MUSIC: My Complete Thoughts

Playboi Carti's MUSIC is, without a doubt, my most unpleasant album-listening experience to date. Upon re-listen, my thoughts have had more time in the oven, so I'll outline my main issues here:

First, the lyrics are dogwater. Carti either doesn't know how to talk about anything besides money and sex, or he just chooses not to. Whenever he tries to be cool, it comes off as very self-unaware, dropping banger lines such as "vamp life spooky". His whole bad guy persona is very cringe to me, but his fans seem to like it, so I'll leave it at that. The lyrics are oversaturated with ad libs that are annoying at best.

On top of this, the beats are repetitive and bland. When every song opens with the same royalty-free trap beat, it makes for a very tiring listening experience. It almost put me to sleep. The songs are poorly mixed, too. Some have the beat blaring over the lyrics, others have aggressive autotune that doesn't work at all.

I was originally introduced to this album through the Kendrick features, but even Kendrick sounds worse in this album. His style doesn't blend at all with Carti's, so when he tries to mimic his lyricism, it just sounds dumb. Kendrick saying "Carti my evil twin" like he's at gunpoint is a good example. This goes for all features on the album. Carti somehow makes them all sound worse.

Since I always like to give credit where it's due, here are the songs I found to be somewhat interesting:

RATHER LIE (with The Weeknd) — Heavenly vocals from The Weeknd over a great beat. It's all fun and games until Carti comes in with his stupid ahh vocals. Overall, a good change of pace from the monotony of the rest of the album.

BACKD00R (feat. Kendrick Lamar & Jhené Aiko) — Here, Kendrick finally gets real lines instead of dumb ad libs, like in GOOD CREDIT. This and RATHER LIE are the only good features on the album. The sample is clean and fits well. As usual, Carti's verses are the only bad parts of the song.

All other 28 songs on this album are a 0/10. The main disconnect is that I came into this album expecting talent on the songwriting/production front, but I think most people like Carti as an influencer, not as a talented musician. He obviously has a target audience and has no interest in appealing to anything outside of it. This still doesn't shield him from criticism, though. On a music production standpoint alone, Carti is one of the worst of our generation. He seems very passionate and energetic, but has no substance for it to carry any meaning. And since all anyone asks of him is the same beat over and over again, he has no incentive to make something new.

1/10