and full of scoundrelism, out-of-control lyrics about guns, money, chains, high fashion, and women. Carti frequently fills his albums with sawed-off vocals, vocals that sound like he rapped with a razor blade stuck in his teeth; vocals that might want to intimidate but instead become rallying cries for young music fans ready to riot after weeks of isolation. Take his Rolling Loud performance last weekend. Carti’s music isn’t beholden to the festival stage, but it certainly adds to its mystique with the fires—striking lights that aim to make a concert look like a secret society. To be a fan of Carti is to want to test the quality of the music via the live event. Fans didn’t quite know the new music word for word as well as they have in the past sets. However, judging from the spark in the crowd, the screams when well-known songs begin, Carti remains a relentless superstar, a megalomaniacal one who values the spectacle in a way that hip-hop should be grateful for. Welcome to the Playboi Carti experience: it might have been wobbly, but the reverberations have just begun.