No more waiting. No more refreshing Spotify. You’re not dreaming. Music is finally here.
Music took about four and a half years to materialize, and Playboi Carti matches the long wait with his longest, most wide-ranging album—a nearly 77-minute record that boasts blockbuster features and makes official several fan-favorite snippets. Where Whole Lotta Red felt focused in its brazen, punk-imbued approach, Music sprawls with classic Atlanta rap, industrial synths, and electropop.
Here are five takeaways from the album:
But Wait, There’s More Waiting
Leave it to this guy to be fashionably late to an album release he first announced years ago. When the clock struck midnight on the East Coast last night, we didn’t get Music; we got a rare X post from Carti with some of the guests on the album and a promise that the project would arrive at midnight Pacific Time. So Carti spent the wee hours of the night posting FaceTime screenshots with some of the featured artists, like Skepta, Young Thug, and Lil Uzi Vert. And, naturally, midnight Pacific came and went, and fans began to freak out over another botched album release. While Kai Cenat streamed overnight, Carti used him as a liaison to give updates on the album. “ANY MIN NOW,” reads a text from him to Kai near 4 AM, “IF IT WASN’T FOR THE SAMPLES AND CLEARANCES IT WOULD BEEN OUT AT 12 EAST.” It wasn’t until around 7:30 a.m. Eastern that Music finally surfaced across digital streaming platforms. The album was posted in such a frenzy that writers and producers are still yet to be credited on DSPs. As goofy as it sounds, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Paying Homage
If there’s one thing Playboi Carti has been clear about, with regard to Music, it’s that he’s using this record to channel his influences. His native roots in Atlanta are on display all across the board: His vocal cadence on several tracks, like “Walk” and “Toxic,” feels directly adapted from Future; and DJ Swamp Izzo, whose voice bellows throughout the album, has longstanding ties with Young Thug, Gucci Mane, and countless other local stars; there even appears to be a sample of Rich Kidz’s “Bend Over” on “Like Weezy.” With that being said, it’s arguably Lil Wayne whose influence permeates the album the most. For starters, there’s the title, as the New Orleans rap legend has notably had “I Am Music” tattooed on his forehead since his prime. And, recently, there was an image floating around from an old WorldStar video of Wayne wearing a boxing robe with the same phrase written on it in red. The horns and key shifts of Carti’s “Radar” may be heavily indebted to the sound Lex Luger brought to Atlanta, but they also sound like something Wayne would’ve rapped on in 2011.
