Playboi Carti Deepens His Gen Z Rap Dominance

At 30 tracks that span an hour and 16 minutes, I Am Music is the long-awaited banquet of fresh – or, at the very least, reheated – Playboi Carti material that fans have clamored for. The Atlanta rapper’s prior album, 2020’s Whole Lotta Red, currently stands as a foundational text for dozens if not hundreds of extremely online acts that mimic his talent for transmogrifying his voice into odd shapes over blurry, cartoon-ish melodies. Without naming and shaming his many imitators (and inspiring angry social media posts as a result), none approach their craft with the level of imagination and creativity that Carti does. Even when he slips into an uninspired chant or exhausts with his monomaniacal focus on drugs, women, cars, and taunting opps, he still magnetizes as a wholly unique pop star.

But while Carti fascinated on Whole Lotta Red with his ability to shift into a scabrously raw flow that seemed partly inspired by his then-recent breakup with partner Iggy Azalea, I Am Music finds him decidedly aware of his potential as a generational talent. The title alludes to Lil Wayne’s ethos and 2023 greatest hits compilation I Am Music. Much of its contents have been teased through social media posts and Rolling Loud concert performances; leaked by hackers; or, in the case of “Evil J0rdan” and “HBA” (previously titled “H00d By Air”), issued as stand-alone singles. There are a handful of moments where synthesized washes burble and soar, the net effect of arena lights splashing onto a crowd of thousands. “Evil J0rdan” gets a new synthesized intro that evokes the feeling of watching someone hoisted into the sky on wire harnesses. As Carti stands on the mountaintop, he finds himself looking back at his journey and inspirations as well as admiring the view and puzzling over his inevitable descent. “I’m working on dying,” he says at the beginning of “Dis 1 Got It.”

I Am Music’s host is DJ Swamp Izzo, an Atlanta DJ who emerged in the late Aughts and helmed Young Thug’s early mixtapes. Thugger, Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert all make multiple cameos and, importantly, all spend time contributing ad-libs for Carti’s raps, a sign of how important his vision has become. (One of Young Thug’s appearances, “We Need All the Vibes,” is taken from a demo he made before he was incarcerated in 2022.) “Had a white bitch like (Yes) Julz, but she ain’t a model,” chants Carti on “Mojo Jojo” as Lamar adds, “But she a what?” Their frequent appearances conjure an intimate feel, like gaming and smoking with your friends during an all-night session. Meanwhile, Skepta delivers a killer verse on “Toxic.” When he raps, “I study the streets, how you gonna war with a genius” in his stentorian British voice, he adds much needed ballast to a vibe that often feels overly wavy, and internet addled.

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If Playboi Carti has mostly escaped the kind of “mumble rap” epithets that old heads use to belittle the Gen-Z horde, it’s because his gesticulations, which may be inspired by living with asthma, are so unequivocally impressive. He shifts his tone from track to track so dramatically that he often sounds like a completely different person. The croaky emissions of “Jumpin’” evokes, as Pitchfork’s Olivier Lafontant put it, “tweaking off

drugs in dark rooms.” He phlegmatically gasps for air on “Pop Out” as he hoarsely shouts, “Every time we pop out got them bitches nervous!” He crustily mutters like Future so convincingly on “Dis 1 Got It” that one wonders if it’s really the latter. Then, of course, there’s his famed baby-like voice that he deployed to excellent effect on past work like 2018’s Die Lit. Here, it’s revived for “Fine Shit.”

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. On the surface, it’s utterly engrossing, no matter that some songs such as “Wake Up F1lthy” and “Charge Dem Hoes a Fee” falter from mundanity while others like “OPM Babi” scintillate with weirdly alluring funk. Yet I Am Music’s “trim” – to quote the automotive-inspired slang Carti often repeats – isn’t pretty enough to divert attention from what may or may not be underneath the hood.

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Like so much of rap, Carti’s choice of words reflects an obsession with male power dynamics, where women, cars, and drugs are accrued and consumed as ornaments of power. A noted exception to this is “Rather Lie,” a track that begins with a sappy chorus by The Weeknd, continues with a typical Carti boast about “bagging” a “cougar,” then surprisingly shifts into a query: “Opposites attract, how you get happy then get mad?” It’s a fleeting sign that people in real life struggle to maintain romantic relationships; more typical here when he raps, “Got a bitch wanna fuck on the gang/Put a stain on the floor” on “K-Pop.” 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 adopting proudly antisemitic renegade Kanye “Ye” West, who co-produces “Backd00r,” as a mentor – Carti earned his first Billboard chart-topping single due to West’s 2024 track “Carnival” – to flirting with dark and satanic imagery in his innumerable IG clips, I Am Music reflects an environment where power, coercion, and violence dictate who wins.

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If I Am Music has real problems, it’s not just that it’s overlong, an acceptable if not necessarily enjoyable symptom of the genre. (Most projects these days seem to have a too-short 30-minute runtime or ramble on for hours.) Carti’s a sonic theorist, yet his lyrics vacillate between pure, joyous expression and manifestations of deeper pathos that he’s not quite capable of exploring. On “HBA,” he mentions that he’s had three children, briefly summoning an image of a father cranking out hits to fuel the kind of generational wealth he didn’t have when he was younger. “I’m a crack baby, ho, I was raised off dope,” he reveals on “South Atlanta Baby.” (The trope mirrors the late Young Dolph’s controversial single “In My System.”) How does that kind of childhood reflect the choices he makes now?

Perhaps it’s too much to ask for someone who already dazzles as a sonic theorist to give more than what he’s already generously provided. Regardless, it’s the challenge that Carti faces now that I Am Music is finally here, leaving him with a new journey to embark on. “See, this gonna feel like the end of the world to a lot of you fuck niggas. To my day ones, it’s a new beginning,” shouts DJ Swamp Izzo on “Walk.” Hopefully, that’s a promise.