“Trash”
“Dude literally threw some ad-libs over beats and thinks he’s special, smh”
“Does this guy actually have any talent? lol”
That’s just a sample of the type of comments you find under a typical Playboi Carti music video.
The hate is real, and the hate is varied;
- They hate on his lack of skill.
- They hate on his lack of meaningful content.
- They hate on his lack of versatility.
And sometimes, I must say, you can kind of see where they’re coming from.
However, what they fail to understand is, Carti’s music is the embodiment of a lack of.
There are 2 ways to approach Playboi Carti’s music, and you’ll probably find yourself on one of these sides of the Carti spectrum.
You could either:
- Plug yourself in and begin to float in the nirvana of a sound that knows to boundaries. A sound that produces earworms at every juncture — a skill that Carti possessess and flaunts so nonchalantly. In this near-psychedelic mental state that you will find yourself in, what Carti says doesn’t matter. It’s about how he says it, and how his meaningless vocals combine with the melodic beats to create an orgasmic trance that you will be stuck in, until the song ends and you are snapped back into reality.
- Go into the song with pre-conceived notions and expectations of what you expect Carti to sound like and what you expect rap to sound like in general. In which case, it would sound like the absolute noise that is somewhat synonymous with some of the newer wave “SoundCloud rappers”, most of whom Carti sounds nothing like.
If you are the latter, I don’t blame you, but here’s why you’re missing out.
Carti doesn’t follow the rules. If ever there was an unwritten hip-hop rulebook curated by the OGs over time, then Carti simply copied the book report. Nothing about Jordan Carter’s sound feels like he adopted it from anywhere. It’s totally radical stuff and appreciating radical ideas is tough, that’s understandable. Carti is only really a rapper by loose definition. “I’m a rockstaaaaaar,” one of his catchiest refrains to date, only does more to highlight this.
Sir Cartier has brought minimalism to the rap scene. It’s a fact. For lack of a more relatable description, his music is like those tiny salads you often see on a fitness model’s Instagram, the kind that’ll leave you shaking your head at what people call a “meal” in 2018. Minimalist and efficient, he’s the master economist of the rap game. Not only is he conscious of precisely what will keep you hooked, he’s exactly aware of when not to overstay his welcome.
Carti is a sonical superhero, his superpower is drawing you in to his sonic blackhole, where you are sucked in a void devoid of thought, lost in the atmosphere of his hypnotic snotty voice meshing and merging with his sidekick Pierre Bourne’s outlandish but mesmerizing beats.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VanJEnccYV8
Speaking of Pierre, the Carti-Pierre connection is nothing short of special. Not since the glory days of Zaytoven and Gucci Mane have we seen such a potent one-two punch in the rap stratosphere. Pierre is the blacksmith, Carti the master swordsman. It’s almost as if the now famous, “Yo Pierre you wanna come out here!” is a battle cry rather than a producer credit. Pierre’s no. 2 status may soon change, however, with him picking up the mic on two tracks on Carti’s new Die Lit, an album that epitomizes the phrase, less is more.
In contrast to a multitude of rappers who he shares the “mumble rap” limelight with, Carti requires very little of his listeners. He doesn’t need you to pop some pills before you listen to him. Neither does he need you to be biracial first (sorry Logic fans). There are no prerequisites to the Carti sound. All he requires is for you to open your mind and receive his message (or lack of).
In conclusion, Cash Carti is never going to educate you — well if you discount the spontaneous lessons on high fashion brands such as Raf Simons and Maison Margiela. He’s never going to get you to think deeply about anything. Heck, he may never even really catch your attention. But what the South Atlanta native will do, is to give you a vibe.
My advice? Next time you decide to give Carti a try, clear your mind, sit back and enjoy the sunset with “Let It Go” blasting in the background, and feel yourself, slowly but surely, sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of the uncharted and inescapable Carti sound.
