Jordan Terrell Carter, known professionally as Playboi Carti, is one of my favorite artists — not just rappers, but artists, period.
It has been three years since “Whole Lotta Red,” his last album, which came out Christmas Day 2020.
For the past month, he has been teasing “MUSIC,” his upcoming record, dropping five singles on social media: “Ur the Moon/Different Day,” “2024,” “H00DBYAIR,” “BACKR00MS (ft. Travis Scott)” and “EVILJ0RDAN.”
It is, by far, the weirdest album rollout I have ever seen. None of the singles are on Spotify or Apple Music — or any streaming service, for that matter — only Instagram and YouTube. Carti is not using his personal Instagram account, @playboicarti, to promote “MUSIC” or the singles; he is using his label, Opium’s, @opium_00pium, which effectively functions as his burner.
A single post is all that populates his main page; meanwhile, captions of “#IAMMUSIC,” “2024” and “IAMATLANTA” fill his other. Before releasing a single, he posts a video of an unidentifiable man yelling, “Carti dropping tonight,” his face covered by black and white text stating when fans, like myself, should refresh the app. Hours later, after listeners have shared their thoughts on the song across various social media channels and message boards, he puts up a Story which reads, “KEEP STREAMING; I’LL DROP ANOTHER.”
Although the album still does not have an official release date, it has been more than two weeks since the last of the singles, all of which came out within days of each other. It feels like the record is right around the corner. The word “feels” is important here; you never know with Carti.
Assuming I am, in fact, right, and this is all of the singles, here are my rankings of all five:
- “EVILJ0RDAN”
“EVILJ0RDAN,” the most recent of the singles, is not a bad song — not by a longshot. But I heard a snippet of it on TikTok before it came out, and that snippet happens to be the best part of the track, in my opinion. DJ Swamp Izzo’s production is, by far, the standout here. Carti’s performance is not underwhelming per se, but he does not pack as much into the single’s two-minute runtime as he does the other four. If this is, in fact, the last of them, it is a bit underwhelming as a “closer.”
- “2024”
A standout because of Kanye West’s co-producer credit and Carti’s mid-song voice change, “2024” is one of the most dynamic, if not the most dynamic, of the five singles. The first half of the song features Carti’s “normal” voice, while the second showcases the deeper voice he introduced on Travis Scott’s “FE!N.” Personally, I think it is a bit of a lull compared to the other songs, but structurally, it might be the most interesting of them all.
- “BACKR00MS (ft. Travis Scott)”
Scott is the only artist featured on any of the five singles, which is fitting, as his rage banger “FE!N” is one of the only songs in recent memory Carti has been featured on. Both Carti and Scott deliver relaxed, laid-back flows over a dreamy, spacey beat. And both give great performances, but Scott’s verse is terrific. Again, it is perfect. Carti felt like the best part of “FE!N”; Scott feels like the best part of “BACKR00MS.”
- “Ur the Moon/Different Day”
“Ur the Moon/Different Day,” the first single, is a personal favorite of mine, but it feels like it has not quite caught on with Carti’s fan base as a whole. Maybe it is because the song features one voice, and that is Carti’s high-pitched, so-called “baby voice,” which I know many find annoying and whiny. I happen to be a big fan of it.
- “H00DBYAIR”
The best of the singles in terms of both production and performance, in my opinion, “H00DBYAIR” has it all. I should say that all of the songs came with music videos, and this is, by far, my favorite of them. The imagery is ice-cold and menacing, which perfectly reflects the sound of the track. And the video features Destroy Lonely and Ken Carson, Opium signees and, by extension, Carti’s de facto protégés. To me, this is a top-10 Carti song.
