After nearly five years of waiting, Playboi Carti has dropped his highly anticipated third album, titled “MUSIC”. The album contains 30 songs, which is a massive amount for any artist. Fully packed with notable features, the album is relatively hit or miss and does not truly evolve Carti’s sound like most thought it would.
The album starts off with the abrasive, screeching track “POP OUT”. This was certainly unexpected as it sounded very close to almost industrial hip-hop, which is a territory Carti has not explored yet in his studio albums.
The next track features Travis Scott, who makes a few appearances throughout the album and its lengthy tracklist. This song, titled “CRUSH,” starts off really well with a panning synth, but the beat goes relatively nowhere, and Travis and Carti both give lackluster performances.
A few tracks later comes a major highlight, the song “EVIL J0RDAN”. This song contains a well-produced intro with a beat drop capped off by a percussive 808 pattern, which transitions into the main looping beat, on which Carti does some very solid rapping.
The next few tracks are relatively boring, until arguably the best track comes on, titled “RATHER LIE”, featuring The Weeknd. This song features a vocal chop accompanied by hi-hats and drums underneath a solid bass, proving to be one of the most lush and textured tracks on the album.
The album delves into more filler for the moment, containing decently produced tracks such as “GOOD CREDIT” and “TOXIC”. The first half of the album is decent but still hit or miss in most regards.
The album immediately starts the second half strongly with “I SEEE YOU BABY BOI”, which has one of the best beats Carti has ever rapped on. The way he slides on this beat is truly phenomenal, showcasing the rapping ability that his fans are used to. The rest of the album, besides that, is pretty decent, with some songs being way better than others.
“The features were cool, but I wish Tyler, The Creator was on it,” said Alex Frey, a freshman.
One major gripe I have with this album is the placement of snare rolls and the mixing of various hi-hats and 808s. The amount of unmixed snare rolls on this album is truly enormous and it overall ruins a bit of the experience.
“It was an 8/10 for me. Besides that, the album is not really that cohesive and has a lot of hits and misses, especially for a 30-song album because overall it was good and had great production,” said Daniel Thuestad, a freshman.
To me, it sounds more like a mixtape than a full-blown album.
Overall, “MUSIC” proves to be a mediocre album at best with many good to great songs, but a whole lot of filler in between, making a full listen to be pretty hard to do considering how it is not cohesive at all.
