It comes as no surprise that
Playboi Carti's third studio album,
Music, is overwhelming. The often-imitated, record-breakingly popular rapper built his empire on a style that overwhelms and disorients, from his head-spinning, distortion-saturated production to his baby cyborg flows to lyrics that feel transmitted from the future. Arriving five years after the dungeonous shoegaze trap of 2020's
Whole Lotta Red,
Music (also known as
I Am Music) attempts to make up for lost time with 30 tracks, all full of ideas in various states of completion. The more fully formed moments hit their respective marks. "Pop Out" is a demented rage track with a beat that sounds like it's breaking for the song's entire duration, and the flame-broiled hooks of "Cocaine Nose" are similarly exciting, similarly blown out. The
Lil Uzi Vert-assisted "Twin Trim" is featherweight trap-pop heavy on synths and melodic flows, and "Like Weezy" is similar, taking notes from 2010s radio rap production but ultimately landing somewhere stranger and less accessible than any
Lil Wayne hit. "Crush," one of several songs to feature
Travis Scott, aims for the opulence of peak
Kanye, with backing from a choir evoking the same masterwork aspirations of
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, only delivered with
Donda II levels of inspiration.
Carti uses
Music to try on different identities, switching gears as often as he invites other top-tier rappers into the booth. "We Need All Da Vibes" features
Ty Dolla $ign and
Young Thug on its smooth, summery instrumental, resulting in a tune that exists in an almost entirely different world than the tripped-out trap of "Charge Dem Hoes a Fee" (featuring
Future and
Travis Scott) or the red-lined space invaders trap of "Toxic" (with
Skepta).
Kendrick Lamar provides ad-libs for a few songs and contributes a verse to the anxious banger "Good Credit," and
Carti somewhat reprises the energy of his appearance on "Timeless" (a highlight from
the Weeknd's 2025 album
Hurry Up Tomorrow), bringing in
the Weeknd to sing a melancholic hook for one of
Music's more atmospheric pop moments.
Music never feels quite cohesive enough to register as an album, and its bloated, style-hopping track list and 76-minute run time don't help any consistent themes to solidify. At the same time, the album lacks the kind of casual ease that would make it come off like a mixtape or a nonchalant dump of every partially cooked idea
Carti has had in the last half-decade. Instead,
Music is a cyclone of weird turns, big ideas, and choices that don't really make sense together, but are still somehow enjoyable under the banner of blissful confusion that
Playboi Carti has made his brand from the start. ~ Fred Thomas
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