World-famous rapper Playboi Carti finally released his long awaited album “MUSIC” on March 14 after a four-year wait and countless delays.
Atlanta-based rapper Playboi Carti debuted his first studio album in 2017 and took off in the music world with tracks such as “Magnolia”,” Location”, and “wokeuplikethis*.” He then went on to release “Die Lit” one year later which is considered by many to be his best album and “WLR” in 2020 which was a controversial album when released but is now looked on as some of Carti’s best work.
“MUSIC” has been highly anticipated by fans for years now, with Carti first hinting at the album in 2021 after his “Whole Lotta Red” album. He then announced a stadium world tour called the Antagonist tour which included him and his rap label Opium who also gained huge followings over the past years. During this time Carti continued to hint at a new album and when the time came for the tour he delayed it and then eventually canceled it months later. Carti Fans were outraged by this and he began to build a reputation as a liar. Carti then released “2024” on YouTube on Dec. 14 2023 further building hype for the album. Carti released a couple of more songs on YouTube but a big breakthrough happened when he released the song “ALL RED”, convincing fans the album would drop soon, possibly on Halloween or on Christmas which is when “WLR” was released. The fans were once again wrong and finally six months later in March of 2025 Playboi Carti announced his fourth studio album “MUSIC” to drop at midnight of March 14. The album did drop that night, but in usual Playboi Carti fashion, was three hours late and was received with mixed reviews by the public.
After listening to “MUSIC” for the first time the album earms a solid 6.7 . Some of the best tracks on this album include “Toxic”,”HBA”, and “2024.” Production on these songs was phenomenal and Travis Scott had multiple great features over various types of beats. The only thing wrong with the album are some weak songs that are sloppy and just don’t fit into the album. Songs such as “Munyun”, “Opm Babi”, and “Twin Trim” which were outright some of the worst songs Carti has ever produced. Playboi Cartis new producer DJ Swamp Izzo flooded some of these songs with adlibs that just made them unlistenable. Also unsuccessful was the way Carti changed some songs by adding a minute-long intro to “Evil J0rdan”, and adding extra sound effects to “HBA” along with removing lyrics.
Features on this album covered the extreme ends of quality; they were either great or horrible. Some of the good features include Skepta on “Toxic”, Travis Scott on all five songs he was on, Young Thug and Ty Dolla on “We Need All Da Vibes” , and Future on “Charge Dem Hoes a Fee”. The bad features on this album include Kendrick Lamar on both songs he was on, adding weird adlibs and just not matching the beat nor the flow, and Lil Uzi Vert who was on two songs that were just average. There was nothing special to his features and every song he was on was just average.
Overall this album is very good but had the potential to be more. It has some of the highest highs but some of the lowest lows but the good most definitely outweighs the bad. Carti’s new relationship with DJ Swamp Izzo outright ruined songs on the album with just his ad libs alone. Some songs on this album such as “Toxic”, “Philly”, “HBA”, “2024”, “Backr00MS”,and “Evil J0rdan” all could be rated nine or higher and the replayability on these songs is a ten out of ten without a doubt. Similar to “WLR” this album will grow on people more as time goes on. For the hype that followed this three-year build up for the album it could have done a lot better. I think it is clear that Carti did not even start working on this album until late 2024 which is why it feels a little bit rushed and some of the songs are just bad and boring. Whilst this album is good, it is not Carti’s best work.
