Following over four years of teasers, roll-outs and fit pics, Playboi Carti has finally released his long-awaited album “MUSIC,” a 30-track behemoth spanning over 70 minutes of material.
Carti has positioned himself as one of the most in-demand artists in the industry, with his 2020 album “Whole Lotta Red” being seen as one of the most influential releases of the decade in the genre, but does “MUSIC” compare?
The tracklist length must be addressed first – 30 songs is a lot. That said, the album was always going to be long. Carti’s rabid, passionate fanbase has waited so long for a new release, it would’ve been hard to sell them too much less. Overall, however, the quality is there.
“MUSIC” feels like an amalgamation of Carti’s sounds throughout his career. Tracks like the opener “POP OUT,” “CRANK,” and “COCAINE NOSE” feel like expound-upon versions of the blown-out aggression of “Whole Lotta Red,” while moments like “RATHER LIE” with The Weeknd and “BACKD00R” with Kendrick Lamar and Jhené Aiko show the melodic capabilities of the best moments on his 2018 debut album “Die Lit.”
More so than any previous Carti record, the featured performers pad this album out quite a bit. The aforementioned Kendrick Lamar, following the biggest year of his career, has three features on “MUSIC,” with two being credited on “BACKD00R” and “GOOD CREDIT,” also doing notable ad-libs on “MOJO JOJO.”
Travis Scott contributed four performances on “MUSIC” of varying degrees of quality, and you also see appearances from Future, Lil Uzi Vert, Skepta and more. Highlights include Lamar’s fiery verse on “GOOD CREDIT,” Future’s consistent triplets on “TRIM” and Young Thug’s summer-ready hook on “WE NEED ALL DA VIBES.”
Carti’s lyricism is rarely the focus of his listeners and, despite the occasional reflections like “Came a long way, still can’t believe I made Forbes,” on “MUNYUN” or actually acknowledging his children on the standout “HBA,” he regularly resorts to obtuse drug use and his intense need to be surrounded by the hottest women imaginable – fun topics to have on in the background, but rarely the purpose of listening to a Playboi Carti album.
Production highlights include the EDM inspired “I SEEEEEE YOU BABY BOI,” the Hot Boys-sampling “LIKE WEEZY” and the dark, brooding “HBA.”
Selling nearly 300,000 units in the first week, “MUSIC” is the highest-selling rap album of 2025 so far, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, with tracks “EVIL J0RDAN” and “RATHER LIE” debuting at number 2 and number 4 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.
Playboi Carti’s “MUSIC” is not a perfect album – far from it, actually – but this bloated, personality-filled record serves as a true representation of where Carti came from and where he is now.
You get every version of his style so far throughout the 30 tracks and again, not all of those are worth having on record, but it’s an impressive snapshot of where Carti is creatively right now.
