It’s also the point in which you start to feel like you’d rather be listening to a whole project of Carti with Rocky instead of solo endeavor, as they complement each other well. When Rocky’s verse kicks off (“ I roll up an L in the lobby, my partner’s got wops and it’s probably a Glock or a Tommy”) it’s both the project’s first and last instance of being drawn in by actual rapping. Harry Fraud)īy far the most sonically aggressive and intimidating track, “New Choppa” is warped and destabilizing. Clocking in at 15 tracks, Carti just effectively doubled his output to date. The project (album? mixtape?) features mentor and Mob boss A$AP Rocky, diminutive partner-in-refusing-to-rhyme Lil Uzi Vert and Santa Monica singer/songwriter/producer Leven Kali, along with production from Harry Fraud, Hit-Boy, Pierre Bourne and 808 Mafia’s Southside and Chris Fresh, among others. The longer the wait for a Carti tape lasted, the more his fans wanted it.Īfter years of waiting, Playboi Carti finally, actually came through for his throes of Supreme-clad fans with his first full-length release, appropriately titled Playboi Carti. The answer-beyond “Broke Boi” sounding like a fire somehow raging inside an ice block-is that Carti’s could-care-less attitude and refusal to bow to consumer demand took on almost mythical proportions to a generation of young hypebeasts used to getting any and every desire quenched immediately and without question. And for someone who seemed more content making fashion week appearances and mingling with models and tastemakers than pursuing a music career, Carti barely posted to social media, a far cry from the attention-seeking crowd he hung around.Ī musician who didn’t release music? A rapper who didn’t rap? A millennial trendsetter who went months without posting to Instagram? Who is Playboi Carti, and why did so many people care to find out? 1 combined didn’t even amount to your standard 16-bar verse more ad libs than focused bars. His two high-profile “features” on A$AP Mob’s Cozy Tapes Vol. Championed by the youth as the next big thing in rap, Carti has actively avoided putting out new raps, dropping only a few tracks of his own and popping up on only a handful of guest spots. Moving seamlessly from an alignment with Awful Records to A$AP Mob, Carti has spent the last two years since his breakout SoundCloud hit “Broke Boi” (and to a lesser but meaningful extent “Fetti”) as an enigma.
Unlike his musical peers, though, Carti has, up until this point, appeared completely unconcerned with, you know, actually releasing music. The designer-draped Atlanta wunderkind has long been slotted as one of the Four Horsemen of the Rap-pocalypse, causing traditional heads to shudder and wonder "What would Biggie say?" alongside fellow “unlyrical” new school torchbearers Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage. I was beginning to think Playboi Carti might never actually release a project.