As a new album from Playboi Carti, speculatively titled I AM MUSIC, appears to draw closer, the Free Review is ranking the five tracks the rapper has released since December.
5. “EVILJ0RDAN”
The most recent track to drop in Carti’s string of promotional bangers is the weakest of the crop. The beat, helmed by Cardo and DJ Moon, feels one-dimensional and lightly grating, piloted by little more than a ringtone jingle of a synth riff and a plodding bed of 808 subs. Carti’s verse is solid, delivered in a deranged half-whisper, and he supplies some stand-out lyrics (“I put duct tape on my switch, perfect aim / they can’t put me in no genre, baby / ‘cause I changed the game”). But at a little over two minutes, “EVILJ0RDAN” is too slight to make a major impact, a near-throwaway amongst a series of better songs.
4. “H00DBYAIR”
The most menacing of the five tracks here, “H00DBYAIR” captures the bloodshot intensity of Whole Lotta Red’s “No Sl33p,” its goosebump-inducing production like John Carpenter by way of Metro Boomin. Carti raps like he’s on the edge of a breakdown, his voice close to cracking, his flow paranoid and claustrophobic - “all of my friends are dead,” he croaks, “leave ‘em in the cold, put ‘em in the tundra.” The track is structured as one extended verse, allowing the rapper to splatter one strung-out punchline after another onto the track’s grim, icy backdrop. It’s the most convincing case here for Carti as an emcee, his lyrics more cohesive and focused than on any of the other songs in this series.
3. “BACKR00MS (feat. Travis Scott)”
The only track of the bunch to feature a guest artist, “BACKR00MS” recruits frequent collaborator Travis Scott for its second verse - it’s the most recent team-up from the two rappers, following “FE!N,” a standout cut from Travis Scott’s fourth album, UTOPIA. While “BACKR00MS” lacks that song’s demented energy, it feels like the most fully-formed song on this list, and one of only two with a traditional chorus/verse structure. Carti’s hook is an unlikely earworm (“In the middle of the field, throw me a bomb / I’m throwin’ that bitch like quarterback”), but it’s stickier than it seems on paper, and his leading verse contains some semi-quotables, including “I was in the spot yesterday with my pops / my grandma still play bingo.” Scott’s contribution is decent, though his punchlines still feel like warmed-over Kanye leftovers (“she doin’ Ozempic, tryna be different, tryna be a newer woman”) and he fails to meet Carti’s erratic enthusiasm. The instrumental, courtesy of Cardo and Ojivolta, is led by an icy piano riff that lends the song and its decidedly lo-fi music video an eerie and unsettling air, and the ominous orchestral arrangement that creeps into the song’s final minute makes the track feel like the most cinematic of the rapper’s recent output.
2. “UR THE MOON” (or “Different Day”)
The first solo track from Playboi Carti in almost three years, “UR THE MOON,” was released exclusively to Instagram in early December. It’s an ethereal, bass-heavy banger that veers into a spacier, more atmospheric direction than most of the songs here. The production is engrossing, layering chilly synth chimes over rattling percussion and a rumbling bass line, and Carti’s performance is a syrupy marvel, gliding over the track like a phosphorescent apparition. Like “H00DBYAIR” and “EVILJ0RDAN” before it, “UR THE MOON” contains no discernible hook, but Carti’s flow is stronger here than it is on any of his other recent cuts - he also introduces a new, head-scratching ad-lib (“sceeah”) that pops up throughout the batch of new tracks.
1. “2024”
The best song to emerge from Carti’s recent stream of singles is “2024,” which feels like a return to WLR-era excellence. The instrumental, produced by Ojivolta, Earl on the Beat, and Kanye West, is irrepressibly bouncy and gently triumphant, the perfect playground for one of Carti’s best performances here. The hook (“put ‘em on the news!”) is the kind of hypnotic refrain the rapper is known best for, and he drops several head-turning punchlines (“I told her the globe don’t fit / I’m feeling like OJ”). Midway through the track, Carti switches registers completely, returning to the lower, more guttural delivery he’s exercised in his most recent appearances. The change-up is jarring, and the track sounds like the meeting of two distinct personalities, a development in the rapper’s trajectory that maintains his unpredictable, shape-shifting appeal and makes I AM MUSIC one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year. Sceeah.
(Note: “2024” also features the lyric, “no, I can’t be cancelled ‘cause you feel some type of way,” likely referring to the allegations of domestic abuse that Carti faces as of February last year. The quality of the song aside, this line should not be overlooked as a pretty vile blunder.)